allergy is not a disease, it is the result of our lifestyle

1. 1
Why We Suffer
Allergy?
LOOK MORE DEEP FOR
THE MAIN CAUSE OF ALLERGY
based on my experience for 10 years lived with allergy
FELIX INDRAWAN
Indonesian

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Table of Contents
What is allergy? 3
My experience with allergy 5
Why we suffer allergy 6
Save our planet 8

3. 3
What is allergy?
Before we answer why we suffer allergy, we must understand allergy first.
Allergies are hypersensitive immune responses to substances that either enter or come
in contact with the body, such as pet dander, pollen, or bee venom. A substances that
causes an allergic reaction is called an “allergen”. Allergens can be found in food, drinks,
or the environment.
Allergy is not caused by bactery or virus, but caused by the malfunction of our
immune responses. Most allergens are harmless, most people are not affected by them.
If you are allergic to a substances, such as pollen, your immune system reacts to it as if
it were a phatogen (a foreign harmful substances), and tries to destroy it.
What are the signs and symptoms of allergies?
When a person with an allergy comes into contact with an allergen, the allergic
reaction is not immediate. The immune system gradually builds up sensitivity to the
substances before overreacting to it. The immune system needs time to recognize and
remember the allergen. As it becomes sensitivity to it, it starts making antibodies to
attack it – this process is called sensitization.
Sensitization can take from a few days to several years. In many cases the
sensitization process is not completed and the patient experiences some symptoms but
never a full allergy. When the immune system reacts to an allergen, there is
inflammation and irritation, sign and symptoms depend on the type of allergen. Allergic
reactions may occur in the gut (digestive system), skin, sinuses, airways, eyes, and nasal
passages.
Allergies from dust and pollen may have the following symptoms:
 Blocked nose
 Itchy eyes
 Itchy nose
 Runny nose
 Swollen eyes
 Watery eyes
 Cough

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Skin Reactions, as in eczema (atopic dermatitis) may include:
 Flaking skin
 Itchy skin
 Peeling skin
 Red skin, rashes.
Food Allergies may include several types of reactions:
 Vomiting
 Tongue swelling
 Tingling in the mouth
 Swelling of the lips
 Swelling of the face
 Swelling in the throat
 Stomach cramps
 Shortness of breath
 Rectal bleeding (in children, rare in adults)
 Itchiness in the mouth
 Diarrhea
 Blocked nose
 Itchy nose
 Anaphylaxis – a very severe, often life-threatening allergic reaction.

5. 5
My Experience with Allergy
Hi, my name is felix, now i'm 31 years old, I'm lived in indonesia, and my english is
not very good, so if there is mistake in my writing please forgive me. Before.. I don't
understand what is allergy until I got it when i'm 21 years old. My parent told me that
when I'm a child at 10 years old, I'm already have been suffered allergy, they took me
to the doctor, but i'm already forget about that.
If you have been suffered allergy when you are a child doesn't mean that cost you
to suffer the entire life. It depends on your lifestyle. I will give you the answer of this
but before that please read my experience first.
I'm a college student at that time at fifth semester when i'm 21 years old. Like
other young people, on holiday day, I started my vacation to the puncak with my cousins.
At that place, my nose become itchy and I started sneezing. At first, I think it was
because of the cold. But the sneezing is not stopped even after we back to home. That
was the first time, I ever suffer this disease (I don't remember the first time at ten
years old). Every morning after the vacation, my nose is always itchy and sneezing,
sometimes my eyes become red. Lucky for me, my class at noon, so I can sleep for a
moment first.
After got hit by this disease, I begin to curious about it. “How to heal it” that's
the word in my head. My life is changed. My confident is dropped. I spent the most of
my time surfed on google. Looking for the word called “Allergy”. After the surf, I
become to understand what disease i'm dealing with. I'm suffered Allergic Rhinitis. It is
a reaction of my immune system by an allergen such as pollen, dust, mold, or flakes of
skin from certain animals.
At first, i'm become desperated because in many article, i'm always find this word
“Allergy can't be cured, you must live with it”. But slowly i'm begin to collect important
data about allergy. This data can answer you why we suffer allergy. Before.. I tried many
things to cure my allergy like drink herbal medicine, go to the specialist, using health
necklace, etc. but all of this is useless, there's no progress after all.

