Re: Allergies\parasite connection?

Hi, I have been reading this forum intensively for the last week and reading this thread it summarises some of the thoughts in my head. Warning, this may be a long post! Please bear with it...

I have probably come to this from a very different angle to most of you and for the last year or so I have been researching and changing my family's lifestyle to reduce our histamine response, which peaked when my three year old daughter when into anaphylaxis from an intolerance nearly two years ago. My family on my mother's side have a strong genetic trait of Ehlers Danlos and when I finally took my eldest daughter to the specialist in London she was very interested in my complete intolerance to chemicals and also my food sensitivities . Subsequently my daughter was tested for Mast Cell Activation Disorder, which is a condition where mast cells degranulate too much and the body has too much histamine (histadelia). (I have read that the body will produce more mast cells if parasites are present and I wonder if this would cause a heightened histamine response.) Indeed looking down my mother's side if the family, we all have histadelia. You can see it in our driven personalities, our irritability levels, food intolerances , mood swings etc. The test came back as probable, which is as good as it gets for MCAD and just two months later, after rushing my youngest to hospital I started taking it very seriously.

At this point my children were suffering from chronic acid reflux, stomach pains, headaches, joint pains, fatigue, sore eyes, insomnia, night sweats, nausea, gluten sensitivity... does this sound familiar? My daughters and I are all very slim and struggle to maintain a healthy weight, we react to minutest toxin or chemical in our environment and we are all very emotionally sensitive and struggle with brain fog. In my childhood I suffered terribly from ear, nose and throat infections for years, and over the years I have had very bad sinus headaches.

So after finally realising that even specialist immunologist and gastroenterologist couldn't help us (and in fact made us worse with their antihistamines and other drugs) I took matters into my own hands and radically changed our lives. I gave up my stressful job and my husband started contracting, the children came out of school to learn at home, we moved house to the countryside away from pollution and I threw out every high and medium histamine food we had in the kitchen. This includes dairy, fermented foods, acidic foods, most red foods, alcohol and any food that isn't completely fresh. In addition, we stopped eating sugar, all processed foods (so everything is now made from scratch) and went as organic as possible. We were already mostly chemical free but then I took the last couple of steps by giving up shampoo, soap, makeup, creams etc. The diet was the hardest part and at times unbearable but in the last six to eight months we have settled and I have reintroduced some medium histamine foods that I deem healthy and beneficial without overflowing our histamine buckets. From reading about parasites, I believe this would have significantly changed the environment of our bodies to be less favourable?

In addition to this I started studying nutrigenomics and methylation. I discovered that we were significantly lacking SAMe and certain vitamins and minerals plus my homocysteine levels were very low. I started supplementing methionine and experimented over long period with different vitamins, minerals, enzymes, herbs to see what helped. Plus focussing of herbs and foods that stabilise mast cells. My key indicator being my energy levels and whether I would need to nap in the afternoon or if I could take the girls out for an outing somewhere. I found that my kidneys are not coping and despite being almost 100% chemical / toxin free, my body is still struggling to get rid of toxins. My estrogen / progesterone levels were out of balance and my adrenals were working overdrive. I took ashwaghanda to lower my oxidative stress, used acupuncture points to calm my adrenals and activate my thyroid and took some hormone balancing teas. This really helped so that my body focus on what it needed to do. I now supplement SAMe directly, plus a range of B vitamins, acetylcholine (which is one of the body's primary need for SAMe to produce if you are deficient), minerals (I have a taste test kit so I can regularly check my levels) and vitamins K2 and D3 (I have osteopenia in my spine). My children have a cut down version of these, almost nothing for the little one. I do my best to add as much as I can naturally through our meals but it can be difficult to get the children eat certain herbs or foods.

So, where are we now? Well, much better but it seems more of patch up job rather than a cure. I don't really want my children to have to live like this for the rest of their lives. I recently stumbled upon Dr Hulda Clark 's book, A cure for all diseases and read it cover to cover in a day. I am almost convinced that parasites are one of the roots of our problems. The main drawback being our lack of current symptoms, but then if we eat the wrong foods they all come flooding back (mainly sinus and stomach pain).

Do you think we have parasites and our lifestyle and diet have made them less active? I have started Hulda Clark 's parasite cleanse and I am already to go with the CoQ10 / L cysteine / ozonated oil. (I'm not sure if I should do both together). I am getting some sneezing and tinnitus but I don't really have a lot of symptoms to get rid of apart from my low energy levels. I have ordered the zapper and look forward to giving it a go.

I would be very interested in your thoughts and I hope my post will add something to your investigation of histadelia and methylation. I am very happy to answer questions about it, I could probably write a book by now! It is difficult to get the balance between what's useful to pass on and simply too much detail.