Now Almost Everyone Has Allergies
"They’re just allergies."- quote from a Reactine allergy medication commercial
The point of the commercial is that they are not "just allergies." But what are allergies?
Our bodies are set up to fight invasions by foreign bodies that could do them harm. Our immune system does most of the work fighting invaders, though billions of bacteria that live symbiotically with us (primarily on our skin and in our gut) help out considerably.
Generally speaking those good bacteria (we could not live without them) don’t cause us much trouble. They depend on us, we depend on them, and we all get along splendidly. Our own immune systems cause the problems. (Antibiotics kill these good bacteria, by the way.)
Allergies are mostly an affliction of the modern era. In my classroom career teaching young children, which ended a generation ago, I came across only two kids with severe allergies. Both had problems learning because their allergies prevented them from thinking clearly.
One child, that I knew was of at least average intelligence, went through a battery of tests by a psychologist twice in the school year, then was sent the following year to a special education class for children with learning disabilities. I objected strenuously to my principal, but was overruled. I insisted that the tests had been given when the boy suffered most from his allergies, not when he was clear headed. I was not included in the decision. He joined a special class for children who mostly had low intelligence.
The other child, no doubt destined for the same fate, moved out of the community in February. His mother had tears in her eyes when she told me that they had to move, because her son had done so well in my care, but circumstances dictated. I could foresee a similar school track for him.
In those days, severe allergies were rare. A few kids had allergic reactions to pollen, in season, but only a few. One child suffered from asthma--the only student I had who did, and I only discovered it when the class went on an outing that required hiking in a wilderness area.
Today allergies in the classroom are so common that teachers expect them and classmates expect to be inconvenienced by those who require special treatment. Some teachers today need emergency medical training and training in the dispensing of medication for their kids.
Allergies are the body’s overreaction to a stimulus it doesn’t like. Asthma is, fundamentally, an extreme version of an allergy. Something gets into the body and the body reacts violently to get rid of it.
Just over a decade ago I developed an allergy. After extensive tests, my doctor declared that I had a "mild environmental allergy." Nothing that could be identified, thus avoided. I could either begin taking allergy shots or continue using profound quantities of tissues daily. I chose the latter.
Over the past year, my wife has developed the same allergy. To what? We don’t drink city water, so we do not subject our bodies to the 300,000 chemical pollutants that city water treatment plants don’t remove. But we can’t do anything about the half million pollutants factories put in the air that everyone breathes. All things considered, we decided to avoid wearing chemical gas masks all day long.
I also have an allergy to breathing very cold air. When I walk outside in winter, my sinuses go to work and my nose runs. Inconvenient. But, in doing so, the mucus may continue to warm my breathing passage, preventing them from freezing. This might be an adaptation by body has made to protect itself. In this case, is an allergy an adaptation to the environment?
As well, I begin to sneeze when my body senses a temperature change of two degrees or more. This "allergy" likely has the same cause, but is a side effect of the adaptation. It’s an overreaction by natural functions of my body, as all true allergies are.
These days, asthma is common. Allergies are so ubiquitous that almost everyone has one or more. Some have an allergy that is so common to them and that affects them year round that they don’t even know they have it. To them, it’s "just life as I am getting older."
Science and archeology writer Jeff D. Leach believes, as do many people, including health professionals, that kids and adults develop allergies because their homes are so clean that their immune systems have not been challenged enough. He wrote in the New York Times "the alarming rise in allergic and autoimmune disorders during the past few decades is at least partly attributable to our lack of exposure to microorganisms that once covered our food and us."
He quotes research that suggests we reintroduce some dirt into our lives to see a reduction in diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, several allergies and other diseases. Our immune systems were built to fight hard and constantly, and if they don’t they redirect their efforts and work against us.
If this has you scratching your head and doubting, more reading on the subject of allergies will relieve that doubt.
One allergy you likely were not aware of has been shown to cause obesity. It’s not the only cause, but it is one that has been identified through scientific tests.
Here are a few other facts you likely don’t know about allergies.
Thanks to advertisers who want us to live in a "clean" environment, our immune system has fewer enemies to fight. In desperation, it fires on relatively innocent targets such as peanuts and cat dander. Our immune system is designed to fight for our survival throughout our life. When it doesn’t have an enemy, it invents one. Allergy symptoms are the results of a one-sided war.
The National Institutes of Health in the USA estimates that over half of Americans have at least one testable allergy. One of them is an allergy to penicillin, which can cause fatal anaphylaxis. Penicillin, when it first became public, was considered a great saviour against disease.