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Why We Suffer Allergy
We know that allergy is hypersensitive of our immune system, but why not all
people suffer it? According to recent research shows that junk food and foods high in
fat increase the risk of allergies in modern developed countries. According to the
researchers, the Western diet is high in sugar, animal fat, and calorie-dense foods
decrease the amount of good bacteria in the human digestive.
The good bacteria helps the digestion of food, protecting the body from
pathogens, and reduce the risk of inflammation. Research conducted on microbial the
abdomen of 30 healthy children aged one to six years in a village in Burkina Faso, West
Africa, and compared to children Italian children. The main food of Africa children rich
in fiber, and low in fat, mostly consisting of vegetables, cereals, nuts, and seeds, where
as Italian children have a Western diet, low in fiber, but high in animal protein, sugar,
starch, and fat. Researchers found differences in the composition of the bacteria which
inhabit in the digestive system of children both regions.
African children have more good bacteria found in children who are not Italian.
African children have bacteria in high concentrations to aid digestion of plant foods.
These microbes produce fatty acids that provide energy and help prevent diseases such
as allergies and inflammatory diseases of the stomach. They also have mules and
diarrhea causing bacteria such as Shigella and E.coli fewer. Duccio Cavalieri, a
microbiologist at the University of Florence, Italy, stated that this discovery is very
important, because it can show how to feed our children to keep them healthy. We must
develop the habit of eating a high-fiber, with the same number of calories.
The good bacteria is called probiotic, and it is already in our digestive system
since we were born. Probiotics has an important role to our immune system and that is as
an immunomodulator. The agents that alter the immune response by suppression
(immunosuppressive) or enhancement (immunostimulant). Our immune system need to be
teach to work properly, they have to know who the real enemy is, what substances are
allowed to attack, and what are not. This job is assign to probiotics that live in our gut.
The problem is many people doesn't understand the important role of probiotics,
it's teach our immune system to identify the substances that enter our body. Lack of
probiotics will lead to auto immune disease such as allergy, asthma, Systematic Lupus
Erythematosus (SLE), Psoriasis, etc.

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In modern life, our lifestyle have contribute mostly to the lack of probiotics in
our gut. We rare to eat vegetables and prefer to choose meat as our main food.
Probiotics live in pH balance, if our body is too much acid then it will decrease
probiotics. And the absence of probiotics means the absence of immunomodulator in our
immune system. We must keep maintain our pH balance in order to maintain our good
bacteria. Like the old said : “Fix your gut, Fix your health”.
What is pH? pH is the indicator of how acid or how alkaline our body was. You can
get pH balance in 80-20 ratio of alkaline food and acid food, which means we must eat
more alkaline food instead of acid food. It is said that if our body too much acid is the
source of all disease such as cancer, tumor, overweight, etc. Paying attention to your
body's pH can help you stay slim. This is because, outside of the stomach, acidity is a
major cause of hormonal imbalance. And if we refer to the book The Hormone Diet,
hormone balance plus the difference in calories equals weight loss, then anything that
upsets hormonal balance has the potential to cause weight gain. If you have the health
problem, you are likely a walking acid trip. No matter what type of therapy you choose to
treat you condition, resolution will not come until you pH balance is restored.
Generally, alkaline forming foods include: most fruits, green vegetables, peas,
beans, lentils, spices, herbs, and seasonings, and seeds, and nuts. Acid forming foods
include: meat, fish, poultry, eggs, grains, and legumes. The envinronment that needed for
probiotics to growth is slightly alkaline, if too much acid then probiotics will not survive.
Eating meat is becoming our lifestyle in modern life but that cost your health
more than you can imagine, you have to weigh your food, and choose what food that more
benefit for you, not a food that satisfy your tongue. "Let your food be your medicine,
and your medicine be your food" – quote by Hippocrates.

