Allergy Season Redux, Redux

So, are you STILL SUFFERING from allergies? Please consider the ten-day detox I recommended in my last posting. We’re having great results with the ten-day plan, followed up with specific homeopathic remedies to combat the seasonal pollen parade.

Why does the detox help with seasonal allergies?

First, you give your body a break from foods that may be adding to the toxic load on a system already under assault by the pollens. Many of us have minor food sensitivities that don’t reveal themselves as full-blown allergies. But those little troublemakers that ordinarily pose no serious problem — when dumped into an already overworked detox system — will quickly reveal their dark side.

A second reason to detox is to assist your overburdened liver by optimizing the performance of its congested detoxification pathways. Think, “opening the channels.” Think, “healthy Draino.”

Ultimately, even a healthy body has a limited ability to ward off incoming toxins, including those pesky pollens and problem foods. Identifying your major culprits, reducing your intake of reactive foods, and reinforcing your defenses will help reduce both the ongoing stress on your body and those misery-mmaking stress-reactions that we call allergies.

Allergy Season Redux

OK, so it’s allergy time again. We can wheeze. We can sneeze. We can itch. We can ooze. Let’s face it: although some of us clearly suffer more than others do, those insidious, often-unseen particles floating through our air are not good for any of us. Is there anything we can do to minimize their effects? Well, yes, fortunately, we’re not completely defenseless.

For starters, this is a great time of year for a simple, 10-day detox program. In just ten days, you’ll simultaneously give your body a well deserved break from foods it may find challenging, while cleaning your liver and opening its drainage pathways so it can successfully break down and flush out those pesky allergens and irritants.

It’s also a great time to haul out Neti and resume (or begin?) that salutary nasal washing. And, its time to reinvigorate your hard-working bodily systems with lymphatic drainage and homeopathic detoxification remedies; they’ll arm your body to attack and eliminate those annoying invading pollens.

Another very effective treatment is allergy elimination treatment, which involves reprogramming your body’s physical and psychological responses to an allergen.

And, of course, it’s again time to think about which areas of your diet, nutritional supplementation, stress levels, or exercise regimen need tweaking. Appropriate tweaking sometimes means less of something, sometimes more. Most of us need a bit more rest and a lot less stress to mount a proper immune response to whatever challenges come our way, including the airborne ones.

If you’re suffering from seasonal allergies, I’d be glad to discuss the detox program and my beloved Neti pot, and to help devise a personally tailored, safe, effective counterattack.

New Diseases, New Drugs, Same Old Record Profits

A recent AlterNet posting bears a chilling title: “How the Drug Companies Want Us to Be Sick.” Multinational pharmaceutical corporations have a dream, and it isn’t one they gleaned from Martin Luther King.

Their dream: at least one disease and more than one prescription drug for every American. There is so much marketing and selling of sickness that the phrase “disease mongering” has been coined to refer to the marketing of diseases and their matching drug solutions. Dr. Richard Lippin, an occupational health physician, predicts we’ll see the “disease” label applied to anything and everything to do with pain, fatigue, or feeling stressed. He reasons that there will be an attempt to market to the baby boomers desperate to avoid aging and death. Also, thanks to the very real problems we face globally, anxiety and depression will continue to rise. Good news for the antidepressant manufacturers, bad news for unsuspecting consumers.

Recently, “big pharma” was given a green light by the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Communications Commission, and they’ve unleashed a veritable tsunami of drug ads swamping American television screens with the message, “Ask your doctor…,” — and believe me, we’re asking.

With these ads and other complementary marketing techniques, drug makers are redefining the parameters of “normal” health. And they’re convincing more and more of us that we’re in need of drugs to cure or control a rapidly expanding list of pharmaceutically targeted ailments. Suddenly, for example, we learn that what was once an acceptable blood pressure or blood cholesterol level is now in the “unhealthy” range. But, we’re oh-so-relieved to learn, help is available, in the form of drugs whose lists of side effects — even when rattled off at breakneck speed — eat up huge chunks of airtime in their commercials.

These newly revised standards, by the way, are unsupported by independent scientific research. Take the revived barrage of warnings about cholesterol levels. Fact is, tests for homocysteine and C-reactive protein are better indicators of heart disease risk than are measurements of cholesterol, but the former are rarely ordered. And, guess why? Controlling these risk factors doesn’t involve a pharmaceutical solution, but relies instead on vitamin supplementation and lifestyle changes. But, oops, there’s not enough profit down that path.

In reality, many of the diseases — old and new — commonly treated with pharmaceuticals are the compound result of unhealthy lifestyle factors including stress, lack of exercise, processed foods, and an ecosystem out of balance. It’s the sickening of America, and it really is sickening.

So, what do I recommend? By all means, ask your doctor. But not about drugs and diseases. Ask about dietary changes, about exercise, about supplements. Ask how you can change your life and start taking control of your health, your choices, and your dream.