If you have ever been afflicted with food poisoning, it becomes a call to wellness that resounds deep in your belly with the message shouting, “Don’t ever do this to me again!”

One out of six of us will be stricken with food poisoning this year. Most of the time the symptoms will be relatively mild and your internal terrain will be back in balance within a day or two. On the other hand, a severe case may keep you down for days hopefully without complications.

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If you have ever been afflicted with food poisoning, it becomes a call to wellness that resounds deep in your belly with the message shouting, “Don’t ever do this to me again!”

One out of six of us will be stricken with food poisoning this year. Most of the time the symptoms will be relatively mild and your internal terrain will be back in balance within a day or two. On the other hand, a severe case may keep you down for days hopefully without complications.

To keep the danger in perspective, reported cases of food borne illnesses cause 128,000 hospitalizations and 3,000 deaths every year. Most of the time suspected gastrointestinal viruses that cause diarrhea, fever and vomiting are most characteristic of food poisoning rather than influenza? Though symptoms usually show up 2 to 6 hours after eating contaminated food, there is a possibility they won’t grab you for days.

Whether a virus or food poisoning, treatment and care are the same—rest and drink plenty of water. Avoid reverse osmosis water. It does not contain the necessary mineral content important to your immune system. Soda may temporarily settle your stomach, but alkaline ionized water is the best solution for long-term effects and to rebalance your system. Good electrolyzed water naturally restores electrolyte balance. Gatorade and Pedialyte, though highly advertised, are very acidic and can aggravate your situation. The same is true of citrus juice.

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Webster says allergy is a hypersensitivity to a specific substance or condition. Wikipedia talks about allergy being a disorder of the immune system. WebMD tells us allergy is an abnormal response of the immune system. All are correct.

According to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases [NIAID], 5%  of children and 4% of adults in the USA are miserable with them. Whether they are food allergies or environment allergies, 10 million to 12 million people now and growing are spending a fortune in time and medication to efficiently get through their day.

New guidelines have come out on food allergies to help determine if you have them. Severity of these allergies has a wide range from mild to severe. This can even include death. Some of the most common reactive proteins are milk and dairy products from all milk producing animals, peanuts, eggs, wheat, shellfish, certain fruits and vegetables, natural coloring and chemical additives.

Matthew Fenton, Chief of the Asthma, Allergy and inflammation Branch of the Division of Allergy, Immunology and Transplantation of the Allergy Institute says that peanut allergies in particular are on the rise. His organization was among more than 30 professional organizations and agencies who contributed to a new group of guidelines that can especially help parents navigate this difficult road when their babies and toddlers start showing signs of food allergies.

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Flame retardant is deadly! Yes, you read that right. Flame retardant is deadly! Of fifteen kinds in common use, chlorinated tris is the most common and in widest use. It is found in countless products ranging from furniture to clothes, from indoor dust to lakes and rivers where we get our drinking water.

In the 1970s when my two boys were born, children’s pajamas were supposedly made safer for children by coating them with chemicals to keep them from catching fire. This seemed innocent enough. Why would anybody want to do something to a child’s clothing that could compromise his little life? But when the time came to buy their pjs, I noticed the fabric had a sticky tacky feel.

It was my pediatrician who advised me wisely, “Wash the boys pajamas in hot, hot water twice in full cycles before putting them on the kids” to get the chemicals out of them. Today I know what that chemical was, chlorinated tris, a substance suspected to be a carcinogen that started and stopped on pajama’s in the ‘70s but did not get banned across the board. It actually was the beginning of a chemical wave we are facing today.

Chemicals are poisoning our infants. Eight out of 10 common baby products have in them flame-retardant chemicals.

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“No! You can’t go swimming for an hour.” How many of us heard our mothers say this and at the same time were told the reason was because we would get stomach cramps if we swam too soon after eating? Soon enough a child figures out the truth. Somewhere outside the purview of parents, grandparents or babysitters, they went ahead and swam and felt perfectly fine.

From the June 2011 issue of Women’s Health magazine talks about five myths that you might find humorous if not downright silly. The next time you hear one of them, have a good giggle and take it with a grain of salt while applying an easy and reliable remedy more suitable to your situation.

