Wife Allergic To Husband's Sperm

Now this is something I hadn't heard of before. And no, it's not a cooked, scientific mumbo-jumbo variation of "I-have-a-headache."  Boy meets Girl, they fall in love, make the Beast With Two Backs and instead of bliss and fireworks, this happens:

"I had this bizarre reaction," said Clara, who for privacy reasons did not want to use her real name. "I had burning and swelling and redness, which was very unusual. I thought I had contracted an STD [sexually transmitted disease]."

Horrified, she made an appointment with the gynecologist for testing and was nervous about having a "tricky conversation" with Jeff.

After several doctors' visits and hours of research online, the North Carolina couple finally got some answers, but it derailed their sex life and shook their marriage.

What she had was something called seminal plasma hypersensitivity, an allergic reaction to proteins in her husband's semen.

They tried condoms, but it didn't help, and treatment was expensive.so they just avoided sex.

"In a normal romantic relationship, you want to feel attractive to your partner and want to do things that make you feel sexy," Clara said. "I feel like we actually started to define ourselves -- minimizing things to avoid sex. Funny, I started thinking I wouldn't wear sexy underwear. ... What seemed like medical problems had bigger effects."

"It pretty much dramatically reduced our libido," Jeff said. "We really haven't had much sex at all for the last 10 months."

They didn't share their concerns with anyone.

"When your mom calls up and asks how's married life? ... It's something we've been facing privately," Clara said.

Jeff said they started feeling "isolated, like total weirdoes," wondering why this would happen to them. "The intimacy level drops dramatically -- all of a sudden instead of living with your new wife or husband, you are more like roommates."

Eventually they couldn't stand it any more, found a doctor who would take their insurance, and Clara was treated. This involved diluted injections of Jeff's love juice...and not in the fun way, but via syringe every 15-20 minutes over the course of two to three hours. Specialists in allergies refer to this as 'desensitizing', and happily it did the trick.

The doctor involved, Dr. Jonathan Bernstein is also a professor at University of Cincinnati, who specializes in allergies and immunology. According to him, this condition is extremely rare, but not unknown and probably affects an estimated 20,000 to 40,000 women in the U.S.

Who knew?

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This Food Contains 100 TIMES More Probiotics than a Supplement

Video:  Dr. Mercola Interviews Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride About Immunity and Gut Flora

Story at-a-glance

• Abnormalities in your immune system—such as allergies and autoimmune diseases—are a common outcome of Gut and Physiology Syndrome (GAPS), as about 85 percent of your immune system is located in your gut wall
• The answer to resolving food allergies, as well as virtually all autoimmune disorders, is to heal and seal your intestines, which the GAPS nutritional program is designed to do
• Fermented foods are both potent chelators (detoxifiers) and contain far larger amounts of probiotics, compared to probiotic supplements, making them ideal for maintaining optimal gut flora
• If you’ve never eaten fermented foods before, too large a portion may provoke a healing crisis, which happens when the probiotics kill off pathogens in your gut. When the pathogens die, they release potent toxins. If you’ve never had fermented foods in your life, you need to start very carefully and very gradually, beginning with as little as one teaspoon of sauerkraut with one meal. Observe your reactions for a couple of days before proceeding with another tiny portion

By Dr. Mercola

Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride is a formally trained Russian neurologist whose child developed autism.

As a result of her own research into autism, she ended up developing what might be one of the most profoundly important treatment strategies not just for autism, but for a wide range of neurological-, psychological-, and autoimmune disorders as well.

I believe her Gut and Psychology Syndrome, and Gut and Physiology Syndrome (GAPS) Nutritional program is vitally important for MOST people, as the majority of people have such poor gut health due to poor diet and toxic exposures. We’ve previously discussed how the GAPS program can help those with autism and other neurological- and psychiatric disorders, such as:

• Dyslexia and dyspraxia
• Depression
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder
• Bipolar disorder
• Epilepsy

What is Gut and Physiology Syndrome?

In this interview, we discuss how your gut affects your immune system, as there’s profound dynamic interaction between them. Dr. McBride covers the problems related to Gut and Psychology Syndrome in her first book by the same name. Her next book will cover Gut and Physiology Syndrome, which relates to diseases that are not located in the nervous system but rather elsewhere in your body, such as:

• Arthritis
• Asthma and allergies
• Skin problems
• Kidney problems
• Digestive issues, and
• Autoimmune disorders

Abnormalities in your immune system are a common outcome of GAPS, and such immune abnormalities are at the root of virtually all degenerative diseases.

“Why is that? It’s because about 85 percent of our immune system is located in the gut wall,” she says. “This fact has been established by basic physiology research in the 1930s and the 1940s. Your gut, your digestive wall, is the biggest and the most important immune organ in your body. There is a very tight conversation and a relationship going on between the gut flora that lives inside your digestive system, and your immune system...

Your gut flora—the state of the gut flora and the composition of microbes in your gut flora—has a profound effect on what forms of immune cells you will be producing on any given day, what they’re going to be doing, and how balanced your immune system is.”

