Peppers and tomatoes

 I've got a feeling this piece of research into Parkinson's and tomatoes and peppers may miss the point.
 
Let me declare an interest - a close relative has just died from Parkinson's; and then a second interest, a very personal one. There has been evidence in the past linking Parkinson's to a history of allergic conditions. I'm a little worried.

The researchers here set out to show that tomatoes and peppers help to "protect" against Parkinson's. Their thesis is that these two fruits contain nicotine - which is thought to protect against Parkinson's. So they find that people who get Parkinson's don't eat many tomatoes and peppers.

As it happens my relative did not eat many tomatoes. Neither do I, nor many peppers - because I am allergic to them. My relative never had an allergy diagnosed - but he did not like tomatoes and I watched once when he ate one. Shortly after he reached for his hanky as his nose began running. Yes, I am concerned we may share genes.

This piece of research may be what's known as a failure of causation. It may well be that tomatoes and peppers do not "protect" against Parkinson's but help cause it - but because they cause it through allergic reactions, susceptible people actively avoid them, thereby eating less of the substance. Or it may be a bit of both.

What continues to be frustrating is the way a whole range of medical research simply fails to display joined up thinking. There are some people who recognise that allergic syndromes cause general inflammation - but they are few and far between. I know there are some in medicine who recognise that super-specialisation is the wrong way forward - it means that researchers and doctors simply fail to make connections. 

RAS

Euro-pollen map

 A Euro-pollen map from the University of Vienna could eventually be helpful if you are travelling the continent over the next few months. However you may need to use a translator as it is in German.

There is an app available at  www.polleninfo.org covering several countries.

Details at  http://www.meduniwien.ac.at/homepage/news-und-topstories/?tx_ttnews[tt_news]=3354&cHash=ab4e3683aa

RAS

World Allergy Week

 There's been no need to keep ice on the go in the fridge as our tap water has come through at freezing temperatures for the last two months.

Meanwhile here is news of World Allergy Week, starting tomorrow. It's all about food allergies so it will be interesting to see if anyone discusses salicylate.

Milwaukee, WI. The World Allergy Organization (WAO) will host its annual World Allergy Week from 8-14 April, 2013, together with its 93 national Member Societies, to address the topic of “Food Allergy – A Rising Global Health Problem,” and its growing burden on children.

Globally, 220-250 million people may suffer from food allergy [1], and the occurrence of food allergies continues to rise in both developed and developing countries, especially in children. This year WAO plans to highlight the need for greater awareness and understanding of food allergy as well as the exchange of ideas and collaboration in order to address a variety of safety and quality-of-life issues related to the care of patients with food sensitivity. Activities will include international teleconferences with experts presenting information about global food allergy concerns and answering questions immediately afterward.

According to Professor Ruby Pawankar, President of the World Allergy Organization, “There are problems that need to be addressed in many countries throughout the world such as the lack of awareness of food allergies, lack of standardized national anaphylaxis action plans for food allergy, limited or no access to adrenaline autoinjectors, and the lack of food labeling laws. Moreover, some countries have standardized action plans but no ready access to autoinjectors; others have autoinjectors but no standardized action plans. These circumstances can be improved with the distribution of information and resources for physicians, patients, parents, schools, health ministries, and throughout communities and by a call to action to
policy makers.”

“As in previous years, many of the national Member Societies of WAO will organize local events and programs around food allergy issues that specifically affect their communities,” said Professor Motohiro Ebisawa, WAO Board of Director and Chair of the Communications Council. WAO is providing information about food allergy online at www.worldallergyweek.org and will track activities of its Member Societies. “Everyone with an interest in food allergy can participate by contacting their national allergy societies and food allergy advocacy groups,” said Professor Ebisawa. A list of organizations is also available on the website.
______
[1] Fiocchi A, Sampson HA et al. “Food Allergy”, Section 2.5 in WAO White Book on Allergy, Editors: R Pawankar, GW Canonica, ST Holgate, RF
Lockey (Milwaukee, Wisconsin: World Allergy Organization, 2011), pp 47-53.

About the World Allergy Organization
The World Allergy Organization (WAO) is an international alliance of 93 regional and national allergy, asthma and immunology societies. Through
collaboration with its Member Societies WAO provides a wide range of educational and outreach programs, symposia and lectureships to allergists
and clinical immunologists around the world and conducts initiatives related to clinical practice, service provision, and physical training in order to
better understand and address the challenges facing allergy and immunology professionals worldwide. For more information, visit www.worldallergy.org.
 
RAS

Ice!

 Three, small, fillings at the dentist today - the first I've had for a long time.

That's not bad considering I haven't used toothpaste for six years. But three fillings in one day is too many and expensive also.

So I've resolved to do better.This will be my belated New Year resolution. I had a think about things and realised I'm not drinking as much water as before. I used to alternate it with my half-pints of decaf coffee and I've stopped doing it. I just drink decaf by the pint.

So even though I was eating a lot of cheap chocolate the water, which is fluoridated here, must have swilled my mouth out.

And here's how I'm going to make this happen. We are going to keep the freezer stocked with ice cubes, just like we do on holiday. This will have another great spin-off. For while instant decaf does nothing to keep me awake when I'm working, iced water surely will.

RAS

Kill or cure!

Sometimes silence here simply means I haven't got a clue what the h... is happening.

So I thought I shook off my cold in December by drinking redbush tea. And I kept to my resolution not to drink wine over Christmas. Quite a lot of whisky was consumed.

And then I came out of Christmas with a chronic stuffy nose. I thought maybe I had overdone the redbush tea and small things seemed to be causing reactions. For instance at the weekend I had nachos at the cinema but I did have them with cheese sauce. That definitely made my throat a little sore.

