Food Allergies in Infants

Twenty to thirty years ago we witnessed a massive rise in asthma rates among children. It came to be considered a public health emergency not only because asthma was becoming so very common, but more so due to the dramatic increases in hospitalization rates caused by asthma. Asthma, an allergic disease, was not just increasingly annoying, it was an increasingly serious health issue. There is good news. First, that asthma rates have stopped climbing so rapidly. Second, this wave of illness opened medical eyes to see greater complexity in the causation of asthma. The view that some exposure to bacteria and viral illnesses is an important part of healthy immunologic development, initially embraced by a few of us (especially me), is no longer considered radical. Medical science is increasingly accepting of the asthma-inducing influences of many factors, such as vitamin D and previously ignored environmental chemicals. There is also bad news. Food allergy rates are now rising with much the same ferocity we saw with the asthma epidemic. An especially disappointing story in the bad news is that many of our good efforts reduce food allergy rates have not helped. They actually back fired. What IS going on? Some of the reasons for increasing food allergy rates are the same. Living indoors makes us sick. Lower vitamin D, less exposure to the bacterial richness of soil, less physical activity, increased chemical exposures, too little animal contact at the beginning of life, etc., all appear to contribute to higher risk of food allergy as well as asthma. It might be that food allergies are slower to appear and we might then soon see an imminent plateauing of the disturbing food allergy numbers as we did with asthma. Although I just made up that sunnily hopeful theory, I have to shoot down my own optimism, or maybe blunt it (a lot). We have evidence that in many cases, food allergies develop much earlier in life than we thought. Australian researchers, entering patients into their studies at four to six months of age, found that 29% of children with eczema already had food allergies. As eczema is an allergic disease and I find dietary treatment highly successful, it is dismaying but not hugely surprising that so many had food allergies. In some their reactions where already so severe that they could even suffer lethal allergic reactions to foods. If allergic onset occurs in some individuals so very early in life, then one would expect that food allergy rates would plateau as rapidly...

Light on Vision

Needing to wear glasses has long been viewed as a mark of geekiness without any other real significance. “Just bad luck”, the medical experts said. “Your eyeball is just shaped wrong and there is nothing you can do about it”. Dissenting voices, especially from the fuzzier end of the alternative medical spectrum, promoted eye exercises to improve vision and health and full spectrum lights (like the ones in my office). We have learned that near-sightedness (aka myopia) makes a person more likely to develop glaucoma or retinal detachment. The risk of glaucoma is 14 times higher in those with really bad nearsightedness. Two thirds of those who develop a retinal detachment had nearsightedness before the detachment occurred. Those are pretty serious consequences Many years ago, I heard a wise young female Asian opthalmologist comment that children were spending too much time indoors and reading. She agreed with the fuzzy thinkers that continual and intense focus on nearby, unmoving objects in poor lighting, was unhealthy. She and they were right. Since 1970, the rate of nearsightedness (the most common reason for needing glasses) in the USA has risen a staggering 65%. Rates are even higher in Asian countries, inspiring researchers in Taiwan to conduct a study to learn if requiring children to spend 80 minutes out of doors, each day they were in school would have any impact on nearsightedness. It did. A Danish study discovered one possible explanation. As the shape of the eye determines focal length and, greater focal length is the cause of nearsightedness, that was the focus of their investigation. By measuring the eyes of children through the extreme seasonal changes of the Nordic year, they learned that the less daylight exposure children experienced, the longer their eyes grew. My conclusions? Simple things have hugely positive effects. Being outside is healthy for a person’s eyes and so much else. Full spectrum lighting is the healthiest artificial light....

Vitamin Supplement Mistakes

If you read about vitamin supplements you must be confused. Actually, it would be hard not to be. Vitamins are, by definition, essential to health. Studies of hundreds of millions of people confirm that truth. However, a rash of recent studies have linked taking vitamin supplements to higher rates of a variety of diseases, especially cancer. What’s up? The fundamental problem is bad research. This bad research is the consequence of poor understanding, plus the difficulties inherent in designing and conduct nutritional studies that apply to the real world. The best examples of the faults in these nutritional studies are probably those dealing with folic acid and vitamin E. Many studies show that dietary folic acid reduces the risk of many diseases, particularly cancer. The prevention of congenital spinal malformations is the main reason our food supply has been fortified with folic acid for decades. Surveys of the American population show that this approach works. That is the simple part. The confusing part is that some studies have shown an increased risk of cancer with folic acid supplementation, while others have shown that folic acid lowers the risk of the very same cancers. As many of you have heard me explain following your own blood testing, nearly 20% of us have a genetic inability to convert folic acid to its metabolically active form. Those individuals among us need to take a special form of folate. If they take the common, most widely available kind of folic acid, not only does it not help, it seems to cause problems consistent with the unhappy research findings. After MERCK, which holds a patent on this form of folic acid, allowed others to use it, I had it added to my multiple vitamin. Very few multiple vitamins contain this form of folic acid, as it is more expensive. Two months ago I read an editorial in a major medical journal wherein a couple of prominent experts pointed out that negative studies on folic acid in diabetics had neglected to address this issue. Their opinion, with which I am in complete agreement, was that these studies were fundamentally flawed and almost certainly drawing incorrect conclusions as a consequence. Vitamin E has also taken a lot of heat due, to a similar lack of understanding. Most of the vitamin E you can buy in supplements comes as alpha tocopherol. Unless you are a chemist, your brain won’t want to swallow that word or distinguish it from beta, gamma, delta or...

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This video talk is exceptional. You will find it interesting and surprising. The presentation style is very cool and the information is accurate, overlooked and extremely important.