Myth: Peeing on a jellyfish sting will ease the pain. In the words of my ten year old grandson, “Yuck!” Not exactly a mainstream form of treatment. On the other hand, “¦household white vinegar applied to the wound for 30 minutes’ can inactivate the stingers and minimize pain,” according to Stanford University School of Medicine’s emergency-medicine doctor Paul Auerbach, M.D. After the vinegar, follow it with an over-the-counter hydrocortisone cream for the itching. If you are fortunate enough to have on hand a redox signaling product, apply it topically via spray bottle several times in close secession for fast and almost instant calming results.

Myth: You can get sick going in and out of air-conditioned buildings. More likely the truth is about allergies from prevalent allergens in the summer air according to Neil Schachter, M.D., pulmonologist. Want real relief from those allergies? Drink alkaline ionized water -1/2 oz per each pound of ones body weight. Add to that a banana a day to benefit from its natural chemicals that repel allergies.¹

Myth: A car is the safest place to be in a lightning storm because of the rubber tires. Somewhat true but not because of the tires. According to John Jensenius, lightning-safety expert for the National Weather Service, a car is the best place because of the metal that conducts the electricity around the outside of the car creating a metal frame for the people inside. Just don’t touch anything metal or the radio that may be wired to an outside antenna.

Myth: Flip flops are good for your feet. Not true. Flip flops most often have no support or ability to absorb shock. Wearing them all summer can lead to serious foot conditions like pinched nerves, heel pain, tendinitis, strained arches, even hammertoe growth. Other unhealthy conditions can occur from wearing thongs that force your foot into a clenched position while walking.

Myth: Swimming in a pool can replace the daily shower or bath. DEFINITELY NOT SO! Of all the myths here, this is the most risky if you believe it. Truth is most people do not rinse with a shower of any kind before going swimming. In a public or community pool, “Chemicals in personal-care products, sweat, and makeup can interfere with chlorine, making it much less effective,” says Michele Hlavsa, R.N., M.P.H., of the CDC’s Healthy Swimming Program. These pools, especially, are full of bacteria such as cryptosporidium, a parasite carried by birds and animals that can transmit to humans and cause severe abdominal pain and diarrhea; and, contagious fungal infections that can bring on conditions like swimmer’s ear, vaginitis, jock itch and athlete’s foot. Chlorine in a pool can only do so much good. Use good judgment when swimming and protect your children by knowing the pool you are using is cared for and maintained appropriately on a daily basis.

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

Resource:

¹Pesmen, Curt, editor. Uncommon Cures For Everyday Ailments ( Stamford, 2009), pg 57-58.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR EZINE OR WEBSITE? You can as long as you include this complete blurb with it:

LouAnn Savage is publisher and editor of The Weekly Healthline, an online health and lifestyle publication. Follow or subscribe at these online locations: http://www.HealthFitforLife.com, http://www.Savage.TeamAsea.com, twitter @louannsavage and join her on Facebook.com/louannsavage. She is a sales representative for Asea and has affordable water ionizers available upon request.

Grete Waitz was a Norwegian marathon runner who came into prominence in the 1980s. She passed away this past April 2011 at the age of 58 from cancer. Grete was an immensely talented runner whose parents had difficulty accepting her running athleticism as a profession. Against all odds, she broke new ground for herself and other women distance runners. She wrote, “No matter who we are, at some point we are all first-time marathoners.”

She was a marvel to watch and became an inspiration for me in 1991 when with a group of girlfriends we decided to be ‘participants’ in the Los Angeles Marathon. I would hardly say I ‘ran’ nor could I even come partially close to comparing myself to any devoted runner, much less Ms. Waitz, the nine-time winner of the New York City Marathon and Silver Olympic medalist. But she did give me the courage to give it a shot. Come the end of the Los Angeles City Marathon that spring day in March of 1991, I finished before dark and I earned a medal to show for it. Man, did that feel good and boy did my feet hurt! But it was worth every bit of exertion, effort, concentration, exhilaration and pain.

If you have a burning desire to join a marathon but think it’s impossible. If you want to get fit and you have a willingness to do it walking or running, believe me you can. I did and it got me into a regular routine of exercise and physical fitness that remains with me to this day. I go to the gym three times a week and take a two to three mile walk once or twice a week. Because of my routine, my circulation is better, I sleep better and I feel better overall. Exercise is just one part of my three part regimen of a good and balanced diet of very little meat and an abundance of fresh plant recipes along with appropriate supplements.

