Candidiasis

One of the most intriguing question often asked by someone who suffers from allergy is, "Why does one get an an allergic reaction now and not previously?"

Twenty years ago, I thought that one of the most common predispositions to cause allergy was the presence of candida in our body.

Nowadays everyone is jumping into the bandwagon and pushing candida as the culprit. This has caused a great number of probiotics in the market promoting their use in combating candida. 

What is Candida? 

Simply put, they are the 'bad guys' in our tummy as opposed to the 'good guys' of probiotic. Generally the good and the bad live in harmony within the gut and all is well. What often change the equilibrium is, ironically, the medical profession: doctors who prescribe antibiotics liberally even for minor cough and cold. The antibiotics destroy the bad guys, yes, but also the good guys. When the bad guys return, you may find that you have less good guys to fight the bad guys.

The Chinese Sinsehs (traditional medicine practitioners) are no better. The indiscriminate dispensing of steroids for all sorts of ailments from skin disorder to arthritis and minor muscular problems compounds the problem. With the overuse of too much chemicals plus the combination of candidiasis, the explosion of allergic conditions occur.

Once candida is diagnosed to be overwhelming the body causing allergic conditions, I would prescribe probiotics to treat the allergy. However, one has to understand that not all probiotics are the same: the number of probiotics, source as well as the species in the probiotic is important. There are, of course, the 'Rolls Royce' of probiotics and the 'Proton Saga' and depending on your allergy condition, some may need the best and some don't.

The Lesson: The diagnosis of candidiasis is paramount in treating allergy.

My learning continues….

Allergies in Infants

Allergy in infants is fascinating to me especially neonates (babies who are a few weeks old) as most of them are on breast milk and therefore the number of allergens they are exposed to in their diet are limited. 

I had a neonate who had a rash on his face. His father is a good friend of mine and his mother is a pharmacist (who has since introduced a lot of patients to me).

I thought the obvious culprit would be cows milk but on testing it was not. I then thought maybe it was the cream or soap they were using on him but the test also proved negative. The mysterious agent was soon confirmed when the father stated that they have just installed a drinking water filter of a particular brand when the child was born thinking the water would be better for him. I did my muscle testing and confirmed that it was indeed the water was the cause of the boys rash and by simply eliminating the filtered water, the rash would not come back. I was proven right; it didn't.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Another interesting case was the child was having a rash just below both his eyes one week after birth and muscle testing did not reveal a cause for the rash. I was puzzled as I had gone through every conceivable substance and food with no results, UNTIL I saw the pacifier the child had in his mouth. I tested that and it proved to be positive. That was when I discovered that silicon material nowadays used in milk bottle teats and pacifiers can be the cause of allergy of the face or around the mouth in infants. They do very well by switching to rubber teats and not using pacifier (which is not easy to do sometimes!).

                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Other common allergy in infants is cow's milk or even soya milk allergy. Goat's milk allergy is rare but possible. House dust mite or mould (spores in the air) allergy causing infants to have a lot of phlegm resulting in disturbed sleep is not uncommon.

Diaper allergy causing rashes around the groin region is common and infants can have rashes as a result of paraben (a chemical) found in a lot of baby creams and lotions. Inhalants that cause nasal congestion or even wheezing also includes pets such as dogs, cats and even birds and hamsters. I had a child who was allergic to the white jasmine flowers which the indians use as prayer offerings. The list goes on and on.  

The Lesson: Allergy in infants can be caused by a myriad of agents

… and my learning continues.

Filling Your Allergy Cup

My dance instructor is a spritely 72-year-old man. The other day, he came to see me for an allergic rash. The rash was spread throughout his whole body and his skin was atrophied (i.e. thin) as a result of too much steroids (consumed as well as used on the skin for the last 2 years).

Ironically, he was trying to recommend a multi-level-marketing product he was consuming which was supposedly good for people with bad skin. After testing him, I found that he had developed multiple allergies to most of the supplements he was consuming!

The question is this: why did he develop an allergy at the ripe old age of 72?

My good friend, an allergist from London has this hyphothesis: Our allergy profile is like a cup and the allergens are the substances that fill the cup. For those who have an extreme genetic predisposition to allergy, the cup is already three quarters to almost full, whereas those with less allergic tendencies, the cup may be relative empty at first. 

More than three decades ago, when i first started my medical practice, I hardly saw any allergic conditions. Fast forward 30 years and there is an epidermic proportion of allergies. 

Why?......

We have been filling the cup of allergy with the sheer number of mind boggling chemicals in our daily use ranging from soaps, detergents, toothpastes and processed foods. Even when we take 'real' food, most are contaminated with weedicides and pesticides. With air pollutants included, it's not hard to see how the cup can fill quickly. When the cup overflows, allergy appears. 

I think this is quite an accurate assessment of what has gone wrong. What do we do to reverse the process? I think we have to re-educate ourselves and more importantly, our children to avoid, as much as possible, all the aforementioned allergens. 

Eat simple and as far as possible, eat organic. Use the most basic few daily use products that have the least likelihood of causing allergies (paraben-free and fragrance-free, for example). Remember that in the old days, most of these products were very basic and less likely to cause allergy.

Educate our young to eat healthy and use less products with chemicals in them

My learning continues.

A Phone-y Allergy

Recently, I had an interesting case of a 14-year old girl who had seen me before for egg allergy and has done exceedingly well (her generalized skin rash had gone)

This time her mother brought her from KL to see me because she had a rash on her right ear. It was obvious that she had eczema on her right earlobe but what what was the cause? Her rash had reduced after treatment by a few visits to a local doctor but recurred after the cream was stopped. I tested her and found that she was now allergic to chrome and nickel. But why only the right ear? It puzzled me.

Her mother told me that she forbade her children to use jewelry of any kind and all of them did own not any mobile phone as she did not believe that they should be using mobile phones at her age.

That was my 'Aha' moment.

I requested her mother to leave us alone for a moment and when she had gone, I asked the girl whether she had been using her friend's mobile phone. She was a little hesitant to admit it, but she did. When I took out my aging mobile phone and asked her if it looked like that, her eyes widened and she nodded. 

My phone had a chrome border around it.

It's not hard to deduce the resourcefulness of a pretty young girl of 14 who had been banned from owning a mobile phone. The diagnosis was easy but the tricky part was to convince the mother to get her a cheap mobile phone and to cover the phone with a case!

It is common to have a child start with one or two allergens and left undetected and untreated, he/she would developed more and more sensitivities to other allergens, especially with the number of the allergens that can be found in our food these days. Also, our daily use of washing chemicals is phenomenal. Worth noting is that a skin allergy can develop into to asthma or colic (pain in the abdomen).   

                                   

Remember the Allergy March: Allergy begets allergy and has to be treated early

My learning continues.