8. 8
Save Our Planet
We are the luckiest generation because we still have the chance to save this
planet and all of his beauty. Global warming is really happens, no matter how much we
denied it, it is indisputable. Drought occurs everywhere. Decline in agricultural
production due to crop failure. Antartic ice continues to melt. Sea level rise. Increased
intensity of storms. If global warming is continues we will facing great danger in the
future such as drought, starving, high temperature, extinction of coral reefs that leads
to less oxygen, reduction of rainfall, forest fires, el nino storm rising, flooding occurs
everywhere, etc.
What cause global warming? Green house effect and Deforeststation. What is
green house effect? If it were not for greenhouse gases trapping heat in the
atmosphere, the earth would be a very cold place. Greenhouse gases keep the earth
warm through the process called the greenhouse effect.
The earth gets the energy from the sun in the form of sunlight. The Earth's
surface absorbs some of this energy and heats up. That's why the surface of a road can
feel hot even after the sun has gone down—because it has absorbed a lot of energy from
the sun. The Earth cools down by giving off a different form of energy, called infrared
radiation. But before all this radiation can escape to outer space, greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere absorb some of it, which makes the atmosphere warmer. As the
atmosphere gets warmer, it makes the Earth's surface warmer, too.
The primary greenhouse gases in the earth's atmosphere are water pavor, carbon
dioxide (CO2), methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. The main source of carbon dioxide
emisions is :
1. Electricity, Electricity is a significant source of energy in many countries and is
used to power homes, business, and industry. The combustion of fossil fuels to
generate electricity is the largest single source of CO2 emissions in the nation.
2. Transportation, The combustion of fossil fuels such as gasoline and diesel to
transport people and goods is the second largest source of CO2 emissions. This
category includes transportation sources such as highway vehicles, air travel,
marine transportation, and rail.
3. Industry, Many industrial processes emit CO2 through fossil fuel combustion.
Several processes also produce CO2 emissions through chemical reactions that do

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not involve combustion, for example, the production and consumption of mineral
products such as cement, the production of metals such as iron and steel, and the
production of chemicals. Note that many industrial processes also use electricity
and therefore indirectly cause the emissions from the electricity production.
The latest information proved that methane has a warming effect 25 times more
potent in causing global warming than CO2. This calculation is based on the average of
warming effect of methane for 100 years. However, after one decade, methane was
difficult to trace and almost dissapeared after 20 years, thus dramatically will spend an
average of one century to reduce its impact. And because we do not have the time 100
years to reduce our greenhouse effect, the latest calculations show that over a period
of 20 years the warming effect of methane be 72 times more powerful.
Methane emissions come from nature such as the ocean, permanent ice cover,
loose soils, and originate from human activities. Methane produced by human activities is
one of the largest contributors in particular methane comes from the burning of organic
crops (burning vegetation for land clearing and land use) as well as the livestock
industry. Methane from the coal mining industry, oil refineries, and gas pipeline leaks can
be minimized by changes and advances in technology. But the methane from the livestock
industry is the largest contributor to emissions and the worst of human activity. As
explained by Dr. Kirk Smith, Professor of Global Environmental Health at the University
of California, Berkley, "We are all involved as contributors, all of us who eat meat and
drink milk should acknowledge this." Fortunately, reducing the level of methane gas is
something we can control right now by reducing consumption of meat and products
made from milk. Professor Smith verifying back and stated: "The most rapid
improvement is to reduce meat consumption."
Lately, governments around the world to focus more on policies to reduce CO2
emissions; however, the latest information about methane should make the government
more focused on policies to reduce methane. Dr. Smith added, "Methane is the second
gas in the greenhouse effect, but this gas into the most dangerous threat." He
describes it as a dangerous hidden gas; which not only adds to the greenhouse effect
but also makes the destruction of ozone which can damage human health. If high levels
of methane gas reduces the oxygen levels in the atmosphere below the 19.5% it will
cause shortness of breath, increased levels may also lead to high levels of fire and
explosion when mixed with air.

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Dr. Kirk Smith believes that climate scientists should be more focused on the dire
effects of methane. "Of course we have to deal with CO2, but if we want to get results
to tackle the climate in the next 20 years, we must start with a greenhouse gas that has
a shorter cycle and foremost, namely methane." The people of the world must pay
attention to advice and carry out the reduction of methane as the most important
priority by switching to a meatless diet in the forefront as a strategy for reducing all
greenhouse gases. Dr. Smith added, "The only source of methane caused by the human
world is a farm." reduce global methane levels also can extend our time to transition to a
sustainable energy applications.
In short, the experts now tell us that methane has a warming effect several times
more powerful in warming the planet compared to CO2 and we should immediately reduce
our methane emissions drastically for the sake of the earth and all its inhabitants. The
most rapid and effective way to reduce it is to live an animal-free diet or a vegan. And
this can be done by everyone.
As citizen of earth, we are all have responsibility for what happens with our world,
we have to maintain and preserve our earth for the next generation of our children.