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Reuters London reports that European Neuroscientists are in a dither over funding cuts for research and discovery of new drugs for brain disease from mental illness, depression, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s. Yet, in the United States, the funding and research marches on into more and more drug therapy and treatment while “brain” science is not much further along than it was ten, fifteen, twenty years ago.

It’s evident when you consider what little we know about your mother’s Alzheimer’s symptoms, your son’s football concussion, your husband’s head injury while biking, and your own forgetfulness. In all of these cases the brain is at substantial risk. Every 15 seconds someone receives a traumatic brain injury. Of the 1,000,000 treated in emergency rooms every year, 50,000 die and 80,000 become permanently disabled. These figures don’t take into account our military head trauma called Traumatic Brain Injury or TBI, nor does it consider the effects and outcome of disease like multiple sclerosis, ALS, Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s.

David Nutt, professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, in response to funding cuts, states, “These are dark days for brain science.” But are they? Could research and development be forced to start taking a deeper look into more organic remedies that go outside the mainstream drug culture of what has come to be known as ‘big pharma?’

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When my son was in college, he was, what I thought, lazing around on a summer Sunday. He is a hard worker and an avid athlete. I thought on this Sunday he was making up lost sleep by taking a long nap. But about two in the afternoon, he came to me and asked what it meant to have blood show in a bowel movement. At that, I was alarmed and said, “That’s not at all normal,” then quizzed him about it.

My mind flashed to E.coli, but couldn’t be sure. None of us had ever had it before, yet I knew he needed to see a doctor sooner rather than later. He was getting sicker by the minute. Being Sunday, I packed my boy into the car and off we went to the emergency room. I learned on the drive that he had eaten a burger from a favorite fast food burger place in California the day before, a place where you would never expect to find E.coli.

Lying on a hospital gurney with his 6’2” frame hanging over the end, he could barely lift his head let alone describe his symptoms to the gastroenterologist. Fortunately, the doctor was well informed about E.coli. He diagnosed it immediately, prescribed antibiotics, said he would be better in twenty-four hours or so and told us it was a very good thing we got there when we did. That was more than fifteen years ago.

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Trust me on this one; it isn’t just for the ladies. How many times have you burned yourself with your curling iron? It if isn’t our forehead, it’s our neck, or ear. And worse than that, I just read about a small child grabbing it by the heating element.

Standing in the bathroom getting my hair prettied up this past weekend, I got to my bangs. You guessed it. I wound up for a curl and suddenly felt intense heat against my skin. The result, a second degree burn on my forehead. Painful? Yes, quite. At first look, all to be seen was redness. No blister. I grabbed a product you’ve heard me talk about from time to time and sprayed it directly on the wound. Immediately there was a calming sensation and I thought that would be the end of it. Later I took a more serious look and a blister had started to form, but with no pain. From my First Aid Certification days, I remembered it would be important to not pop the blister and keep the bubbled skin in tact until it healed in order to avoid infection..

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How often do we find ourselves being sent down to the lab for blood work? Or hear from a friend that she had to have an MRI for a migraine? Or have a CT scan ordered up like aspirin? Whether we see it on ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ or experience on our own midnight visit to the emergency room, tests are pervasive in our Western health care system.

Now I am one who is all about being conservative when it comes to my health and I would rather err on the side of caution. But come on. These tests are coming at us from right and left. Many, if not most, people feel uncomfortable questioning their doctors judgment or reasoning. In a survey by Consumer Reports carried out with 8,000 people without heart disease history participating, most said they were prescribed at least one test designed for people with heart disease symptoms. And most agreed to the tests without asking any pertinent questions such as:

1. What are you looking for specifically?
2. How did you arrive at your decision to have me take this test?
3. What are my symptoms that make you want me to have this test?
4. How accurate is the test?
5. Are there any other ways you can get confirmation of what you are looking for?
6. What are the potential complications of the test?
7. What happens or how would I know if the test is performed incorrectly
8. What will the solution be if results of test show an abnormal condition?
9. What is the chance of misdiagnosis?
10. How often does this test produce a false positive result?
11. How invasive is [a particular] test?
12. What are the chances of surgery as a result of the tests?

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