Asthma & Allergies (& Antibiotics & Autoimmunity)

If you were born in the 20th century, I want you to think back to your elementary school days.  How many of your classmates had seasonal allergies?  How many had food allergies?  How many had asthma?  How many were taking antibiotics on a regular basis?

Probably not a lot.  Back in my day (good god, that's what I sound like now?), we all happily brought our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to school, full of peanuts and gluten.  I mean, we also nourished our bodies with such healthy options as Kool-aid and Doritos.  The back half of the 20th century (or the '1900s', as the 13-year olds I teach call it) was a weird time, eh?

When I returned to teaching after a nearly decade-long hiatus in 2010, I was astonished to learn how many of our students had food allergies and sensitivities.  At least 25% of the student body needed to take daily medication for allergies and/or asthma.  "Nut-Free" described most school facilities.  Now, in 2018, the student medicine bag I carry on a field trip is packed full of Epi pens and inhalers.  Nearly half of my students have allergies of some kind, and many have asthma as well.

I remember, in 2010, wondering to myself--is this just my imagination?  Was I not paying attention before, or are there more kids with allergies than there used to be?

It was *not* just my imagination.  There have been a lot of theories about the rise of allergies and asthma, and the theory that seems to be gaining the most popularity in published studies suggests that we've let our civilized lifestyle get too clean.

Firstly, let's start by defining an allergy.  Basically, it's your immune system freaking out, thinking you've been poisoned.  By that definition, allergies are essentially an autoimmune condition, which is why allergies and autoimmunity tend to go hand in hand.  The 'we got too clean' theory basically states that, when a child's immune system is in development, it needs to be challenged in order to develop properly. When babies stick things in their mouths, they are heeding nature's call to expose their systems to small amounts of germs and dirt so that their immune systems grow up big and strong. When we take these things out of their mouths and clean them with Lysol and Clorox, we keep the germs away, which means their immune systems aren't getting the practice they need to grow up.

Multiply this over a few generations, and you get a burgeoning allergy / asthma epidemic.




So even though my parents were hardly clean freaks, and they did a really solid job of making sure I was an outdoorsy kid (12 years of camping with the girl scouts--I can make you a seriously gorgeous fire), the sum of the cultural norm of de-germifying all of civilization was greater than their individual efforts.

I was one of the outliers in my cohort (though I would fit right in with my current middle schoolers) who had chronic seasonal and environmental allergies. Bronchitis was my unwelcome houseguest no less than twice a year, and I would take antibiotics every time it hit. I had an inhaler (plus a dispensing chamber which looks suspiciously like an Austin Powers prop) and I consumed enough Robitussin and Sudafed to make a meth cooker blush.   

Around age 12, the rashes on my face, combined with my chronic stomach aches brought me to an allergist who diagnosed me with a casein allergy and lactose intolerance.  I was inconsistent in my compliance in avoiding dairy--We replaced my morning cereal milk with soy milk,  but I sure as heck wasn't about to stop eating cake or ice cream or cheese just because of a little eczema and digestive distress (Lactaid *kind* of worked).

So, now we've established that, by my teen years I had seasonal allergies, chronic bronchial asthma, and both an allergy and a sensitivity to two different components in dairy, which I continued to consume because CAKE AND ICE CREAM AND CHEESE.

God, I miss cheese.

Allergically and Asthmatically speaking, my 20s were my strongest years.  I seemed to tolerate dairy in moderation, and I went for years without needing antibiotics. I was cured! I had outgrown my allergies and asthma (and with them my proclivity for respiratory infections)!

Until...one fateful day in my late 20s, my husband and I went to the movies. We ate all the things.  We ate the popcorn, we ate the hot dogs, we ate the nachos, and we drank the soda.  We were young and having fun! After the movie was over, I noticed a rash on my chest. "Huh," I said, "I think I'm having some kind of allergic reaction." I figured it would go away on its own. It did not. It grew. It crawled up my neck and down my stomach. The skin on my throat started to swell, and my digestive system went into protest. We finally decided to head the E.R, where I was told "you're having an allergic reaction."

Well, DUH.


They pumped me full of steroids (whose side effects were only slightly preferable to the allergic reaction) and referred me to an allergist. After a scratch test, he told me "Well, you've got a pretty significant allergy to milk" (oops, guess I didn't outgrow that).

He was unsure what, exactly, caused the reaction I had experienced in the movie theatre, but the scratch test also revealed reactions to: wheat, rice, peas, and chicken.

CHICKEN? Who is allergic to chicken?

"That's, like, everything I consume."  I said. I wasn't kidding. Bagel and cream cheese for breakfast, sesame chicken for lunch, mac and cheese for dinner--this was a regular day in the life of Dianna at this time.  "What am I supposed to eat?" I pleaded.

He told me that the allergies were mild, and I could probably just go ahead and continue eating these foods as long as I wasn't noticing any symptoms.

Note my wording there:  NOTICING any symptoms.  Symptoms are sneaky little buggers, and can hide deep within your system for years before you figure out there's anything wrong.

This should have been my first clue that sometimes, not all doctors always give the best advice.

But I trusted him, and I liked bagels with cream cheese, so I went on eating these foods 'in moderation' for years, until quite recently, when I finally started to 'notice' the symptoms I had been living with (and believing were just normal 'life is pain' feelings).

I mean, life *is* pain, but it isn't chronic eczema and respiratory infections and asthma and digestive distress. Those are SYMPTOMS. But it took me a few decades to figure that out, because I'm a little slow.

These days, my list of 'trigger foods' is even longer (but that's for another post).  While a scratch test can help find allergies, the best way to truly get at the root of which foods set off autoimmune responses in a human body is to do an elimination diet, which is something a very awesome doctor of mine suggested years ago and which I only just got around to doing this past year, because, well, (sometimes some patients don't always follow the best advice, plus) CAKE AND CHEESE AND ICE CREAM.

So, which came first--the asthma, the allergies, or the autoimmune condition (we'll get to that later)?  It doesn't really matter. What matters is knowing that they're linked, and that finally putting that link together has helped me manage all three in a way that I was never able to do when I was trying to treat them separately. The leg bone is, in fact, connected to the hip bone. Ergo, the asthma bone is, in fact, connected to the allergy bone. And so on. To quote Dirk Gently, "Everything is connected."

Cheese is delicious (soooooo delicious) but it's not as delicious as feeling like my stomach isn't trying to eat itself from the inside.

Find your connections. Put them together.  Eat food that heals you, rather than harms you.


image sources:
http://scibosnian.com/recipe/peanut-butter-sandwiches/
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/health-canada-warns-of-epipen-shortage-1.3765824
http://www.medbroadcast.com/procedure/getprocedure/allergy-skin-test