The Role of the Immune System

A primary contributor to allergies in children as well as adults is a poorly functioning immune system. “If the immune system is inadequate,” Dr. Rapp says, “we can develop allergies and environmental illness. One way to strengthen the immune system so that your child is less prone to environmental illness or allergy is by using various nutrients. A helpful resource is the book, Super Immunity in Kids, which says, basically: If you take the correct nutrients in the correct amounts, you can strengthen the immune system so that you are less apt to become ill from natural things such as pollen, dust, and mold exposures. You will also be less apt to become ill from exposure to infections.” Throughout this book you’ll find information on how healthy eating and lifestyle can boost the immune system so that the body is able to handle assaults from the outside. You’ll find specific information for children in chapter 65.

Environmental Allergies

Dr. Rapp offers many tips for helping parents to determine whether a child’s behavior is related to allergies or environmental factors. “Think back,” she says. “Does your child say, ‘When I go to school in the morning I feel great!’? Or does the child say, ‘I feel great when I leave the house and by the time I get to school I don’t feel right’? Or does he say, ‘I feel nervous’? Or tired, or irritable, or, ‘I have a headache’? If that happens, you have to think, it might be the fumes on the school bus, or what he ate for breakfast, or what he uses to brush his teeth, or the soap that he uses. You’ve got to think of everything that he came in contact with before he got on the bus, and then what happened when he was on the bus.

“Now, children who are sensitive to things in the school will frequently notice that their headache starts within an hour. And the headaches frequently become more intense during the day. By Friday afternoon, the headache will be much worse than it was on Monday morning or on Sunday night. At first the headaches may disappear 1 to 4 hours after your child leaves school, but later on, if there are too many exposures during the week, you may notice that they don’t get better at night and that it might take the whole weekend for the headache to go away.”

It’s also a good idea to pay attention to your child’s sense of smell. “Another clue that certain exposures are making your child feel worse is when your child can smell everything before anybody else,” Dr. Rapp explains. “She smells natural gas, or smells that perfume across the room, or she can smell food cooking before anybody else. She can smell disinfectants. If these odors bother your child and she can perceive them faster than anybody else, it means that she is probably becoming sensitized to the abundance of chemicals that we have now managed to put in our food, air, water, clothing, homes, schools, and workplaces.”

Your child’s academic performance may yield clues about a possible allergy to something in school. “The child may get an A one day, and an F the next day in the same subject,” Dr. Rapp says. “It isn’t that your child lost brain cells within 24 hours, but it does indicate to me that you should investigate that school to try to find out what could be causing the problem. Is the school dusty or moldy? Are the ventilation ducts open and clean? Was the basement of the school ever flooded? Does it smell worse on damp days?

“A big problem in schools is poor ventilation, especially in the winter. Many systems are old and functioning improperly. The windows don’t always open. Dust, molds, and chemicals can accumulate at very high levels. More children and teachers seem to be adversely affected when they go to school.”

Dr. Rapp adds, “There is nothing worse in present-day schools than some of the synthetic carpets. They are made of chemicals that cause problems. In addition, they use adhesives that are full of other chemicals that cause even more problems.”

TESTING FOR ENVIRONMENTAL ALLERGIES Traditional allergy testing is conducted in a few different ways. In the scratch or puncture test, an allergen is scratched across or lightly pricked into the skin. The skin will show evidence of allergic reaction by producing a small, raised area. In the intradermal test, an allergen is injected under the skin. This test may be needed if the scratch test results are not conclusive. A blood test is another option.

“If you suspect that your child may have been exposed to neurotoxic substances—those that actually damage the nervous system—ask your doctor to send you to specialists who can tell you whether the nerve conduction time in your child’s body is normal or not,” Dr. Rapp continues. “They can do a variety of blood tests to find out if the chemicals that are in the carpets and the adhesives are in the blood.”