How Your Gut Flora Directs Your Immune System

There are two primary “arms” in your immune system:

1. Th1 immunity is responsible for normal reactions to anything in your environment, from pollen to animal dandruff, dust mites, chemicals, food and anything else you come into contact with. Th1 is kept robust and healthy by your gut flora. As long as your gut flora is normal, you will have no adverse symptoms when exposed to these types of environmental influences, but if your gut flora is abnormal, your Th1 become increasingly disabled
2. Th2 immunity is designed to address immune functions inside your body, and is not equipped to handle environmental influences. However, it will try to compensate if your Th1 becomes disabled. Unfortunately, since it’s not properly equipped for this job, it ends up dealing with environmental influences like pollen and foods in an inappropriate way; the end result of which is allergies and intolerances.

It’s important to realize that food allergies and intolerances are a very different group of allergies from the more acute anaphylactic allergies. Food intolerances caused by disabled Th1 (due to abnormal gut flora) are not mediated by the same immunoglobulin as the true allergies are. Food intolerances can also manifest hours, days, or even weeks later, making identifying food allergies very difficult.

“Different reactions can also overlap on top of each other. For example, on any given day you can be reacting to broccoli that you have just had for lunch, and to lamb that you’ve eaten yesterday, and to egg that you’ve eaten two days ago, and to a piece of bread that you’ve eaten 10 days ago. All of these reactions overlap on top of each other. On any given day, you have no idea what exactly you’re reacting to,” Dr. McBride explains.

Making matters even more difficult, these food allergies and intolerances can result in all sorts of reactions, from headache, to sneezing, to rashes, or abdominal pains or swollen joints. Or they may result in psoriasis, or cause eczema to flare up.

“Or, it can be an episode of depression, anxiety, or a panic attack. Any kind of symptom can be brought up by food allergies and intolerances,” Dr. McBride says.

At the same time, because your gut flora is abnormal, your gut lining begins to deteriorate, since it is actively maintained by our gut flora. (The beneficial bacteria in your gut make sure the cells that line your entire digestive tract are healthy, well-fed, and protected from chemical- or microbial attacks.) As your gut lining deteriorates, the junctions between the cells open up, causing your gut to become porous, or “leaky.”

“It becomes like a sieve, and foods don’t get the chance to be digested properly before they are absorbed,” Dr. McBride explains.

“They’re absorbed in this maldigested or partially broken down form. When the immune system and the bloodstream finds them and looks at them, it doesn’t recognize them as food. It says, “You’re not food. I don’t recognize you,” and it reacts to them. It creates immune complexes, which attack these partially digested proteins. As a result, we’ll get all sorts of symptoms in your body.”

So what’s the answer?

The key to resolving your health issues is NOT to determine which foods you’re reacting to in order to avoid them. Rather you need to focus on healing your gut lining, because this is the most likely root of your problem. This will also be your most cost-effective strategy, as allergy testing can be quite expensive.

“There are many testing methods developed now for food allergies and intolerances,” Dr. McBride says. “... [But] if you had enough money to test twice a day for two weeks in a row, you would discover that you react to everything you eat... The majority of practitioners who are experienced in this area give up on testing... They recommend focusing on healing and sealing your gut lining instead. Then these food allergies and intolerances will disappear, and you will be able to eventually start eating foods that you could not tolerate before.”

GAPS and Autoimmune Disease

Autoimmune disorders are a very common side effect of GAPS. Conventional medicine has identified about 200 different autoimmune conditions so far, and the list is continually growing.

“The testing in autoimmunity is fairly expensive, so not many people get tested,” Dr. McBride says. “But the more we test, the more we realize that pretty much every degenerative condition has got an autoimmune component. Why is that? Because 85 percent of your immune system is located in your digestive wall, in your gut wall, and the state of your gut flora has a direct and very profound effect on the way your immune system functions.

... Your immune system is a very hungry organ. It needs to be continuously fed... People with abnormal gut flora – GAPS people – do not digest and absorb their food properly, so they develop multiple nutritional deficiencies; their immune system is starving... At the same time, a river of toxicity is flowing from the gut into the bloodstream of these people, because all those pathogenic microbes sitting in their gut flora are converting the food that comes along into hundreds and hundreds of very toxic substances.

The immune system gets quite a lot of this toxicity, so... we have a poor immune system—it is malnourished; it is intoxicated; it is unbalanced, and, at the same time, it is challenged with a huge amount of work to do. Of course, it cannot function properly. Of course, it cannot react appropriately to various things. Autoimmunity is the result of that.”

Abnormal flora in your digestive tract can easily lead to overgrowth of:

• Pathogenic bacteria
• Pathogenic viruses
• Fungi
• Worms
• Protozoa

Once your gut lining begins to deteriorate, these disease-causing agents can be easily absorbed into your bloodstream and circulated throughout your body. Some of them have affinities for certain proteins, and will attach themselves to them. When that happens, it changes the three-dimensional shape of that protein molecule. When your immune system comes across this foreign-looking protein, it will attack it and begin producing antibodies against it.

“This mechanism is particularly at work in multiple sclerosis in patients. We have researched that quite a lot,” Dr. McBride says.

