MEDICATIONS: HIGH RISK, LOW REWARD
We might accept the serious side effects of many of these drugs if we knew they would cure us of what ails us, but the reality is that drugs don’t cure diseases; they mitigate symptoms. And in most cases, they don’t work much better, if at all better, than a placebo. According to Dr. Allen Roses, a scientist and the former global vice president of genetics at GlaxoSmithKline, “Most prescription medicines do not work on most people.” He added, “The vast majority of drugs—more than 90 percent—only work on 30 to 50 percent of the people.”14
Harvard University research found that approximately 50 percent of the effectiveness of pharmaceutical drugs can actually be linked to the placebo effect, not the actual effectiveness of the medication. Study participants were given either a pain drug or a placebo. When either the drug or placebo was administered with the message that it is an “effective treatment,” both had significantly better results. When the real drug was switched with the placebo, the results were nearly the same, provided that the message of the effective treatment accompanied the pills.15
It should be fairly clear by now that the effectiveness of prescription drugs is much less than you may have believed. Much of their effectiveness can be attributed to the placebo effect or advertising or physician messaging that suggests that the drugs are effective. Additionally, when we refer to drugs as effective, we simply mean they reduce symptoms. Sadly, no drug has ever cured allergies. And considering the high cost, both financial and in terms of side effects, the minimal symptom improvement sometimes offered from pharmaceutical drugs is simply insufficient.
Consider a media release issued by the Orthomolecular Medicine News Service entitled “Does Anybody Still Believe Slam Pieces on Dietary Supplements?” In it, the organization reported that “the biological action of most prescription drugs can be duplicated with dietary supplements at far less cost and side effects. . . .”16
The nutrients, however, do not share the extensive list of side effects that accompany most prescription and OTC drugs, particularly in the category of pharmaceutically prepared analgesics. Twenty years ago, astute medical professionals who kept up on the research knew that nutrients could replace prescription drugs for treating disease.
As you’ll soon discover in Allergy-Proof Your Life, foods, nutrients, natural medicines, and lifestyle modifications go a long way toward alleviating allergy symptoms and, in many cases I’ve personally witnessed, eliminating the allergies altogether.
Forget blaming bad genes for the conditions that ail you: allergies are included as pioneering research into a specific field known as nutrigenomics—the study of the effects of nutrition on the expression of DNA. Nutrigenomics has found that certain nutrients formed compounds that could actually “turn off” the expression of so-called bad genes.17 While we once believed our genes were comparable to ticking time bombs just waiting to go off, leading scientists and nutritionists now know that what we eat and how we live plays a much greater role in preventing or even reversing the effects of our genes than we ever imagined possible.
If you believe drugs are the only effective options for allergies, think again. Besides that, many drugs actually cause the same symptoms they are taken to alleviate. The natural options I’ll share with you over the coming chapters not only reduce allergy symptoms; they also strengthen and balance the body to quiet an overactive immune system and go to the root cause of the allergies themselves—which is not a drug deficiency disease as the pharmaceutical industry would have you believe.
Foods That Harm, Foods That Heal
WHEN I FIRST MET my husband, Curtis, he suffered from severe seasonal allergies. Sneezing, sniffling, itchy eyes, and nasal congestion seemed to be part of his springtime routine. We moved in together about six weeks after our first date. Yes, it was quick, but we were and still are madly in love and have been together for nearly nineteen years now.
When we embarked on our first joint grocery order, we decided to “divide and conquer”: I picked up the fresh produce while Curtis tracked down the juice, pasta, and other staples. When he arrived back at the grocery cart, arms full of items on our list, I was shocked. I couldn’t believe the junk he had gathered. From sugar-loaded cranberry juice to white pasta and freezer pastry dough, I hadn’t expected so much junk from someone who was so fit and athletic. I said “that’s not juice” after noticing the sugar-water-cranberry solution, and we had a good laugh about our different eating styles.
Already a holistic nutritionist with a focus on the use of food to heal disease for several years by the time Curtis and I had that first grocery shopping experience together, I quickly realized that my sweetheart’s diet was playing a significant role in his allergy symptoms. I asked him if he would consider making dietary changes if they would likely help his seasonal allergies. Considering his love of the outdoors, as well as hiking, running, cycling, walking, he agreed.
I recommended eliminating all dairy products from his diet, including the ones hidden in his morning muffins and other baked goods that were a normal part of his diet. I also suggested that he significantly reduce all sugar from his diet for at least one month. My plan for Curtis involved eliminating all white-flour pastas and breads and any foods with trans fats and chemical food additives. I was impressed that he followed my plan to the letter for a full month. During that time, he observed that his allergies continuously improved and, by one month, were completely gone.
Curtis was pleasantly surprised that simply changing his diet reversed his seasonal allergies altogether. He also experienced more energy, increased vitality, better-quality sleep, and fewer headaches on this new eating plan. He stuck with the program most of the time but would occasionally enjoy a sugary treat. Curtis observed that if he ate too many of his old favorites, his allergy symptoms would come back, although they were never as severe as they once had been. And he felt empowered knowing that he could simply make dietary improvements and watch his seasonal allergies lift.
I have observed the dietary connection to seasonal allergies over and over again with many patients in my practice over the last twenty-five years. One eighteen-year-old young man exclaimed, “I can’t believe that just by eliminating dairy products and sugar my allergies are gone!” Although it may seem hard to believe, my experience proves otherwise. And as you’re about to learn, it is easier than you might think to eliminate these mucus-forming, allergy-aggravating foods from your diet. There are many excellent replacements for your favorite foods so you won’t feel deprived. I eat some of the best food of my life, even though I don’t eat dairy products and I rarely eat sweets made with sugar.
THE NOT-SO-SUGAR-COATED TRUTH ABOUT SUGAR
Sugar is not the safe addition to an otherwise healthy diet that manufacturers of sugary foods would have you believe. It is highly mucus forming and aggravates allergies. I put my clients on a minimum thirty-day low-sugar diet (and no, that doesn’t mean adding artificial sweeteners), and as you learned from my husband’s story, most of them see dramatic improvements in their environmental allergies even if they do nothing else and don’t bother with supplements or herbs. Of course, if you want faster results, then I definitely recommend including other natural remedies, which I’ll describe later in chapter 5.
In my experience, most asthma and allergy sufferers are sensitive to sugars of all kinds, natural or otherwise. It is best to cut back on all sweeteners and artificial sweeteners, the latter of which we’ll discuss momentarily.