However, for the past 40 years it has been known that only about 5% of all the reactions experienced from environmental substances (food, chemicals, etc.) are mediated via the serum sensitivity system. All the rest are mediated via "cellular immunity". These are not successfully identified via skin testing. The laboratory of the bodymind is the only one sophisticated enough to do this kind of testing.

Now I understand why what I was taught in medical school (more than 40 years ago) about "allergists" is true: If you take a group of allergic patients and skin test them for allergens, and then make up the usual sera for those sensitivities to give the person an "allergy shot" twice a week, after 2 years 55% show improvement. IF, half of the bottles have only water in them, and neither the patient or the doctor knows which bottle has the true serum, after 2 years of injections 50% of the patients getting the WATER show improvement.

This means that only 5% of the patients getting the entire science of the "allergist" is getting anything more than the placebo effect. It seems to me that 95% failure is failure.

Clinical Ecologists have been trying to get the field of allergy to recognize that the 95% they are missing is caused by cellular mediated immunity and they need to change their paradigm. The allergists are doing "just fine" the way things are so they don't want to change. They are willing prisoners of the "Tolstoy Effect" (below). The allergists have so fiercely clung to their original paradigm that they have actually sponsored bills in several of their states to outlaw Clinical Ecology.

NOW, the question is: "How is cellular mediated hypersensitivity caused and dealt with?"

To understand THAT one needs to understand something about how the bodymind protects itself from becoming hypersensitive to everything in our environment: Inside the lumen of the intestinal tract is outside the body. Just as inside your mouth is still outside your body so is inside the entire tube, running from the lips to the anus, outside the body. It is the job of the lining (skin) of the intestinal tract to protect us from the outside world.

Normally, it does a wonderful job---replacing itself, on the average, every 14 hours. However, when one is chronically in the fight or flight mode, the first thing that loses its blood supply is the intestinal tract (We do not need our guts to run or fight.) See the article about stress on this website. That means that the intestinal tract continues to lose the lining but it is incapable of replacing it properly.

Eventually this results in the "skin" of the intestinal tract not being perfect in doing its job.

The way that this skin protects us from environmental immunological reactions is by breaking down all the ingested proteins into amino acids. Our immune system is designed to protect us from living things (all of which have proteins). So, it only reacts to proteins (or pieces of proteins known as peptides). Our immune system does not react to amino acids as it does not recognize them as coming from something other than ourselves. If our gut is not perfect at breaking things down into amino acids, the peptides (fragments of proteins not totally broken down) can leak into the bloodstream where our immune system sees them as invaders.

When we make antibodies to these "faux invaders" we have a "hypersensitivity".

So, until we deal with why we have the leaky gut syndrome, all approaches to hypersensitivity will be temporary.

That is not to say that eliminating what we are hypersensitive to is not helpful on a temporary basis. These substances can be identified by elimination/provocation diets (since our diet is still the easiest "environmental" thing to manage) or sublingual testing of other substances. This is the bodymind laboratory mentioned above. The offending substances can rarely be identified by skin testing since they would have to elicit a humeral (serum) sensitivity to test positive that way.

Once there has been a cellular sensitivity set up, the antibodies designed to attack the peptides that leaked into the system can also attack any other identical peptide (which may make up different ones of our tissues). This is how this mechanism can cause brain symptoms, asthma, arthritis, fibromyositis, glandular conditions, etc. Any part of our bodyminds (that has any protein in its makeup---and all of them do) can have symptoms from this mechanism.

"The bonds of which we are unaware are the most binding of all."

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.

--Tolstoy

Place your questions on the bulletin board.

Walt