“Mercury, lead, aluminum, other toxic metals and organic molecules that contain this toxic metal have a particular propensity for getting stored in high-fat tissues such as your brain and the rest of your nervous system, particularly the myelin sheath on your nerves... These toxic metals target your brain and your nerves. But when they get accumulated in those high-fat tissues, these toxins attach themselves to proteins in your myelin, in the white matter of your brain, and other parts of your nervous system. Once they’ve accumulated, once they’ve attached themselves to those proteins, they change their three-dimensional structure. Then the immune system develops an antibody against your protein and your myelin.

That is the number one antibody, which is at work in multiple sclerosis. It is called a myelin-specific protein antibody. It’s an antibody which attacks proteins in your myelin... What the immune system is trying to do is it’s trying to clear out mercury, lead, and other toxic metals out of the nervous system, which got stored in there. Where do they come from? 99.9 percent of anything toxic in your body comes out in the digestive system.”

GAPS and Multiple Sclerosis

Interestingly, when your body is unable to clear a particular toxin on its own, it will invite and employ microbes from the environment to help clear these toxins.

“The microbes in the environment are not our enemies at all. They’re actually our allies. They’re our helpers. Your body employs them when it needs them,” Dr. McBride explains.

“If you have accumulated certain amount of mercury in your brain and in your nerves... your body might employ a virus... If you got a cold, that virus (many viruses target your nervous system) will go directly to those toxic patches in your brain and your nervous system and attack them. It will start gobbling it up... Of course, your immune system then joins in, trying to attack the virus. It joins in with inflammation, and you [begin to experience] symptoms of multiple sclerosis. You will get tingling. You will get numbness in your face or in your extremities. You might start wetting your bed, or you might get peripheral loss of vision for a while... That’s one of the first symptoms in multiple sclerosis.

in this situation, if you would just feed your immune system properly and leave the work for the immune system to complete, then these symptoms would last for a month or two, and then they would disappear, because... the virus will gobble up the [toxins] and your immune system will clear out the virus. Your nerves will recover naturally.”

Unfortunately, this is not what happens nowadays. Typically, as soon as people get tingling, numbness, and other symptoms, they rush to the doctor, who will immediately put them on some form of medication, which will typically have a dampening effect on the immune system. As a result, the viruses spread and become even more established, and the disease becomes chronic and permanent.

You have Natural Antibodies Against Virtually All Autoimmune Diseases...

“What people have to understand is that we all – 100 percent of humans – have in our bodies antibodies to deal with multiple sclerosis, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, lupus, or any other autoimmune condition,” Dr. McBride says.

It all begins in utero. As soon as the baby’s thymus develops, the proteins floating about in the bloodstream, which is shared between the mother and the baby, begin to educate the baby’s immune system, and allocate a particular responder cell to every protein encountered. Autoimmune conditions develop when your immune system attacks particular tissues or proteins in your body because they’ve been contaminated by toxins or some other environmental influence. And remember, this imbalance, this toxic influence, originates from your digestive system or gut wall.

“Autoimmunity is born in the gut. That’s where it comes from – your gut wall,” Dr. McBride says. “That happens because your gut flora is abnormal. In order to heal any autoimmune condition – whether it’s multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, lupus, alopecia, psoriasis, or anything else that has got an autoimmune component – you have to focus on healing and sealing your gut lining with the GAPS Nutritional Protocol. And you have to focus on... normalizing your gut flora. You have to drive out the pathogens from the gut flora and replace them with the beneficial flora. Then a lot of healing will happen...’

Unfortunately, conventional medicine is largely ignorant about this research, and does not view autoimmune disorders as digestive disorders, which Dr. McBride is convinced is the case.

The Importance of Fermented Foods

Did you know the number of bacteria in your body outnumber your cells by about 10 to 1? These bacteria in turn are comprised of both beneficial ones and harmful ones. The ideal balance is about 85 percent good bacteria and 15 percent bad. Maintaining this ideal ratio is what it’s all about when we’re talking about the importance of probiotics. It’s important to understand though that probiotics are not a new concept. The only thing that’s new is that you can take them in pill form. But historically, mankind has consumed large amounts of probiotics in the form of fermented and cultured foods, which were invented long before the advent of refrigeration and other forms of food preservation.

“Every traditional culture, when you look at their traditional diet, they ferment their foods. They fermented everything. You can ferment dairy, grains, beans, vegetables, fruits, meats, and fish. Everything can be fermented, and there were fermented beverages in every culture. When the cabbages were ripe in September, you made it a fermented cabbage. Perhaps for a month or two, you were eating fresh cabbage, but then for the rest of the year, 10 months of the year, you ate your cabbage in a fermented form. Quite a large percent of all the foods that people consume on a daily basis were fermented. And with every mouthful of these fermented foods you consume trillions of beneficial bacteria…”

Fermented foods not only give you a wider variety of beneficial bacteria, they also give you far more of them, so it’s a much more cost effective alternative. Here’s a case in point: It’s unusual to find a probiotic supplement containing more than 10 billion colony-forming units. But when my team actually tested fermented vegetables produced by probiotic starter cultures, they had 10 trillion colony-forming units of bacteria. Literally, one serving of vegetables was equal to an entire bottle of a high potency probiotic! So clearly, you’re far better off using fermented foods.

