When my daughter Ashley was a baby she caught eczema from some neighbors' children. I say caught because eczema does not run in my family or my husbands' and these neighbors had eczema from head to toe. To me it was too much of a coincidence. The doctors at the time told me that eczema was just a form of sensitive skin and not contagious. In my opinion i was slowly watching it spread from her hand up her arm and onto part of her face. At one point i had traced with ball point pen the area and watched it slowly become larger. Not only that I had noticed that it seemed to fax and wane when it was visible. When I noticed the milk sensitive nature of the eczema patches, appearing after she had some, the doctor said yes lots of kids with eczema are sensitive or even allergic to milk and eggs.
Then at ten months Ashley touched or should I say grabbed her brother's peanut butter banana. The reaction was immediate. The areas of eczema and only those areas became raised and filled with some kind of white liquid. When the liquid disappeared an anaphylatic reaction began. Ashley started swelling in response to this white liquid. I rushed her to the emergency room frantically explaining that the reaction was connected to her eczema. rash. The ER physicians looked me straight in the eye and said that peanut allergies are not associated with eczema. 24 hours later i did a search online and found a British Journal of medicine publication associating peanut allergy with eczema.
From then on i decided to go with my gut. I started to research the possible culprits for the infection. Infections drop toxins in microbial warfare. That's how we initially developed antibiotics, penicilin was released by one bacteria to kill another. My notion was that the eczema infection saw the aflotoxin in the peanut butter and thought a mold was encroaching on it's territory. Ashley's anaphylatic reaction was to the toxin.
I found two possibilities: a staph infection or a malassezia fungal infection based on papers i found on pubmed. I then tried to understand the milk sensitive to these infections. How could milk or egg make the ezcema visable?
I thought back over similar patterns. When I had studied type 1 diabetes I had read it had been associated with both candida and celiac disease. Celiac disease was wheat and milk senstive. Then i remembered researching autism because my son had been a late talker. Although I had ruled autism out for my son i had learned that autism had intestinal issues, vaccine issues, and there had been a couple that claimed they had cured their son with a gluten and casein free diet.
What if the infections were causing an immune response when exposed to wheat, milk, or egg? what was it about gluten, casein, and ovalbumin that would cause the infections to react? I found an Italian paper talking about the induction of antibodies by gluten. I started to wonder if the immune system was only seeing the infection when gluten was there.
Then one day I read an article about golf courses using corn gluten to inhibit the growth of crabgrass. I immediately looked up the original paper. Not only did the corn gluten block the ability of the grass seed to sprout roots but the original experiment was looking at a parasitic grass fungus. On the corn gluten the fungus had failed to thrive. Corn gluten had not only blocked the seed roots but the fungal parasitic roots! or at least that is how I interrupted the paper.
I had a eureka moment. If the root morphology was blocked a fungus might shift to a yeast morphology. The infections were dimorphic. Mold to yeast...yeast to mold. Appearing and disappearing to the immune system.
So what ever infection Ashley had it was shifting morphologies when she had egg or milk. ( that was a guess at the time which was wrong but why I did this) I pushed the pediatrician to give me the antifungal loprox. Since most antifungals work on the cholesterol which would be in higher quantities in the mold form, roots have more structure therefore more cholesterol in the membrane..i chose to take her off milk and egg during the loprox treatment. I can't remember exactly how many days i treated her..i used up the loprox in less then a month, but she has never had eczema since then.
I have to admit that the infection could have been staph and not malassezia. I think Loprox would have killed either.
When they do skin scrapings here at National Jewish they find staph. Staph makes a yellow pigment on egg or milk....the golden rod look is from being plated on egg. I am leaning toward the infection to have been a form of staph.
Although the eczema was gone from Ashley's skin for years the peanut allergy persisted. I had a RAST test done every year on Ashley and tracked her antibodies. The only time the antibodies went up, ironically, was when she had been bitten by fire ants and had a reaction to them in Florida. Who doesn't react to fire ant toxin? (First allergy in Thornton has her records and I told National Jewish they could have them)
Over time the antibody levels dropped and dropped. I kept her away from peanuts completely, nothing in the house ever. At 9 years old Ashley accidently was exposed to candy with peanuts. She had no reaction at all. 6 months later the allergist based on her low Rast score agreed to a challenge in the office. Ashley has officially been labeled as one of the lucky few who have "outgrown" her peanut allergy. My daughter can eat peanuts and all she gets is a slight stomach ache.