“The doctor may even make an allergy extract of the air in a room that smells of chemicals. Sometimes we can actually reproduce a headache, a stomachache, or problems thinking. The doctor makes the allergy extract the same way one would bubble air through a fish tank: using a pump to bubble the room air through a salt solution in a tiny test tube. The air bubbles for about 8 hours and at the end of this period a solution remains that contains some of the chemicals that were in the air. Then an allergy extract is prepared from this solution which can be injected in the skin, or placed under the tongue. If it causes numbness in the arms, tingling in the fingers, a headache, stomachache, problems with remembering, or a change in activity or behavior within 10 minutes, we have probably collected the problem chemical from the air within the solution.”

TREATMENT AND ENVIRONMENTAL CONTROL Dr. Rapp explains how an environmental medicine specialist might proceed to treat a child. “The doctor can make dilutions of the chemical solution [found to be causing symptoms] and probably eliminate those same symptoms…. In other words, if the child develops a headache in a certain room, you can put a drop of the air allergy extract under the tongue and provoke the headache in 3 to 8 minutes. Then you can give the child a 5-fold weaker dilution of that same solution and often you can eliminate or neutralize the headache in less than 10 minutes.”

As with adults, the first step in managing environmental allergies is avoiding exposure to a suspected allergen or irritant. Some recommendations for what you can do at home can be found in chapter 34. What if you suspect or determine that your child is being affected by an exposure at school? “One of the things that you can insist on is that school officials check the ventilation system,” Dr. Rapp says. “There are fast and easy ways to measure the amount of carbon dioxide in a classroom, which can tell you whether the ventilation is good or not. Relatively simple tests can also be done to measure for certain chemicals, such as chlorine and formaldehyde. Sometimes, because of poor cleaning of the ventilation systems in schools, the problem is dust and molds, not chemicals. Other times, they put chemicals in the ductwork while cleaning, which really causes trouble because the chemicals then circulate throughout the school, causing illness. Sometimes the intake for the ventilation system is too close to the area where all the school buses line up. The bus drivers let the engines idle for long periods, resulting in all the gasoline fumes and hydrocarbons entering the ductwork intake and circulating throughout the school.”

Food Allergies

Medical literature is filled with case studies in which children experience irritability, hyperactivity, insomnia, lack of concentration, poor memory, fatigue, and lethargy. After isolating and omitting all of the allergens from their diets, these sensitive children often improve. Not only do their physical symptoms clear up, but their behavioral imbalances do as well.

Among children, the most common sources of food allergies include chocolate, milk, wheat, eggs, and pork, Dr. Rapp says. “Ideally,” she adds, “your child should eat only organically grown food because it is less contaminated with pesticides, food coloring, and other chemical additives that may be causing adverse reactions. However, in some places, it remains difficult—and expensive—to buy foods uncontaminated by chemicals.”

The methods used to test for and treat food allergies in adults can be applied to children as well (see chapter 35). Dr. Rapp offers some additional suggestions. “Ask your children to write down or tell you their five favorite foods and beverages. The five foods and beverages that they write are probably the foods that are most likely to cause them difficulty…. If they wrote down bread, cake, cookies, pasta, and macaroni, chances are the problem is wheat. If they wrote down ice cream, yogurt, milk, cheese, and pizza, they are probably sensitive to dairy products.”

Dr. Rapp also suggests asking your children to talk about how they feel, write their names, and draw pictures before and then after eating a meal.” Using a peak flow meter or other device, check their breathing patterns both before and after eating. Pulse rate can be monitored as well. “If the pulse is 80 and suddenly after eating it is 120, a food has set off a silent alarm in the child’s body, which has caused her pulse to increase,” Dr. Rapp says. “So check the writing, the drawing, the pulse rate, the breathing, and how your child feels and looks before a meal and then a half hour or so later. If any of these variables indicates a change for the worse after a meal, one of the foods your child ate may be the cause of the problem.

As in adults, food allergies in children can be treated by an elimination or rotation diet, neutralizing dose therapy, reducing stress, and strengthening the immune system (see chapter 35).