How the Fermentation Process Works

“Mother Nature is extremely wise and extremely kind. It populated all organic fruit and vegetables, the dust on our soils, and all plant matter with Lactobacilli. The fresh cabbage leaves, if it’s organically grown (not the one from chemical farming), will be covered in Lactobacilli—lacto-fermenting bacteria. You don’t need to add anything. You just chop it up. Add some salt in the initial stages. (The salt is added in the initial stage in order to stop putrefactive bacteria from multiplying.) Then as the Lactobacillus stop working and start multiplying, they produce lactic acid. That’s why they’re called Lactobacillus. That’s just lactic acid.

If you look at the research in lactic acid, it is one of the most powerful antiseptics. It kills off lots and lots of bacteria.... So as the lactic acid starts producing, it will kill off all those putrefactive and pathogenic microbes and preserve the food. It’s a great preservative... A good batch of sauerkraut can keep for five to six years without spoiling or rotting, as long as it is covered by its own juice.”

For instructions on how to ferment your own vegetables, which is easier than you might think to do at home, please listen to my previous interview with Caroline Barringer:

Video: Dr. Mercola Interviews Caroline Barringer

Download Interview Transcript

This anaerobic process (fermentation) does more than just preserve the food, however. It also makes the nutrients inside the food more bioavailable. For example, according to Dr. McBride, the amount of bioavailable vitamin C in sauerkraut is 20 times higher than in the same helping of fresh cabbage!

“This is because in the fresh cabbage, vitamin C is bound in the cellulose structure and various other molecules, and our digestive system is just not able to cleave it off and absorb it. Lots of it goes undigested and come out right out of you. So despite the fact that cabbage may be very rich in vitamin C, a lot of it you will not be able to absorb. But if you fermented that cabbage and made sauerkraut, all the vitamin C becomes bioavailable,” she explains.

How to Reduce Chances of “Healing Crisis”

There is one precaution that needs to be discussed here, and that is the potential for a so-called healing crisis, or what Dr. McBride refers to as a die-off reaction, provoked by the massive die-off of pathogenic bacteria, viruses, fungi, and other harmful pathogens by the reintroduction of massive quantities of probiotics. It can significantly worsen whatever health problem you’re experiencing, before you get better.

The reason for this is because when the probiotics kill off the pathogens, those pathogenic microbes release toxins. These toxins are what’s causing your problem to begin with; be it depression, panic attacks, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, or any other symptom. When a large amount of toxin is suddenly released, your symptoms will also suddenly increase.

“If you’ve never had fermented foods in your life, you need to start very carefully and very gradually,” Dr. McBride warns.

She recommends starting off with just ONE TEASPOON of fermented vegetable, such as sauerkraut, with ONE of your meals, and then wait for a couple of days to see how you react. If it’s manageable, you can have another helping, and gradually increase your portion.

“But if the die off is too much, then you need to stop. Let the die off subside, and then have a tiny amount of sauerkraut, or even just a teaspoon of juice from it first; not the cabbage itself. Then two teaspoons per day and so on, until enough die off happens in your body, and your gut flora has changed enough for you to be ready for having the cabbage itself.”

It’s important to realize that besides containing massive amounts of beneficial bacteria, fermented foods also contain many active enzymes, which act as extremely potent detoxifiers.

“Healing goes through two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, and one step back,” Dr. McBride says. “But you will find that the next layer is smaller. The die off and the detox will not last as long as the previous one... We live in a toxic world, and many of us have accumulated layers and layers of toxicity in our bodies. The body will clean them out, but you will find that each layer will last shorter and not be as severe... Eventually, you will come to complete, radiant health. You will feel 100 percent healthy, no matter how ill you were before.”

More Information

You can find more information on Dr. McBride’s website: www.GAPS.me, and on her blog at www.doctor-natasha.com. She recently came back from Australia and New Zealand, where she trained 40 health practitioners to become certified GAPS practitioners. All GAPS practitioners are listed by country on her website.

If you're a doctor, nutritionist, dietician, osteopath, homeopath or other health practitioner and you're interested in becoming a certified GAPS practitioner, please see this link for more information.

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Health Hazards of the Holiday Season

The holiday season and new year celebrations are just round the corner. However, the excitement and stress of preparation and celebration can lead to certain unwanted health problems. Here is a compilation of common holiday hazards to avoid by taking certain precautions.

At last, it's time for the long awaited holiday season merriment. There are a number of errands to do before the holidays begin, such as cleaning, shopping, decorating the home, and finishing work assignments. In the whole process, you are likely to put a lot of pressure on your health and fitness and ignore your personal safety. I am listing out some commonly occurring holiday health problems and issues that can mar your festive spirit.

Hidden Holiday Health Hazards

Work Assignments and Examinations: Stress
Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Vve's parties are surely exciting. However, there is usually a lot of work to be finished in your office before the holidays start. As far as children are concerned, examinations are generally scheduled to take place right before the vacations begin. The haste to finish all the work early and the high anxiety levels to perform well in the examinations can take a physical and mental toll on adults and children alike.

✔ All I am suggesting is that you take one thing at a time. Avoid exerting yourself by trying to finish work and preparing for the festivities simultaneously.