Food allergies are usually to a protein. A team at Trinity College Dublin, in 2004, injected mice with parasites of the kind that mouse immune systems would fight in the wild. It worked. The mice with previously weak immune systems developed healthy ones.
British entrepreneur Jasper Lawrence walked barefoot near some latrines in Cameroon, in 2007, to get infected by hookworms he believed would defeat asthma and seasonal allergies. It worked. For $3000 a person can receive up to 35 hookworm larvae which they put on a bandage and apply to their skin. Mr. Lawrence has not publicly reported the success rate for his business. (NOTE: this therapy is not legal in the USA.)
Between 150 and 200 Americans die each year from allergies to shellfish, nuts, fish, milk, eggs and other foods. They are serious allergies.
Tick bites you could get from walking barefoot in grass could cause your immune system to produce antibodies to alpha-gal, a carbohydrate commonly found in beef, pork and lamb. Resulting allergies to these meats could be fatal.
As many as 40,000 American women may be affected by an allergic sensitivity to male ejaculate (specifically seminal plasma hypersensitivity) which could result in symptoms from local swelling to systemic shock. Another reason for them to insist on the man using a condom.
An allergy to sex seems unfair. However, some women are allergic to their own progesterone, a sex hormone, developing anything from a rash to full shock.
Yes, pets can be allergic to human dander (cast off skin) as well as people can be allergic to pet dander.
Yes, some people are allergic to the sun. And some couples have to separate because they are allergic to each other.
But wait! A few rare individuals can develop aquagenic urticaria, a rash caused when they come in contact with water. Apparently they do not react to the 70 percent of their own body weight that is composed of water.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today’s Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers.
Learn more about the book at http://billallin.com
[Primary source: Discover, May 2012]
Showing posts with label classroom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label classroom. Show all posts
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Monday, August 18, 2008
This Is Who Controls Your Life And The Lives Of Your Kids
Men are born to succeed, not fail.
- Henry David Thoreau, American author, poet and philosopher (1817-1862)
Well, heck, that sounds simple enough.
So why doesn't it work?
Because to succeed, a person must have the tools to succeed and the attitude that the goal is possible. In other words, a person needs a good work ethic, something to do and the means to do it.
Easy again.
But most people settle for less than what they are capable of, then either overwork to benefit their employer or underwork in the mistaken belief that only partial success at work does not equal only partial success in life.
If the original statement is correct, then why are most people not feeling successful, fulfilled and personally complete?
We don't teach to success of the individual. We teach success for the nation. We teach that success for corporations is good. We teach that our working to keep corporations successful is good. We teach that spending every bit of income we get is good, that it should make us happy and keep the economy rolling.
But we don't teach to individual success. That is, we don't teach to success of the individual on a massive, nationwide scale.
What we do teach individuals is that they should have the skills to satisfy employers sufficiently that they will keep us employed. We almost never teach entrepreneurial skills because that would be counter to the benefit of corporations.
Ask most teens why they will continue with their education past high school and you will hear "so I can get a good job" more than any other answer. In other words, "so that I can get a good paying job." Hopefully, one that will not disappear when the employer downsizes because it has not forecast future markets correctly and has lost money, so needs to cut staff to show more profit or minimize losses to satisfy its shareholders.
We don't even teach our children what it means to be successful, other than that they will be happy being constant consumers. Which few are, really. Again, ask a teen what it means for an adult to be successful and the answer will most likely be related to a secure job with good income (with which to buy lots of stuff).
It's not my purpose to teach you what success is. I know what it is for me. But it took me a few decades of searching to learn.
You need to learn what success is for you. What it really is. What it really means to lead a fulfilling life.
Then teach it to every kid you know.
Schools don't do this. Their purpose is to train employees to be good workers and consumers.
Corporations control the curriculum. If you doubt this, check the name brands on all kinds of products in today's high schools and even in grade schools. Including in text books.
First you must learn what success in life really is. Then teach it to others, both adults and children.
How many people, on their deathbeds, have claimed that they should have worked harder or that they should have spent more of their money in order to make their own lives and the lives of their family members better? Corporations want us to believe that we should follow that line of unthinking.
Learn, then teach. It's what we are supposed to do. Corporations took that responsibility from us because we walked away from it ourselves.
When you teach children what is meaningful in life, don't report it to your employer. The employer won't like that. Just do it in private.