I am going to stop at this point. There is a lot for a reader to digest. I hope you could follow me.
Angela
Then at ten months Ashley touched or should I say grabbed her brother's peanut butter banana. The reaction was immediate. The areas of eczema and only those areas became raised and filled with some kind of white liquid. When the liquid disappeared an anaphylatic reaction began. Ashley started swelling in response to this white liquid. I rushed her to the emergency room frantically explaining that the reaction was connected to her eczema. rash. The ER physicians looked me straight in the eye and said that peanut allergies are not associated with eczema. 24 hours later i did a search online and found a British Journal of medicine publication associating peanut allergy with eczema.
From then on i decided to go with my gut. I started to research the possible culprits for the infection. Infections drop toxins in microbial warfare. That's how we initially developed antibiotics, penicilin was released by one bacteria to kill another. My notion was that the eczema infection saw the aflotoxin in the peanut butter and thought a mold was encroaching on it's territory. Ashley's anaphylatic reaction was to the toxin.
I found two possibilities: a staph infection or a malassezia fungal infection based on papers i found on pubmed. I then tried to understand the milk sensitive to these infections. How could milk or egg make the ezcema visable?
I thought back over similar patterns. When I had studied type 1 diabetes I had read it had been associated with both candida and celiac disease. Celiac disease was wheat and milk senstive. Then i remembered researching autism because my son had been a late talker. Although I had ruled autism out for my son i had learned that autism had intestinal issues, vaccine issues, and there had been a couple that claimed they had cured their son with a gluten and casein free diet.
What if the infections were causing an immune response when exposed to wheat, milk, or egg? what was it about gluten, casein, and ovalbumin that would cause the infections to react? I found an Italian paper talking about the induction of antibodies by gluten. I started to wonder if the immune system was only seeing the infection when gluten was there.
Then one day I read an article about golf courses using corn gluten to inhibit the growth of crabgrass. I immediately looked up the original paper. Not only did the corn gluten block the ability of the grass seed to sprout roots but the original experiment was looking at a parasitic grass fungus. On the corn gluten the fungus had failed to thrive. Corn gluten had not only blocked the seed roots but the fungal parasitic roots! or at least that is how I interrupted the paper.
I had a eureka moment. If the root morphology was blocked a fungus might shift to a yeast morphology. The infections were dimorphic. Mold to yeast...yeast to mold. Appearing and disappearing to the immune system.
So what ever infection Ashley had it was shifting morphologies when she had egg or milk. ( that was a guess at the time which was wrong but why I did this) I pushed the pediatrician to give me the antifungal loprox. Since most antifungals work on the cholesterol which would be in higher quantities in the mold form, roots have more structure therefore more cholesterol in the membrane..i chose to take her off milk and egg during the loprox treatment. I can't remember exactly how many days i treated her..i used up the loprox in less then a month, but she has never had eczema since then.
I have to admit that the infection could have been staph and not malassezia. I think Loprox would have killed either.
When they do skin scrapings here at National Jewish they find staph. Staph makes a yellow pigment on egg or milk....the golden rod look is from being plated on egg. I am leaning toward the infection to have been a form of staph.
Although the eczema was gone from Ashley's skin for years the peanut allergy persisted. I had a RAST test done every year on Ashley and tracked her antibodies. The only time the antibodies went up, ironically, was when she had been bitten by fire ants and had a reaction to them in Florida. Who doesn't react to fire ant toxin? (First allergy in Thornton has her records and I told National Jewish they could have them)
Over time the antibody levels dropped and dropped. I kept her away from peanuts completely, nothing in the house ever. At 9 years old Ashley accidently was exposed to candy with peanuts. She had no reaction at all. 6 months later the allergist based on her low Rast score agreed to a challenge in the office. Ashley has officially been labeled as one of the lucky few who have "outgrown" her peanut allergy. My daughter can eat peanuts and all she gets is a slight stomach ache.
I am going to stop at this point. There is a lot for a reader to digest. I hope you could follow me.
Angela
That is just too crazy to be coincidence! I already have so much going on in my head at this point. The idea of some of these problems like eczema and an allergy being actually curable instead of just "fading away with age" has huge significance to me.
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