Cleaning and Decorating: Wounds, Fractures, etc
It is time to clean your homes thoroughly at the onset of the holidays. The overall excitement of the festivities can make you negligent about the safety precautions while decorating the house. In case, you wish to climb and hang the decorations or clean the attic, make sure to use ladders and equipment that is safe for use.

✔ As a precaution, scrutinize all the fittings and bolts of the equipment. This will help you to avoid physical injury in the form of cuts, wounds and fractures.

Shopping: Stress
Holiday shopping and gifts are just unavoidable. It starts with plans for buying gifts for family and friends, browsing through the Internet for the best shopping deals, and visiting the malls during annual Christmas sales. These shopping activities may sound exciting but they are likely to cause severe stress and body ache. A traditional solution for this problem is to take a relaxing bath with Epsom salts after you return home from your long shopping spree.

✔ Doctors suggest consumption of a lot of water, juices, and green tea to reduce the stress level. Personally, I suggest you to carefully draw up a shopping list well in advance so that you do not miss out on any item from your shopping list.

Christmas Tree: Allergy and Skin Irritation
For some of you, Christmas can never be perfect without a bedecked Christmas tree in the living room. Yes, Christmas trees are surely a sign of festivities, but these trees are likely to trigger a lot of breathing and asthmatic problems if they stay inside your home for long. A freshly cut Christmas tree is likely to harbor considerable dust and mold on its needles approximately a week after it is erected. The needles are also likely to cause breathing problems and skin irritation to some people. The same applies to mistletoe too.

✔ I, therefore suggest that you purchase the tree a day or two before Christmas and dispose it off immediately after the festival time. Alternately, buy an artificial Christmas tree which can be erected and decorated to look like a real life tree. There are options to buy artificial mistletoe too.

Holiday Decorations: Allergy and Sore Throat
Do we really bother to carefully pack away the colorful tree decoration after each Christmas? Most of us don't! And all through the rest of the year, these decorations go on collecting dust and mites in some forgotten corner of the attic or the garage. Once the holidays approach, we start looking for the decorative hangings and unknowingly get exposed to the dust. The result? Dust allergy, running nose, sore throat, severe headache and watery eyes right in the middle of the celebrations!

✔ This problem can be controlled by playing safe and storing the decorations in a sealed bag in a clean cabinet. Make sure to cover your nose and mouth with a scarf when you open the bag to retrieve them. If they are washable, then wash them immediately in a solution of soap and warm water. If the decorations are delicate, then place them in the freezer for ten minutes to kill all the dust mites. Carefully clean away all possible dust from the decorations for your own safety.

Lights and Crackers: Fire and Burns
Fairy lights are usually suspended from the external roof of the house and are also hung on Christmas trees. Negligent handling of these electrical fittings can be a reason for house-fires and electric shocks. Similarly, firecrackers make for a lot of fun and entertainment while you celebrate and welcome the new year. However, unsupervised usage of crackers might cause burns and physical injuries to people watching the cracker shows.

✔ It is better to play safe and handle the electrical fittings and lights only if you have sufficient knowledge about them. If not, it is best to opt for help from an electrician. As far as crackers are concerned, follow utmost care when lighting them. Follow all possible safety precautions and keep your children at a safe distance when the crackers are lit.

Candles: Headache and Nausea
Aromatic candles available in the market are bound to add an amazing long-lasting scent in your house. However, these aromas are created on account of the toxic chemicals and poisonous substances added to the wax candles. Though pleasant initially, aroma candles can cause a lot of headache and nausea to people.

✔ An ideal way to overcome this problem is to use non-aromatic candles throughout the festivities. Also, make use of some safe room fresheners, potpourri, and fragrant fresh flowers all over your home.

Feast Food and Wine: Heart Problems and Weight Gain
A typical foodie is likely to starve himself so as to build up an appetite for the specially prepared Thanksgiving feast and Christmas feast. And on the day of the feast, this foodie is likely to binge 30% to 40% more food than his regular appetite. A typical feast comprises roasted turkey, beef, ham, roasted potatoes, cakes, puddings and wines. All of these, excessively add to the calorie intake of a person leading to problems such as poor digestion, acidity, heart burn, weight gain, rise in cholesterol and heart problems.

✔ The best bet is to eat in moderate proportions daily so as to control your appetite. Also, it makes sense to be calorie and cholesterol conscious and eat small proportions of food at least 4 times a day throughout the holiday season.

Sweets and Candies: Choking
Choking by consumption of Christmas sweets and candies is quite common among children who generally have a very narrow esophagus. The excessive temptation of eating sweets is likely to cause choking and respiratory problems in children which may mar the festive spirit at your home.

✔ It is best to monitor the quantity of sweets consumed by them all the time. Make sure to buy sweets and candies in smaller sizes that can be safely swallowed by your children.

Late Night Partying: Vehicle Accidents
Yes, this is the worst health hazard of the holiday season. Excessive drinking and late night partying is a likely cause of disastrous and fatal vehicular accidents. There is a notable rise in consumption of party drugs during this time which can cause drug addiction and severe damage to the body. There is also a steep rise in opting for unprotected sexual encounters during the parties and celebrations which are a likely cause of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.

