Know The Cause - Newsletter Articles

Although I have no statistics to prove this, if I were a betting man, I’d wager a handsome sum that Pediatric Allergists’ offices are deluged with patients in September each year. I’ve known many allergists throughout my career and, unlike other physicians, they really do try to locate “the cause” of their patients’ maladies. Even if I believe that implicating a simple plant like ragweed is erroneous….give them credit, they are trying. It is likely that every September, tens of thousands of parents rush their sniffling children into an allergist’s office. But why September, and why all of the sudden is this child allergic to ragweed?

To respond to the first question, you don’t suppose just being back in school could be contributing to allergies, do you? Is it just a coincidence that the allergists’ office in September is busy every year, or could it be symptomatic of a much larger problem the children are having during this “back to school” month?

Carefully read Dr. Curtis’s article this month, and your questions may all be answered. When they left school for their summer break in June, it was hot. The air conditioning was going 10 hours daily blowing that cool air through the ducting systems in that huge school and directly into their classroom. The cool air vaporized, formed mold and then stagnated for several months of nonuse while your child enjoyed summer vacation. When school starts in September, the huge ducting systems (heat or air) are now impregnated with mold and, with the flip of a breaker, they are turned back on. Teachers and children alike begin to suffer with upper respiratory infections, sinus infections, colds and flu and doctors refer them to their allergist friends, both claiming all the while that their allergies are due to pollen, dust and dander…but they never question the moldy school ducting system. I’ve often wondered if ragweed was merely an innocent bystander being trapped in the sinus spaces because of what I refer to as “mold glue” or if people really were allergic to ragweed so much so that it stands vilified in allergists’ offices. In other words, why are our children only sneezing when seasonal plants, like ragweed, are blooming? Short of snorting glue, why are some children more vulnerable to trapping all of these airborne particles than others? Is it because certain classrooms are more toxic than others, or are their tiny noses and lungs different than the other students?

I recall lecturing on inhaled mold problems one year in Northern Texas. Little did I know that I was lecturing with one of the most prominent and outspoken mold specialists in the country, a microbiologist named Dr. David Strauss. He has published widely on the devastating symptoms that can be caused by inhaling toxic mold in what he refers to as “toxic buildings” in America. Yes, schools are among them and children are vulnerable.

With regard to the second question as to why all of the sudden all of these children are allergic, let’s dwell on our earlier hypothesis a little; What if ragweed or sagebrush is merely being trapped in swollen mucous membrane tissues that might be caused by mold inhalation (what makes bread rise?) If this were the case, the pollen would merely become a secondary irritant, and not “the cause” of the allergic response. The cause would be fungus adhering to the sinus spaces trapping the pollens. Much like many of our cigarette-smoking households when we were children, we very definitely sneezed and were congested when exposed to all of that smoke, but like allergic responses, once the smoking stopped, so did our misery. We never took tobacco smoke shots twice weekly!

What if the 20 million allergic American children are suffering, not from allergies, but from “primed membrane syndrome (PMS) caused by mold, cigarette smoke or other contaminants?” It may be the child whose parents smoke, whose refrigerator is filled with soda, and whose cupboards are filled with sugar treats that becomes saturated with toxins and therefore much more vulnerable initially to catching either allergies or the “flu!” The same can be said for the child chronically exposed to mold in his/her home. As is already questioned earlier in this article with regard to allergies, is it really the flu or has this child simply reached toxic saturation earlier than the rest in his class? Now simply add billions of microscopic fungal spores for the children and teacher to inhale, compromising their immune systems and you’ve got a recipe for transmitting illness. But how does that “primed” first child give it to the rest of the classroom? Remember that fungus is a transmittable germ. Skin fungi, like the dermatophytes that cause ringworm, have been known to be contagious for many years. So has athlete’s foot. Perhaps the primed child spreads his illness because of the mold weakened immunity of his classmates and teacher.

“Primed Membrane Syndrome” may be merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to understanding the “back to school” flu outbreaks and allergy and asthma illnesses. One thing is certain; inoculating our small children with yet another in a myriad of vaccines just because they catch a cold and then associating the cold with the “herd mentality” (larger groups tend to propagate more virulent germs than smaller groups) is no different than lining kids up in an allergist's office and promising four days of relief with an inoculation against ragweed. We’d love for you to believe that allergists absolutely know everything about the immune response but, time and time again, the immune system baffles us. I believe that it will continue to do so until we realize that it is not the vaccine or the pollen or the pill that offers us relief, rather an eventual understanding of why it goes array in the first place. Still today fungus is shrugged off as an inconsequential germ. This, I fear, is the Achilles’ heel of “modern” medicine. Each morning and evening, I find myself popping my beta-glucan and thanking God for knowledge! Doug