A recent study (actually several of them) showed that large corporations were set up to be sociopathological (amoral, capable of violence or spreading fear without feeling guilty). It's part of their corporate ethic.
This is the power that will control the destiny of your children unless you change what your kids believe.
If you don't like it, do something about it. Talk it up. Social change happens only when enough people believe that children should be taught differently. Every socially acceptable norm of today was once a radical idea. Then people talked about it.
So talk. It's easy.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to have a time scale, content and methodology for teaching children what they need to know to lead successful lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
- Henry David Thoreau, American author, poet and philosopher (1817-1862)
Well, heck, that sounds simple enough.
So why doesn't it work?
Because to succeed, a person must have the tools to succeed and the attitude that the goal is possible. In other words, a person needs a good work ethic, something to do and the means to do it.
Easy again.
But most people settle for less than what they are capable of, then either overwork to benefit their employer or underwork in the mistaken belief that only partial success at work does not equal only partial success in life.
If the original statement is correct, then why are most people not feeling successful, fulfilled and personally complete?
We don't teach to success of the individual. We teach success for the nation. We teach that success for corporations is good. We teach that our working to keep corporations successful is good. We teach that spending every bit of income we get is good, that it should make us happy and keep the economy rolling.
But we don't teach to individual success. That is, we don't teach to success of the individual on a massive, nationwide scale.
What we do teach individuals is that they should have the skills to satisfy employers sufficiently that they will keep us employed. We almost never teach entrepreneurial skills because that would be counter to the benefit of corporations.
Ask most teens why they will continue with their education past high school and you will hear "so I can get a good job" more than any other answer. In other words, "so that I can get a good paying job." Hopefully, one that will not disappear when the employer downsizes because it has not forecast future markets correctly and has lost money, so needs to cut staff to show more profit or minimize losses to satisfy its shareholders.
We don't even teach our children what it means to be successful, other than that they will be happy being constant consumers. Which few are, really. Again, ask a teen what it means for an adult to be successful and the answer will most likely be related to a secure job with good income (with which to buy lots of stuff).
It's not my purpose to teach you what success is. I know what it is for me. But it took me a few decades of searching to learn.
You need to learn what success is for you. What it really is. What it really means to lead a fulfilling life.
Then teach it to every kid you know.
Schools don't do this. Their purpose is to train employees to be good workers and consumers.
Corporations control the curriculum. If you doubt this, check the name brands on all kinds of products in today's high schools and even in grade schools. Including in text books.
First you must learn what success in life really is. Then teach it to others, both adults and children.
How many people, on their deathbeds, have claimed that they should have worked harder or that they should have spent more of their money in order to make their own lives and the lives of their family members better? Corporations want us to believe that we should follow that line of unthinking.
Learn, then teach. It's what we are supposed to do. Corporations took that responsibility from us because we walked away from it ourselves.
When you teach children what is meaningful in life, don't report it to your employer. The employer won't like that. Just do it in private.
A recent study (actually several of them) showed that large corporations were set up to be sociopathological (amoral, capable of violence or spreading fear without feeling guilty). It's part of their corporate ethic.
This is the power that will control the destiny of your children unless you change what your kids believe.
If you don't like it, do something about it. Talk it up. Social change happens only when enough people believe that children should be taught differently. Every socially acceptable norm of today was once a radical idea. Then people talked about it.
So talk. It's easy.
Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to have a time scale, content and methodology for teaching children what they need to know to lead successful lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Are You A Doughhead? Find Out
We shall succeed only so far as we continue that most distasteful of all
activity, the intolerable labor of thought.
- Learned Hand, jurist (1872-1961)
Hand's statement seems like a backhanded universal condemnation of humanity. The hope he offers of success for humanity seems dim, at best.
We are, indeed, surrounded by people who don't think. They have brain activity, but that is usually the means by which they rationalize their agreement with the dominant authority who provides them with the thoughts they absorb and believe. They don't actually think anything much for themselves.
Why, if humans are among the most successful species on the planet (we live and survive everywhere we can find food), how could so many of us lack the power to think or give up the ability to think for ourselves? That ability to think allowed us to survive where hundreds and thousands of other species went extinct.
The answer is: we assiduously teach ourselves to avoid thinking. Commercials and other advertising teach us that we don't need to choose among the many brands of detergents, fashion brands and toothpaste, we only need to choose the brand with the most effective advertising. The best advertising trains us best so we don't have to think about it.