✔ Partying is definitely fun. However, one needs to exercise caution before following a path which can be fatal for you and your family. Trust your instincts and opt for utmost safety during the parties.
The holiday season calls for family reunions and cherishing the wonderful life that we have. It is best to carefully carry out all your festive plans and activities to keep the happiness and cheerfulness alive. So do take care of yourself and your family!

By Anuja Marathe Kanhere
Published: 11/28/2011 – Buzzle.com

Related:

Winter and Holiday Health Hazards for Animals

Perils of Peanuts and Peanut Butter… Even Organic

Pretty much everyone is aware that many people are allergic to peanuts, and many schools even ban any form of peanuts because of the dangers to children who may be allergic.  Any severe allergy to a food, or something else, can be life threatening.  (It may actually be the molds/fungus or aflatoxin that people are allergic to rather than the peanuts.)

What a lot of people aren't aware of are the other dangers of peanuts.  I don't eat peanuts, in any form, mostly because of that.  Peanuts can be confusing because we hear they contain a good fat, monounsaturated, but so do avocados, nuts (which peanuts aren’t)and olive oil, which would be healthier choices.  Peanuts also contain a high amount of omega-6, but a more balanced omega-6 to omega-3 ratio would be best as in hemp seeds, fish oil or a high grade natural supplement.  We also hear peanuts are high in antioxidants and some vitamins and minerals.  The biggest claim to health lately has been that they contain resveratrol, which they do, but so do other foods, such as grapes, cranberries and blueberries, so you don't need to eat peanuts for that benefit either.

One problem with peanuts is that they are one of the most highly pesticide contaminated crops there is.  One important reason to only use organically grown peanut products if you choose to continue to eat peanuts.  Conventional peanut farmers have a disproportionately high rate of cancer, mainly because of all the pesticides they use, and because they eat a lot of peanuts.

But the most important reason not to eat peanuts or peanut butter is because they are often contaminated with aflatoxin.  Aflatoxin is a mycotoxin that is produced by many different species of a fungus called Aspergillus.  It is very dangerous, and it is a carcinogen.  It is so potent it has been known to wipe out complete tribes in Africa because of contaminated food there.  In smaller amount it can be a slow killer, as in cancer, and is believed to cause liver cancer.  (Aflatoxin can be in other products as well, corn is another likely one, which is another thing I don't eat.)

Peanuts are particularly susceptible to contamination during growth and storage. Poor storage of peanuts can lead to an infection by the mold fungus Aspergillus flavus, releasing the toxic and highly carcinogenic substance aflatoxin. The aflatoxin-producing molds exist throughout the peanut growing areas and may produce aflatoxin in peanuts when conditions are favorable to fungal growth.

Organic Peanut Butter is part of the top 5 items to buy organic.  Why should you focus on peanut butter? This is because, many peanut farms contaminate their peanut crops with a chemical to treat mold. This mold is one of the major problems that causes peanut crops to die. This chemical is classified as a fungicide.

The peanut, or groundnut (Arachis hypogaea), is a species in the legume or "bean" family (Fabaceae).

The most common way most people get aflatoxin in their diets is through peanut butter. Peanuts have an especially high naturally-occurring concentration of aspergillus flavus mold. Furthermore, while most peanuts are roasted, the roasting process rarely kills all the mold. The longer peanuts sit around in the store or in your house, the more of the mold will grow back--and again, it generally won't be visible to the naked eye. The longer the mold grows, the more aflatoxin builds up.

Here's the most interesting thing about all this: usually your "organic" or "natural" peanut butters will have the highest aflatoxin concentration. The highest concentration of all, though, will typically be the stuff you buy in the store where they take peanuts and grind them into peanut butter for you while you wait. Because while the USDA and FDA has rules for how much aflatoxin is allowed in food before it's shipped to stores, there's no measure of it after it reaches the stores. Those peanuts could have been sitting on the shelves at the story for weeks or months at room temperature, building up mold. It's even worse if the air is mildly moist. Furthermore, if you fresh-grind those nuts into peanut butter, the mold keeps growing in the peanut butter.

This means that your safest source of peanut butter is generally your cheap, garden variety Jif or Skippy or the like (But Skippy just had a recall). The companies that make those generally get the peanuts fresh, roast and grind them immediately, put them through an effective cooking and homogenization process, then seal them in airtight jars. The mold buildup on those will be much lower than your typical "fresh" or "natural" peanut butters and they pretty quickly out of the stores.

The risks for children are the highest as their health can be even more impacted then adults because of their size and their still developing immune systems.  And often they eat more of it regularly than adults.  Pets can also have both allergies or negative affects from the molds, fungus and toxins.

Our suggestion… don’t eat peanuts, peanut butter or organic peanut butter… period!!

By the way, the aflatoxin threat is taken seriously enough that OSHA actually requires workers dealing with large quantities of peanuts to wear facial masks so they don't breath in too much of the mold. And statistically, just as a rule of thumb, two tablespoons of peanut butter a day (regular or organic) produce a higher risk of death than living next to a nuclear power plant.

The number one thing to look for in organic peanut butter is that it is made from organically ‘grown’ peanuts and that it is a brand bought at a store where the jars move quickly!

