Some alternative/Chinese medicine point of view

This is something I wrote about a year and a half ago, after living in Japan for 15 months in response to someone who asked how allergy test scores and the severity of food reaction relates to each other.

In Japan, allergists are aware that the score does not necessarily relate to severity or reaction, and I got the impression that they take more notes on what has actually happened, also how the numbers have changed, rather than what the number is at the moment.

My son has retested positive to egg yolk/white while we were in Seattle and we were told to stay away. A couple months later, we moved to Japan and the allergist there said something like "although the RAST test gives us this number (which wasn't necessarily small - I will try to find the number), he's been avoiding it for sometime (3.5 years then), and the number has actually decreased, so let's give it a try." and he did pass egg yolk challenge (but not egg white). So I guess I learned that science, numbers cannot tell everything, and sometimes experience is more reliable.

Again, sharing another personal dialogue; when in Japan we have visited a western medicine doctor, whose father was an acupuncturist, his father in law was a Chinese medicine doctor, and his daughter is an acupuncturist as well. So his office basically incorporates both eastern/western medicine. He would check my son's pulse, would look into his eyes, the whole eyeball almost, touches his skin, presses his abdomen, and take notes of his medical history, and gives a thorough traditional diagnostics. According to him, it's been said from the old times that, in general, when a child has bluish lines (blood vessel) between the eyes, they are the very very sensitive type.... not just emotionally, but immune systems tends to be as well....! (I wonder if this is true, parents in this group, I'd appreciate your response, if you can see it on your child's face? Or it could be just for Asians; We do come with Mongolian Patch, blue-ish purplish birthmarks).

My son was then prescribed Chinese herbals and has been on it for about 1 year. The idea is to change the body system (because what you eat is who you are) to be more calmed down, again with sensitivity to all different sensory input, food being one of them.

I asked if accupuncture helps (we don't have to do needles for young ones, but rather simply stimulate the points), and he gave me a great nod "oh yes sure, they will". At first my son was reluctant to the idea of acupuncture (as the word is the same sound with Needle - sounds ouchy), but soon he realized it feels good and he actually asks for it sometimes now.

It might sound bizzar scientifically (my husband who is a scientist does not get it), but I think this one year treatment have greatly improved the situation for us. Ofcourse, it could be that he simply is growing out and growing up with stronger systems. However, I am thankful we have had a chance to be exposed to these new stuff.

Now we moved to Fort Collins, CO after one year in Japan, and are working on BioSET right now.

The L.Ac here says, my son is not actually allergic to peanuts, nuts, eggs, sesame, oats, barley, most dairy, among others (which the RAST-test says he is), but rather "INTOLERANT" - she says he is definitely allergic to milk = albumin (but not cheese) and buckwheat and wheat. I am not quite brave enough to try them yet, but according to her, he's lacking the right amount of enzyme to digest those food (peanuts, nuts, etc) properly that he gets an allergy-like reaction. She says that blood tests, skin tests in allergists office do not give enough information on whether one is truely allergic, or is simply "intolerant" - I'm still needing to test and confirm what she says, but just throwing this out as an example of allergists scientific method not being complete. (I honestly don't think I can give my son Cheese now, just because she says it's OK, but it kind of explains why the test scores alone don't give us the whole picture of what our child is experiencing, what could happen etc).

Now I read over this, and I realized how my son did NOT react to cheese when he ate it without knowing at his friends house (scary!! but without problems!!). This friend told me a couple days later how well he ate their food, I asked what he ate, and in it was cheese ....

Just throwing out some information to confuse people further....