SC - Allergies in general

[alm4 at cornell.edu]

Nanna,

 Your question is interesting because 'experts' in America don't even 
agree on why it happens.

 One family I know had a child about 25 years ago that was diagnosed as 
ADHD or something like that and was given medicine for it and it didn't 
help.  So the mother did some 'alternative' research where she found that 
someone thought food additives such as nitrate and BHT, etc were causing 
the sort of problems her son was having.  So the mother decided to take 
him off the medicine since it wasn't helping very much anyway, and 
restricted his diet to food with no additives.

Her son got better and didn't need the medicine and was not 'acting up' 
except when he ate too much food that had additives in it.  She also had 
him tested for allergies and found out he was allergic to cats and some 
kind of peppermint.  He also was allergic to chocolate but that could 
have something to do with additives.  I can't ask her about it anymore 
because she has passed away.

The other theory I heard what is called an 'environmental medicine 
allergy doctor' (in layman's terms--if you have allergies he tried to 
find out what in your environment may be causing them so you could 
possibly eliminate them instead of drugging you up first) told someone I 
know is that every one 'toxic' thing you add to the list of things you 
expose yourself to the more likely your immune system is to overload and 
cause allergic reactions.  I don't know what sort of 'protections' there 
are in your country but in USA we have not always been friendly to the 
environment or the workplaces to which we expose people along with 
everything else.

	Angeline