General Adaptation Syndrome:
Even this natural approach of challenging the body with the offensive substance (the allergen) by introducing bit-by-bit in small doses until the body goes into immunological exhaustion, and until it cannot respond clinically anymore, seemingly looks a far better therapeutic option than the conventional method of using powerful anti-allergic drugs to suppress the symptoms, this in my opinion, is still harmful.
Protective Mechanisms:
One must understand the signs and symptoms are not a disease per sec, but there merely programmed there by the body as alarm bells to serve as warnings that something is not right, and the root causes need to be removed.
Stages of Pathogenesis:
Symptoms are just protective mechanisms programmed there by Mother Nature to protect us, and they should never be silenced with powerful drugs, or worked on until they cannot respond to a threat anymore. The body will first ring the warning bee (alarm stage), and if this ignored or suppressed with drugs, it will slip into a silent and unresponsive phase (asymptomatic stage), and if this again is neglected (the pathology is still reversible at this stage), it will finally sink into the third, last and irreversible phase – the degenerative stage.
The Smoker’s Dilemma:
There are hundreds of examples of the progression of a disease in medicine. But I shall cite just one example of a smoker who has never smoked before. The initial protective stage (alarm stage) when he inhales the smoke of a cigarette is the reflex action of coughing as the body tries to reject the smoke. But if he ignores this signal and warning bell, he sinks into the next stage called the silent stage (no more symptoms, no more coughing, no more warning bells…). He then continues to ‘enjoy’ smoking without realizing the dangers.
If he still continues to smoke, the progression of harm will continue to spiral into the final and last stage called the ‘degenerative stage’ with outcome like chronic bronchitis, emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, (COPD), and finally…cancer of the lungs. This is the scenario.
Stress injuries:
Allergy, like smoking is a stress-related disease. The word ‘stress’ does not just mean emotional, psychological , work, financial, or social stresses, but anything - environmental, nutritional, chemical, metabolic, endocrinal, pathogenic, exogenous (outside the body), endogenous (within the body)… any thing at all that challenges the ability of the body to cope and adapt to the changes. If it fails to adapt, disease set in. In fact almost all chronic and degenerative diseases of modern life-styles are all stress-related.
This is just one of the hundreds of examples why the incidence of chronic and degenerative diseases are on the rise – cancers, cardiovascular, renal, and metabolic diseases like diabetes mellitus, hypertriglyceridemia (high blood triglycerides) , high cholesterol, osteoporosis… etc. They are all nutritional, life-styles, environmental, occupational and exposure diseases.
The frog in a pot:
This is like the analogy of a frog being put into a pot of water, and the heat slowly turned on till the frog is cooked to death without jumping off or realizing it.
Thus even though we can work the body into allergenic exhaustion by challenging it with small doses of food and non-food allergens over time as I have described, the best approach is still prevention.
A Second Thought:
I have instituted this treatment protocol (allergen immunotherapy) on a few of my patients before, but on hind thought, this was still not a very good approach in the management. Preventive medicine is far, far better than ‘curative’ medicine. Once a degenerative disease sets in there is no cure. You can only control (not cure) it through life-long pharmacological intervention till death from other related diseases set in. This is gospel truth.
The best approach still, is to assist the patient in a qualified and professional way to identify the offending substance(s). This is a very long procedure through lengthy and elaborate questionnaires, history-taking, combined with skin patch tests, logging and recording procedures. Finally, there is a need to help the patient through education and practical counseling. It is not an easy job.
Attempting to change life style and food habits … be it trying to avoid peanuts, bread, cow’s milk, shell-fish, bee pollens, or even meeteh is an enormous challenge for a very enduring and a well-trained nutritionist or a caring physician.
Dr Han Selye:
This principle on life-style and stress-related diseases is called General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS). It was first put forward by a very eminent Hungarian-Canadian physician and endocrinologist by the name of Dr. Hans Hugo Bruno Selye.
Allergy is a stress-related disease, and the word ‘stress’ does not just mean emotional, psychological , work, financial, or social stresses, but anything - environmental, nutritional, chemical, metabolic, endocrinal, pathogenic, exogenous (outside the body), endogenous (within the body)… any thing at all that challenges the ability for the body to cope and adapt to the changes. If it fails to adapt, disease set in. In fact almost all chronic and degenerative diseases of modern life-styles are all stress-related.
This principle in medicine applies to all pathogenic (disease) situations, including medical emergency and trauma.
Harmful short-cuts:
Don’t take short cuts with all those drugs, or even immunotherapy with vaccines or food desensitization programmes. It requires enormous efforts by the health-care professionals (doctors, nutritionists, nurses, counselors) and a very high degree of cooperation and compliance by the patient. It is not an easy job.
Welfare of patient, first:
One of the gold standards in the practice of good and ethical medicine which we as physicians take, when solemnizing the Oath in Latin is ‘Primum Non Nocere’ to mean ‘first do no harm’
Unfortunately patients oftentimes are not interested in counseling and education. They only want to get rid of the symptoms as quickly as possible. To them this is ‘good medicine’ So doctors capitalize on this weakness using harmful fast action drugs which pharmaceutical companies are only too happy to promote hand-in-gloves.
lim ju boo
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