What is an Allergy Therapist?

Allergy Therapy

As originally defined, allergy is an unusual physical response to any substance in a person's environment, the environment being anything that a person touches, inhales, has injected, drinks, eats or otherwise contacts. Nowadays, the term allergy is often reserved for an over-reaction - a hypersensitivity to common substances which are referred to as allergens or antigens e.g. pollens, bee sting, house dust mite, eggs, cow's milk which give rise to the production of antibodies that can damage the tissues and cause the release of histamine and other chemicals causing the inflammation that is characteristic of eczema, hay fever or asthma and the extreme shock reaction that can follow the swallowing of peanuts or being stung by bees. There are types of allergy that do not involve the antigen/antibody response as above, but which nevertheless invoke unpleasant symptoms. These are often described as intolerances or sensitivities to foods or chemicals.

Whereas the orthodox approach to treatment of allergies has usually been the use of antihistamines or other drugs or desensitizing injections designed to attempt to reduce the allergic over-reaction and protect the body from itself, these treatments need to be used continuously and their effectiveness is often disappointing. In the fields of food intolerance and chemical sensitivity, increasingly important in the polluted world in which we live, this approach is ineffective.

Oral desensitization, not to be confused with desensitization by injection, however, works by gently stimulating the body to develop a natural immunity to the substances that have affected it in the past. This means that the body begins to repair the damage that has been done previously. This is done by taking extremely dilute preparations of the allergens, prepared in the natural homoeopathic way, which encourage the body's way of dealing with these substances to normalize.

This means that not only can Asthma, Hay Fever and Eczema be treated, but also many other conditions caused by food intolerance or chemical sensitivity. These include Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Candidiasis, Chronic Sinusitis, Recurring Cystitis, Muscle and Joint pain, Extreme Tiredness, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Restless legs, Sore Dry Eyes and other unusual conditions that do not respond to drug- related medicine.

Donald M. Harrison B.A. (Hons.Psych.), B.Sc., M.R.Pharm.S.