Anti-Stress Nutrition Programme to Improve Mood,
Health, Behaviour and Learning
By Brenda Sampson
UNDERSTANDING ALLERGY Part 2
Allergy is very common today. It is sometimes estimated that about 30% of people are allergic, but it may be much higher. In a small survey by our association, over 50% said that they were aware of allergies in self or family; and 94% ticked allergic symptoms they had suffered in the previous 18 months. A BBC reporter conducted his own survey; he said that of the first 20 people he questioned, 18 said they had allergies. I think there are five main causes for this epidemic.
1 When the atmosphere in the home is mainly tense, argumentative and negative, with little laughter,it can make the following more likely to cause allergies.
2 The common use of bottle feeding throughout the 20th century. The tendency to develop allergies runs in families. It is more likely to be inherited if both parents come from allergic families. Allergy is also more likely to develop in a baby if it is bottle fed. The incidence of allergy seems to have increased with each generation. The La Leche League was formed in the 60's to help women breast feed successfully, and they have almost three decades of experience in this field. Should Plunket and La Leche combine, it would benefit the health of New Zealand infants and children.
3 There has been a chemical revolution in this century. Thousands of new chemicals that never existed before, have been invented by a wealthy and powerful industry. When invented there is pressure from the manufacturers to get them sold and used, and they have invaded our food, air and water. The body needs pure food, pure air, pure water; it does not need foreign chemicals; they create stress and weaken the immune system.
4 There is an epidemic today of Candida yeast infection (thrush), (see SECTION 3: THE YEAST CONNECTION), Among other harmful effects, it causes allergy and chemical sensitivity.
5 I think a fifth cause of the allergy epidemic is the diet of teenagers. It is considered cool for children and teenagers to eat fast foods, take-away foods, junk foods. By the time they reach child-bearing years, their bodies are exhausted of the nutrients needed for a happy pregnancy, an easier birth, and a healthy baby. Difficult pregnancy and birth are stress for mother and baby alike, and stress is the forerunner of allergy; or colic as it used to be called. A sleepless, screaming, colicky baby, developing into a restless, unhappy, overactive toddler; is a misery I would not wish on anyone. I say again, that the best time to start feeding a baby right, is several years before it is born. This applies to fathers too, since they provide half the baby's genes.
CLASSIFYING ALLERGIES
Two kinds of allergic reaction are recognised:
1 Allergy to nutritious foods, such as milk or wheat products. This is really an immune reaction, as explained in the first part of this article Understanding allergy
2 The second type is usually called "sensitivity". It is not an immune reaction; it is a reaction to a chemical that is toxic to the body; such as a food additive, a pesticide, a toxic gas such as smoke, perfume, or volatile solvents used in quick drying glues, etc. These fumes are probably toxic to everyone; whether they produce a reaction will depend on how efficiently the individual can excrete them. Allergies can also be classified into those that produce physical symptoms in the body, and those that produce mental and emotional symptoms in the brain and nervous system. The latter are called cerebral allergies. Cerebral allergy is the cause of much or most disturbed emotions and behaviour in children (and I believe in adults, also). Cerebral allergy also produces learning difficulties such as dyslexia, and hyperactivity.
ALLERGY TREATMENT
Always remember that the basic cause of allergy is stress. Allergic symptoms appear when the total stress load is more than the body can cope with. So the first step in allergy treatment is to reduce stress.
Stress can be of two kinds; mental and emotional stress, or physical stress. We give our bodies physical stress when we put something in the body that it does not want; either by eating or drinking or breathing it. This is the easiest kind of stress to reduce; we just have to stop doing it. So this is where I advise people who want to overcome allergy, to begin.
Reduce physical stress (chemical stress) by using a sugar-free Feingold programme. The Feingold programme reduces the quantity of toxic chemical additives in the diet, and eliminating all sugars starves thrush in the bowel and reduces the toxic wastes it produces.
