Conventional allergists once thought of allergy as an accident of birth. They believed that if one or both of your parents slipped you some "allergic" genes, it was like drawing the Monopoly card that says, "Go directly to jail." You were doomed by heredity to spend the rest of your life in a kind of allergic prison.
If your parents didn't give you those genes, you were home free. You got to pass "Go" and collect $200 that you otherwise would have spent on facial tissues.
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Allergies and Asthma
Prevent or even reverse hundreds of conditions with delicious food!Today, researchers believe that in addition to genetics, the environment also plays a critical role in determining who will and who won't develop allergies. Since allergies are strongly associated with the Western lifestyle, researchers have begun to suspect that a multitude of lifestyle factors are involved.
Although scientists haven't yet found all the pieces to the puzzle, their message is empowering. For if allergy is even partly a consequence of making the wrong lifestyle choices, then it should be possible to reduce or even eliminate allergic woes by making the right lifestyle choices. "You can't change an inherited predisposition to allergy, but you can adjust your lifestyle and modify your environment to influence immunity in the right direction," says Andrew Weil, MD, Prevention advisor and director of the Program in Integrative Medicine and clinical professor of medicine at the University of Arizona College of Medicine in Tucson. "Allergy is a learned response of the immune system, and anything learned by this system can be unlearned."
Here's a brief description of how genetics, environment, and lifestyle place you at risk for developing allergies.