Now I am not so convinced. I woke up the other day and my left wrist was sore. In fact today my throat is sore on the left side and so is my eye and my leg is starting to feel sore. I am feeling hard done by because it is exactly why I didn't touch wine over Christmas to avoid these sort of symptoms.

Nevertheless I am beginning to think the problem is a lingering virus, maybe even .... flu. In fact I am feeling quite run down. This may be aggravated by the British freeze. Temperatures plunging to at least minus three have caused power cuts and put our central heating off. No wonder I'm a little shivery.

So I'm back on the redbush tea. Kill or cure!

RAS

Christmas cold

It arrived suddenly on Sunday - a torrent of cold. It's my second bad cold in two years so maybe my immune system's getting better!

I've had the pleasure of drinking redbush tea all week to give the immune system a kick. It's not obviously worked. The cold has simply gone through the phases of a bad cold - a nose that doesn't stop running, a lost voice and attempts to get a cough going. Tonight it seems to be trying to get a cough and a fever going.

The tea must have been well past it's sell-by date. I soon finished the half-a-dozen sachets in the box and went out to get another one.

So has the redbush tea made things better or worse? It could have aggravated the runny nose and sore throat for all I know, like a combined cold and hay fever.

If you remember my theory from last autumn, the allergic reactions seem to give a broad response which see off most viral attacks early. If the virus gets past this, it may cause problems. You could call it a salicylate-resistant virus. Because the fine-tuned parts of the immune system don't have to deal with many viruses, they are less prepared.

I haven't helped myself by not getting enough sleep. Pre-Christmas stress. I've no plans to drink wine to see it off - as I have in the past. That's a medicine with side-effects and usually leaves me with stiff joints for weeks.

RAS

Backache

It arrived at the weekend. Actually the real problem is with the digestive system but I don't like to talk about that. That may be why I have not posted much in the last few weeks.

The rule of thumb is that raw food hits the mouth and throat and you can tell almost instantly if there is a problem. Big offenders are onions and pepper and they tend to crop up in plain English cooking, such as shepherd or cottage pies, or in coleslaw. Somebody served me a delicious shepherd's pie the other day, no pepper, but stuffed with onions and as a result my throat seized up and my nose ran - but it lasted no more than a few hours.

My skin is generally fine, clear as a bell. The Splodge has stayed away, even in spite of the occasional indulgence with Stilton and other blue cheeses. And there have been no rashes. That's because essentially I stick to a low-salicylate diet and mostly to a zero salicylate diet.

But if the food is processed or highly prepared it slips past the throat into the digestive system. That's happening all the time. I may take a pill if I'm having somebody else's food and I may think I get away with it. But the truth is that in spite of keeping pretty fit I've got serious inflammation around the abdomen - I'm pussy-footing around descriptions - and all that goes with it.

Well that caught up with me at the weekend when a muscle at the back of the abdomen pulled. It's taking a while to heal. There were all sorts of reasons but you cannot kid me that the state of my digestive system is not part of it

RAS

Holiday disaster

It was two years ago that a good dose of holiday sunshine burnt the original Splodge from my chest.

So my hopes were high as we set off for holiday climes this year. Surely the resurgent branding on my chest would also burn off rapidly, I thought.

It's a little too early to say - but maybe I did not help myself. A holiday's a break. I took a montelukast every day and let myself indulge in wine and olives. The pill, the sunshine and plenty of fresh air and activity should do the trick, I thought. I try to use sensitive skin or clear sun creams or oils - there seems to be no reaction.

And indeed, while on holiday, it was terrific. No problems - except that the new Splodge faded but did not go away.

Back home? I've had to take a paracetamol tonight. I have sporadic shooting pains all over my limbs, up my left leg and arm and down my right arm. This has happened before: I get it into my head that I can drink a little wine on holiday - and I spend weeks paying for it afterwards.

RAS

Qorn

I think I have an explanation for the return and growth of the splodge on my chest. Over the last few weeks I've spent some time in the company of a vegetarian. I have nothing against vegetarians. But meals tend to get produced  which appear to be chicken but are in fact made with the Qorn meat substitute.

What is Qorn? It's a fungus, like mushroom. So this tends to confirm the theory that I am reacting to fungi. Originally the dietitian said mushrooms were problematic and it depended where they were grown. I assumed this meant that if they were grown in salicylate rich compost - as most commercial mushrooms would be - they were off limits. On this basis Qorn should be okay as, according to Wikipedia, it's grown in vats, not in compost, and fed merely with glucose, vitamins and minerals. But it's obviously not okay.

Thanks to a small amount of sunshine over the weekend the splodge is fading a little and is less red and itchy. Let's hope this continues. Meanwhile I have told everyone, sorry, I won't be eating Qorn again.

RAS

Vinegar and mayonnaise

The returned Splodge is now about the size of a 2p piece. I have been trying to work out what I am doing wrong as my diet has been pretty well controlled for the last few weeks.

Two theories. One is that I have become rather casual about vinegar as though it is okay. As vinegar is merely a kind of wine, of course it is not ok. In particular I've been downing the mayonnaise liberally. You can't have coleslaw without mayonnaise and we're making our own now. I even made tuna mayo with sweetcorn the other night. I decided that mayo must be okay because it's mainly egg - but it's also got vinegar. And certainly at one point last week the speckled rash was back on my tummy.

But there's a second idea. The original Splodge was triggered by penicillin and stilton cheese (the green mould in stilton contains penicillin). So this report about fungus allergy was interesting. Is penicillin allergy actually a fungus allergy? Now our kitchen fridge doesn't seem very cold and there's been quite a bit of mould appearing. I had a slice of cheddar cheese a couple of days ago which tasted quite like stilton. Could it be mould?

Roll on the summer holidays when I might be able to burn off the Splodge. No chance in this wet, wet English weather!

RAS