Patient Stories

“As Alison’s mother, I can honestly say that Alison was born crying. She cried for the first 2 years of her life. I took her to a clinic at the time and found out she was allergic to corn, wheat, and bananas, which caused her to cry every day, all day long. I took her off those foods, and she became a normal, happy 2 year old. She did well for quite a while until she got a problem with a vitamin deficiency, which caused her to be uncontrollable. I couldn’t do anything with her. If I wanted her to get dressed she would scream, rant, and rave. It would take me 3 hours just to get her dressed.

“After reading an article on vitamins, I put her on vitamin supplements. That’s when we realized that she hadn’t smiled in 6 months. Then she was fine again, until 2 years ago, when she started to scream at me all the time, day in and day out, no matter what I wanted her to do, over absolutely nothing. She would scream at me that her shoes were wrong, her hair was wrong. It would take me all day long just to get her into the shower. At this point she was 10 years old. She should have been bathing on her own. I would go pick her up at school and when she was 70 feet away from me, she would scream, ‘Mom, you are early!’ And she would go on and on about why I was early. The next day she’d look at me and she’d scream, ‘Mom, you are late!’ And she would scream the whole way home, until she went up to her room and I would go off somewhere else to get away from her.…

“Dr. Buttram diagnosed my daughter as having food allergies to corn, potatoes, chicken, egg yolks, rice, and chocolate. They put her on these sublingual drops and now I have my normal, happy daughter back again. It was a dramatic change. She had become extremely difficult to live with…. Some days were worse than others. Now I know that on the days she had a combination of foods or a lot of the foods she was allergic to that she was at her worst. The way that I figured out it was food again was because every once in awhile we would have a great day or two and every once in awhile her diet just happened to not include these things. Then she would be fine. But the next day she’d be right back again with the behavior—totally out of control for long periods of time.

“When my mother found out about Alison’s behavior, she told me that I myself had been an absolutely horrendous child. Now that Alison had been diagnosed, she understood that I had had food allergies too. Now I understand that children’s behavior problems are not always due to what the parent is doing with the child, as far as discipline is concerned. I’ve had a lot of children; I’ve been a foster parent for years. When Alison first started this behavior I tried everything in the book and nothing worked. And the thing that told me that something was controlling her, instead of her doing this, was the fact that we would have good days. And it didn’t matter what we were doing on a bad day. If I would sit and play with her all day long, and it was a bad day, we would have a bad day. And discipline meant absolutely nothing, because something was controlling Alison. It was a chemical imbalance in her brain that was controlling her because she had absolutely no control over what she did. It was like the food was controlling her. I related it to the behavior of a manic-depressive or a paranoid schizophrenic who has no control over what they are doing….

“I feel bad that Alison was so miserable for so long. There are so many kids out there that are this miserable. There are kids in learning disability classes and the parents just don’t look any further than their nose. Some parents do make an effort and take their kids to standard allergists who test them, but those doctors may not be able to locate the problem. A friend of mine took her child to a regular allergist who tested him for all the standard things and said he was fine. But he never tested him for half the things to which Alison is allergic and the doctor never questioned the mother about the child’s diet.”

—Alison’s mother

“A patient I saw last week has three sons who came home smelling of mop oil, which is used to clean the school. The mother said that the children’s clothes smelled so badly that she had to use very hot water to eliminate the smell. One of the boys developed a headache and a burning sensation in his throat. So I asked her to bring some of the mop oil and I just put it underneath his nose and let him take one whiff of the odor. Within seconds, he was complaining of a headache around his forehead on both sides of his temples and he said it was throbbing and that his throat was burning. I gave him oxygen for about 10 minutes and the headache, throbbing, and burning in his throat gradually subsided. We videotaped this reaction.

“There was another child who had trouble only on the two afternoons a week when he went to school. He would be weak and tired, hardly able to stand; he couldn’t hold a pencil, clung to his mother, but only on those 2 days. I sent the mother to the school and asked her to try to figure out what’s different in the schoolroom that might be causing your son problems. It turned out that they used a very common disinfectant aerosol in the room, six times a day on the tabletops, to reduce infections. Then they used the same solution on the cot that he napped on. All she had to do was ask the school to stop using that disinfectant and install an air purifier, and the child improved remarkably.”

—Dr. Doris Rapp