From the lists and surveys, these seem to be the top 6 Organic Peanut Butters:

1. Nature's Promise - This peanut butter is made of 100% natural ingredients. Also, Nature's Promise has been around for a while, and supplies many products. Such as, milk, butter, broth, snacks, pizza, and cookies.

2. SunLand Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter- SunLand has been around since 1988, and it is dedicated strictly peanut butter. Best of all, it is United States based; New Mexico to be exact. SunLand's peanut butter is very unique also; the company has many different flavors. The flavors range from "Regular" to "Hickory Smoke".

3. Santa Cruz Organic Peanut Butter - Their peanut butter comes in four flavors; Dark Roasted Creamy, Dark Roasted Crunchy, Light Roasted Creamy, Light Roasted Crunchy. Although, this brand does not only make peanut butter. They also make a variety of items from juices to chocolate syrup.

4. Adams - Adams has been around since 1922. There peanut butter is 100% all natural. They make natural, organic, and no stir peanut butter. While their natural peanut butter has four choices, their organic peanut butter has two choices of varieties.

5. Justin's Organic - This brand is awesome. They now make chocolate flavored peanut butter. Those flavors are "Chocolate Peanut Butter", "Chocolate Hazelnut Butter", and "Chocolate Almond Butter". My personal favorite is "Chocolate Hazelnut Butter", and "Chocolate Almond Butter".

6. Maranatha Nut Butters  - This company has been around since 1982 in Ashland, Oregon. The company to use the purest ingredients, and now allows for their peanut butters to be brought online. I favor two of the products by Maranatha Nut Butter. Those products are Dark Chocolate Peanut Spread and Dark Chocolate Almond Spread. Both have a dark chocolate flavor, making them both irresistible.

 

Does anyone else long for the days when rat droppings were the scariest thing about peanut butter? Anyone? Show of hands?

Let's see. The problems with peanut butter now include:

• Really scary chemicals, including neurotoxins (as if we need something else getting on our nerves).
• Deadly salmonella outbreaks.
• The mysterious rise of very serious peanut allergies.
• A peanut butter aisle so big that it makes you want to curl into a ball and rock back and forth -- right there in the store -- from stimulation overload. (Omega-3 peanut butter ... really?)
• Rat feces, still.
• The Frankenut-butter threat. Although there are no genetically modified peanuts on the market right now, according to the National Peanut Board website, money is being poured into genomic research. (Note to peanut growers: Consider inserting the genes of a Labradoodle. As far as I can tell, no one is allergic to them.) But seriously, on the upside genetically modified peanuts could save lives.

OK, peanut allergies aside, some of the contemporary problems with peanut butter can be avoided by buying organic peanut butter. Of course, this begs some questions: Do any of these organic spreads taste good? And do you have to break the bank for a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich?

And while we're at it, is the "Skippy Factor" real? A while back, when I wrote about turkey, I spoke with Cooks Illustrated senior editor Lisa McManus. She described the Skippy Factor this way: Tasters often favor foods that are comfortingly familiar, such as Skippy peanut butter, over something higher quality. (This also explains why Cooks, which I read regularly, is so shockingly successful. For these food science geeks, taste trumps all. They don't really give a rip about health-consciousness or greenness or food trends.)

So, back to the point: Do organic peanut butters taste good? ARe they worth the extra money? And if they are… choose from the six organic creamy peanut butters that were readily available at local grocery stores that move off the shelves.

 

h/t to Lou Bendrick, Jeanne Coffey, Sanoviv, Dr. Mercola

 

One Way To Mitigate The Risks Of Aflatoxin

The best way to avoid any risks from peanuts is to avoid eating them. There is something you can do, though, if you still feel the need to consume peanuts and peanut butter, even with all the risks.  One type of peanut has been fairly resistant to aflatoxin, and that is the Valencia peanut, which is grown mostly in New Mexico.  These type of peanuts, when they are grown in the southwest of the US, mainly New Mexico, grow in dry conditions not conducive to aflatoxin, a mold which likes moisture.

One problem is that not all Valencia peanuts are grown in that area, but most are.  If you use Arrowhead Mills organic peanut butter, you will avoid the pesticides and the aflatoxin, because it is made with organic Valencia peanuts, and that particular brand has never been shown to contain aflatoxin at all.

Although, that is no guarantees it will be that way forever, but it is certainly the safer way to go.

Choices:

• Stop eating peanuts and peanut products
• Eat regular peanut butter because is moves quicker and there is somewhat less chance of getting sick from the molds and fungus (aflatoxin)
• Eat organic peanut butter because you won’t get the pesticides, but you might get more of the mold and fungus
• Through care to the wind and take your chances…

 

So in the end we suggest… skip eating peanuts, peanut butter and organic peanut butter all together… period!!  And definitely don’t feed feed them to your kids or pets!

Cake Mix Warning… Who Knew?

A Must Read.  Could save someone’s life.

Warning re: cake mixes - who knew?

I always thought that  "old" mixes that were past their expiration date would just not rise/bake correctly.  This  is scary!