Our media teach us what to think and believe about politics. There is no such thing as a major media network that does not have a political agenda and party it supports more than the others. They claim neutrality, but practise something quite the opposite.We tend to support the party and its candidates that the media we pay attention to advocate.
Within offices we have unwritten guidelines about what's right and what's stylish to wear. It's unusual in a factory lunchroom to find one person who regularly disagrees with the political stance of the majority. Workers may support different sports teams, but they enjoy the camaraderie and competition of challenging "their" team against those of others of their co-workers.
In schools, as children, often the lesson most consistently taught is to be quiet when others are talking, during a video presentation or at certain other times. While this behaviour is both courteous and a means of learning, it also teaches children that their thoughts and ideas and concepts they may devise are not worthy of airing or of consideration.
Opportunities to express and have accepted their own thoughts are few in some cases non-existent in the classroom. Without those opportunities to express themselves in a receptive environment, kids learn to avoid thinking because they have nowhere to speak up.
That's thorough teaching, socialization and training. We teach people that they don't need to think because others will always be prepared to do their thinking for them. Isn't the teacher or parent always right, at least to themselves?
To a great extent, this practice has worth. Every society in the world has values and beliefs it holds dear and these must be taught to every child and adult so that chaos does not ensue with people robbing each other, killing each other, raping or cheating each other. We need conformity to some extent.
What we don't need is the thorough lack of thought that so many people give to their lives. A simple example: at gift-giving time (such as Christmas) do we give a child the gift he or she wants or do we consider what gift would best help the child through the next phase of his or her life? That is, do we give a play gift or a learning gift?
In most cases, the gift will be what will satisfy the child. Toys and electronic games break so easily or get cast aside so quickly because the fun but meaningless gifts do not provide what kids naturally know they must have, preparation for their lives as adults. They inherently know what they need, but they ask for the toys they have learned to want from advertising and peer influence.
They have about 20 years to learn how to be competent and knowledgeable adults. By age 20, most young adults know how they should act, what they should do, how they should think. Each of the "shoulds" in the previous sentence results from repeated training: don't think about this, just do it.
Is thinking such hard work? Very much so. For someone of middle age who has done little of it, thinking independently may be virtually impossible. They don't know what to do to engage the gears required to think. They may literally lack the neural pathways to think beyond the surface level of any subject. They get used to learning from others what and how they should "think." They believe what they're told they should think.
Thinking requires about 33 percent as much energy as heavy lifting. The difference is that thinking can continue for an extended period of time, whereas heavy lifting usually takes place for a brief period of time. Over a one hour period, one person thinking can burn many times more calories than someone doing the average construction job, for example.
What happens from years of brain atrophy? Senility, for one. Senility results from long term lack of use of the brain. Senility is totally preventable. Just think.
Health professionals advise now that people should find many activities that will engage their brains to get them thinking as they get older. It's a way to greatly reduce, if not totally eliminate, the risk of Alzheimer's. Just as grass doesn't grow on a busy street, the lesions of Alzheimer's may not grow in a busy brain.
Whoda thought? Not nearly enough of us, judging by the increasing numbers of people dying from Alzheimer's. If you want more evidence, walk down the halls of many nursing homes where patients are left in the halls: watching people walk back and forth along their passageway is the most stimulation the brains of many of them get. There is no brain activity to speak of behind those hollow eyes.
Learned Hand said that "we shall succeed only..." He should have said "we shall survive only..." As individuals and as a species.
The world does not need a flood of more stupid old people to support. Let's make some changes.
Start with yourself. Being a reader, you are not likely to suffer from senility or Alzheimer's, but you know people who will. Maybe you can motivate them to change. Think about it.
Some of the most brilliant thoughts these days are coming from elderly people who have recently learned to think for themselves. One thing we could do is to give them a forum to be heard.
Remember, they have been taught since childhood that their thoughts are not worthy and they will not be heard. They need you to listen to them. And maybe to find others who will pay attention as well.
Bill Allin
"Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems," a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to raise children who can think, instead of socially acceptable automatons who do and think what they are told for their entire lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
activity, the intolerable labor of thought.
- Learned Hand, jurist (1872-1961)
Hand's statement seems like a backhanded universal condemnation of humanity. The hope he offers of success for humanity seems dim, at best.
We are, indeed, surrounded by people who don't think. They have brain activity, but that is usually the means by which they rationalize their agreement with the dominant authority who provides them with the thoughts they absorb and believe. They don't actually think anything much for themselves.
