Post by brigitte on Feb 15, 2015 14:08:26 GMT -5
Last night, the topic of allergies and how kids are exposed to/or not/ to natural flora and bacteria confronted me again.
I was called as an emergency medical technician to a child under 10 who suffered from a potential life threatening reaction to milk (that was the word used by the dispatcher- not "dairy."). The allergy was known, and his parents had an epi pen for anaphylaxsis and Benadryl. The child, raised in a city, had reacted symptomatically with hives. This can be life threatening if untreated and the tissue around the trachea swells and the airway is compromised. Luckily, in this case, the Benadryl stayed the reaction.
He had eaten Sorbet, which didn't seem to be a risk for dairy and the kitchen said it didn't contain dairy. Fresh (raw) milk was not part of this at all (but I got to thinking how quickly the Dept. of Ag would be all over a fresh milk issue if even a remote possibility existed of potential harm) The sorbet did contain a small amount of dairy.
I asked the person in charge of the program (at a large facility, later) whether allergies were becoming more frequent among children. He said they have increased many fold in the past few years, and he volunteered that he thought it was because kids are kept from exposure to the things they would ordinarily have been exposed to a generation ago.
What if this child (whose outcome was good) had been exposed to fresh milk and pigs and chickens on a farm as a younger child. Might he have not developed allergies?
A study of allergies in this country found that Amish kids who drink fresh milk suffer far fewer allergies. The fresh milk fans laud the results, but the science is incomplete. Rather than wave a banner, I wonder how absolute the connection is.
And then of course there are the milk maids who were exposed to cows with cowpox who didn't get infected with smallpox after exposure. The belief was that their exposure to cowpox stimulated their own antibodies to protect them against smallpox. and thus a cue to how vaccine could ultimately work.
Here in Masachusetts, a friend whose son was said to be "allergic to the world" tried giving her suffering son fresh milk as a remedy after all else had failed. It was a last resort. The short version is that the child was completely cured. That woman, Kristin Canty, was so astonished by he disconnect between medicine and remedy that she turned over her kids to her husband for a while to document small farms at odds with government regulators who are keeping remedies from others - Her documentary is called Farmageddon.
I have another friend, Mary, who is lactose intolerant. She survived cancer. But she can't get past the "eeeeeww" factor of fresh milk as something that is still unclean and not from a box or a jar at Stop and Shop. I don't push her, but wonder if she might be able to tolerate fresh milk as I have seen it happen.
The pig farmer in a nearby town where I got piglets from is part of a university study about exposure to pigs as a remedy for swine flu.
And it goes on. Science is short on this topic. At the very least, and trying to view this objectively (okay impossible) it seems there is prejudice against natural remedies and hardly any willingness to level blame on processed/sanitized foods and sanitized lifestyles.
I was called as an emergency medical technician to a child under 10 who suffered from a potential life threatening reaction to milk (that was the word used by the dispatcher- not "dairy."). The allergy was known, and his parents had an epi pen for anaphylaxsis and Benadryl. The child, raised in a city, had reacted symptomatically with hives. This can be life threatening if untreated and the tissue around the trachea swells and the airway is compromised. Luckily, in this case, the Benadryl stayed the reaction.
He had eaten Sorbet, which didn't seem to be a risk for dairy and the kitchen said it didn't contain dairy. Fresh (raw) milk was not part of this at all (but I got to thinking how quickly the Dept. of Ag would be all over a fresh milk issue if even a remote possibility existed of potential harm) The sorbet did contain a small amount of dairy.
I asked the person in charge of the program (at a large facility, later) whether allergies were becoming more frequent among children. He said they have increased many fold in the past few years, and he volunteered that he thought it was because kids are kept from exposure to the things they would ordinarily have been exposed to a generation ago.
What if this child (whose outcome was good) had been exposed to fresh milk and pigs and chickens on a farm as a younger child. Might he have not developed allergies?
A study of allergies in this country found that Amish kids who drink fresh milk suffer far fewer allergies. The fresh milk fans laud the results, but the science is incomplete. Rather than wave a banner, I wonder how absolute the connection is.
And then of course there are the milk maids who were exposed to cows with cowpox who didn't get infected with smallpox after exposure. The belief was that their exposure to cowpox stimulated their own antibodies to protect them against smallpox. and thus a cue to how vaccine could ultimately work.
Here in Masachusetts, a friend whose son was said to be "allergic to the world" tried giving her suffering son fresh milk as a remedy after all else had failed. It was a last resort. The short version is that the child was completely cured. That woman, Kristin Canty, was so astonished by he disconnect between medicine and remedy that she turned over her kids to her husband for a while to document small farms at odds with government regulators who are keeping remedies from others - Her documentary is called Farmageddon.
I have another friend, Mary, who is lactose intolerant. She survived cancer. But she can't get past the "eeeeeww" factor of fresh milk as something that is still unclean and not from a box or a jar at Stop and Shop. I don't push her, but wonder if she might be able to tolerate fresh milk as I have seen it happen.
The pig farmer in a nearby town where I got piglets from is part of a university study about exposure to pigs as a remedy for swine flu.
And it goes on. Science is short on this topic. At the very least, and trying to view this objectively (okay impossible) it seems there is prejudice against natural remedies and hardly any willingness to level blame on processed/sanitized foods and sanitized lifestyles.