Somebody wrote:  Before my surgery I bought quite a few Duncan Hines cakes mixes that were on sale.  A couple of months ago I decide to use one, I checked the expiration date and found it past, all the boxes were passed the expiration date.  I phoned Duncan Hines to ask if the one that was only two months passed if it was OK.  She told me in no uncertain words to throw them all out, she even said to open the boxes and throw the mix in the garbage, just in case someone picked it up and used it.

Cake Mixes & Toxins- ** PLEASE READ**  Pass this on to ALL in your address book. You never know whose life you may save by doing so. For those of you at work, PLEASE remember to check your cupboards when you get home tonight!!!

This is  confirmed on Snopes :  http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/pancake.asp (Not that they are reliable for everything, especially political issues)

A student at HBHS (high school) had pancakes this week and it almost became fatal. His Mom (registered nurse) made him pancakes, dropped him off at school and headed to play tennis. She never takes her cell phone on the court but did this time and her son called to say he was having trouble breathing. She told him to go to the nurse immediately and proceeded to call school and alert the nurse. The nurse called the paramedics and they were there in 3 minutes and worked on the boy all the way to the hospital. He came so close to dying. Evidently this is more common than I ever knew. Check the expiration dates on packages like pancakes and cake mixes that have yeast which over time develop spores. Apparently, the mold that forms in old mixes can be toxic! Throw away ALL OUTDATED  pancake mix, brownie mixes, Bisquick, cake & cookie mixes, etc., you have in your home.

P.S. Tell this to your children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces and anyone else who keeps these types of mixes in the cupboard. P.P.S.  This warning especially applies to any person(s) with mold allergies.

10 Tips to Help Asthmatics Survive the Halloween Fright

You might not think of Halloween as a trigger for asthma, but it can be. From my own personal experience, I can think of no holiday worse on asthma than Halloween.

In fact, my asthma acted up just about every Halloween that I participated in Trick-or-Treating until I was 11-years-old, at which time I vowed never to do it again. This, as you may imagine, was not easy to do.

When I was 24, I forgot my vow and each Halloween from 1990 to 1993 I went to a Halloween costume party and ended up in the Emergency room on -- ahem -- Halloween night.

In retrospect I've learned that I am not allergic to Halloween, but things I did on that night put me face to face with some of my most frightful asthma triggers.

Thankfully, you don't have to learn the hard way as I did, as I have come up a list of 10 tips to help you or your asthmatic child enjoy the Halloween fun.

1. Do not use recycled costumes that were stored in a box all year long. My parents were bent on saving money and kept old Halloween costumes in a box in the basement. While rummaging through them I was exposed to dust mites, a major asthma trigger.

2. Wear costumes that are new or recently washed. You'll want to make sure the costume is allergen-free. If you have latex allergies, make sure there is no latex in your costume!

3. Do not wear masks. Halloween masks can be full of dust mites, and when you have them over your face you are inhaling those dust mites with each breath. There may also be other asthma triggers in the mask too. Avoid them.

4. Do not enter homes while trick-or-treating. You never know what asthma triggers might be in someone else's home, including pet dander, dust, cockroaches, mold and fumes, so it is best to simply stay out of them. Have your kids say "Trick-or-treat," knock on the door, and stay on the porch.

5. Avoid smoky homes. If smoke is pouring from the door as it opens for other trick-or-treaters, avoid it at all costs. The last thing you want your asthmatic child to do is breathe cigarette smoke.

6. Stay home if you have a cold. If you or your child is congested or coughing he is more susceptible to having asthma symptoms and exposure to asthma triggers can make it all the worse.

7. Avoid inclement weather. Fall has a tendency to bring in some nasty weather. Cold air and humidity can be asthma triggers, and light rain can stir up allergens that were previously lying on the ground, such as ragweed pollen and dust. So if you want to risk the elements, make sure you dress yourself and your child appropriately for the weather, or avoid going out altogether if it's bad enough.

8. Don't forget about food allergies. Thankfully I never had to worry about this one, but many asthmatics have allergies to food, which you can read about here. Make sure your child isn't eating something he's allergic too. Common food allergies include nuts, eggs and milk products. Only take food with labels on them so you know exactly what the ingredients are before your child touches or consumes them. Sorry, that means avoiding homemade treats, no matter how healthy (or indulgent) they look!

By: Rick Frea

Source: MyAsthmaCentral.com – Posted: True Health Is True Wealth

What's the difference between a food allergy and a food intolerance?

Food allergy is an abnormal response to a food triggered by the body's immune system. It refers to a particular type of response of the immune system in which the body produces what is called an allergic, or IgE, antibody to a food. (IgE, or immunoglobulin E, is a type of protein that works against a specific food.)

Allergic reactions to food can cause serious illness and, in some cases, death. Therefore, if you have a food allergy, it is extremely important for you to work with your health-care provider to find out what food or foods cause your allergic reaction.

Sometimes, a reaction to food is not an allergy at all but another type of reaction called "food intolerance."

Food intolerance is more common than food allergy. The immune system does not cause the symptoms of food intolerance, though these symptoms may look and feel like those of a food allergy. Among other causes, food intolerances may be to dairy or gluten, to food additives such as MSG, because of food poisoning or for  psychological reasons.

Source:  Remedy