Why, if humans are among the most successful species on the planet (we live and survive everywhere we can find food), how could so many of us lack the power to think or give up the ability to think for ourselves? That ability to think allowed us to survive where hundreds and thousands of other species went extinct.
The answer is: we assiduously teach ourselves to avoid thinking. Commercials and other advertising teach us that we don't need to choose among the many brands of detergents, fashion brands and toothpaste, we only need to choose the brand with the most effective advertising. The best advertising trains us best so we don't have to think about it.
Our media teach us what to think and believe about politics. There is no such thing as a major media network that does not have a political agenda and party it supports more than the others. They claim neutrality, but practise something quite the opposite.We tend to support the party and its candidates that the media we pay attention to advocate.
Within offices we have unwritten guidelines about what's right and what's stylish to wear. It's unusual in a factory lunchroom to find one person who regularly disagrees with the political stance of the majority. Workers may support different sports teams, but they enjoy the camaraderie and competition of challenging "their" team against those of others of their co-workers.
In schools, as children, often the lesson most consistently taught is to be quiet when others are talking, during a video presentation or at certain other times. While this behaviour is both courteous and a means of learning, it also teaches children that their thoughts and ideas and concepts they may devise are not worthy of airing or of consideration.
Opportunities to express and have accepted their own thoughts are few in some cases non-existent in the classroom. Without those opportunities to express themselves in a receptive environment, kids learn to avoid thinking because they have nowhere to speak up.
That's thorough teaching, socialization and training. We teach people that they don't need to think because others will always be prepared to do their thinking for them. Isn't the teacher or parent always right, at least to themselves?
To a great extent, this practice has worth. Every society in the world has values and beliefs it holds dear and these must be taught to every child and adult so that chaos does not ensue with people robbing each other, killing each other, raping or cheating each other. We need conformity to some extent.
What we don't need is the thorough lack of thought that so many people give to their lives. A simple example: at gift-giving time (such as Christmas) do we give a child the gift he or she wants or do we consider what gift would best help the child through the next phase of his or her life? That is, do we give a play gift or a learning gift?
In most cases, the gift will be what will satisfy the child. Toys and electronic games break so easily or get cast aside so quickly because the fun but meaningless gifts do not provide what kids naturally know they must have, preparation for their lives as adults. They inherently know what they need, but they ask for the toys they have learned to want from advertising and peer influence.
They have about 20 years to learn how to be competent and knowledgeable adults. By age 20, most young adults know how they should act, what they should do, how they should think. Each of the "shoulds" in the previous sentence results from repeated training: don't think about this, just do it.
Is thinking such hard work? Very much so. For someone of middle age who has done little of it, thinking independently may be virtually impossible. They don't know what to do to engage the gears required to think. They may literally lack the neural pathways to think beyond the surface level of any subject. They get used to learning from others what and how they should "think." They believe what they're told they should think.
Thinking requires about 33 percent as much energy as heavy lifting. The difference is that thinking can continue for an extended period of time, whereas heavy lifting usually takes place for a brief period of time. Over a one hour period, one person thinking can burn many times more calories than someone doing the average construction job, for example.
What happens from years of brain atrophy? Senility, for one. Senility results from long term lack of use of the brain. Senility is totally preventable. Just think.
Health professionals advise now that people should find many activities that will engage their brains to get them thinking as they get older. It's a way to greatly reduce, if not totally eliminate, the risk of Alzheimer's. Just as grass doesn't grow on a busy street, the lesions of Alzheimer's may not grow in a busy brain.
Whoda thought? Not nearly enough of us, judging by the increasing numbers of people dying from Alzheimer's. If you want more evidence, walk down the halls of many nursing homes where patients are left in the halls: watching people walk back and forth along their passageway is the most stimulation the brains of many of them get. There is no brain activity to speak of behind those hollow eyes.
Learned Hand said that "we shall succeed only..." He should have said "we shall survive only..." As individuals and as a species.
The world does not need a flood of more stupid old people to support. Let's make some changes.
Start with yourself. Being a reader, you are not likely to suffer from senility or Alzheimer's, but you know people who will. Maybe you can motivate them to change. Think about it.
Some of the most brilliant thoughts these days are coming from elderly people who have recently learned to think for themselves. One thing we could do is to give them a forum to be heard.
Remember, they have been taught since childhood that their thoughts are not worthy and they will not be heard. They need you to listen to them. And maybe to find others who will pay attention as well.
Bill Allin
"Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems," a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to raise children who can think, instead of socially acceptable automatons who do and think what they are told for their entire lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
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