An Epidemic of Absence Part 2

Ok, so last nights reading kept me up until about 2am.  Not just the reading, but the section talking about maternal contributions to children being born allergic.  I ruminated to the point of neausea.  In a perfect world, where I have powers to see into the future, I would have done:
1 – eaten way more omega-3s
2 – not remodeled, painted, laid new carpet… beautified my home with scents of disease
3 – most importantly, hauled my ass to a small farm and shoveled shit, milked cows, cleaned after pigs & chickens, and frollicked in bacteria and pollen proteins at least every weekend – for the mix of bacteria to hopefully educate, through the placenta, my son’s immune system.
Wow, it would be interesting to see if all this would have helped my son be born less allergic, or dare I even say it, not allergic at all!?!?!?!
So now what?
I’m not finished with the book – so I continue to hold out hopefully for some clue as to my next steps.  I am rather hung up on the m.vaccae – and have already hatched a plan to redecorate my home with buckets of various animal dung and slop.  Seriously.  The plan is to go out to some Amish or organic farms and purchase their animal excrement.  Not sure after that.  Do I look for microscopic images on the internet to try and identify and hopefully harvest some beneficial fecal animal bacteria?  Do I just let us breath it in?  Will this help, not help, or make things worse?  In the book, Mr Manoff mentions that for some the bacterial exposure after the allergen sensitization has happened, can make things worse – creating an onslaught of defensive alarms.  How & what should I do?
I know it sounds crazy – and not to go into too much detail – but it is a bitter pill to swallow that I need to stand idly by and not try anything.
My hatching plan in progress is evolving to include:
low dose chelation & supplementation to support such detox
exposure to educating bacterial (probiotics yes – but most strains I can find with studies backing them are not available on the market.  Plus this very laser targeted exposure… not so sure it’s effective).  Green acres is the place for me… Farm living is the life I need.  Well OK an urban farm mashup focused on poop and mud.  If you read the book you’ll see just how significant orofecal infections can be in generating a healthy, robust, and tolerant immune system.
fecal transplant (this is on the radar – not on action plan).  We are awaiting our kits from the human gut project – just informational at this point.  But definitely something to think on further.
helminths (this too on radar – but not action plan).  I’m not sure if this isn’t something that my son would need to decide for himself.  Plus if this did graduate to action plan – it is something I’d try for myself first – having raynaud’s and joint issues – both of which point to a whacked out immune system.

An Epidemic of Absence

So I am reading “An Epidemic of Absence: A New Way of Understanding Allergies and Autoimmune Diseases,” penned by Moises Velasquez-Manoff.  At this point, I’m about a third of the way through.  The book is truly amazing in its take on the evolution of much of the human immune system.  It has, for a brief moment, spun my perspective on the allergies that my son has.  It’s as if my son’s body has evolved to negotiate a world that suddenly shifted over the last 50-100 years.  As if allergies and asthma were not a disease but a trait developed over millions of years of co-existence with micro-organisms, parasites, bacteria, fungi… and now suddenly they’ve been removed: through hygiene, vaccination, modernity….  What’s briefly refreshing about this perspective is the idea that these things that we have been told are disease, are really beautiful biological partners in maneuvers that have found themselves on the dance floor alone.  A sort of “it takes two to tango,” that is now clumsily performed by one.  So it’s been nice to have a different glimpse of this stuff that has been my obsession since the diagnosis – as not disease.  It’s painted a vision for me that if we lived in the world our bodies have honed themselves over the millenia to expect, one where we were rife with an onslaught of ‘old friends’ as it were… parasites, bacteria and viruses that span TB to polio,  it’s completely possible that my son would be the shining example of robust strength & health  – as opposed to the kid with the inhaler, benedryl, and epi slung over his shoulder in a carry bag gauging whether or not the pollen level is too high to play outside, or if the person about to shake his hand was recently eating peanuts… Oh the joy this brief glimpse of what could be brings.

The depressing, or disheartening side of things, is that Mr Velasquez-Manoff  talks about a window of opportunity for molding or shifting the immune system is most open (he claims only open) during childhood.  So the bacterial & parasite partners can only prevent allergy/asthma if they make an appearance in childhood before, or within a tiny time-frame of exposure to, say ragweed or peanuts.  And that once we reach adulthood, our immune systems are pretty much set in their ways.  Miss this window of youthful malleability and your basically left with managing a skewed immune system.

Now not to go back on my depressing paragraph above, but he then goes on to talk about a bacteria, M. vaccae.  This soil & cow dung dwelling inhabitant brought to brief fame by the Stanfords in the early 1970′s supposedly corrected Mrs Stanford’s Raynaud’s syndrome.  Better than that though, apparently

“M. Vacae injections helped their daughter’s asthma…”

This is interesting.  This affirms, to me, that maybe the immune system is more malleable in adulthood than we think.  I mean it cleared up the wife’s autoimmune issue.  The other thing that is interesting to me, is that a couple years back I had brought mud from an organic pig farm home for my son to put his hands and feet in – and – well play in.  I ended up not doing it for whatever reason.  But maybe I was onto something.  Maybe I should revisit that idea this summer.  At any rate, I’m excited to continue my read and recommend this for anyone interested in asthma, allergies, or autoimmune issues of any kind.