Your World and You: Tips to Improve Your Family’s Health – Issue 14 (Premium)

Environmental and Nutritional Tips to Improve Your Family’s Health

This feature highlights reports, studies, and feedback from families on efforts that can make a positive impact in our quest for health. Topics we cover in this issue are included below. We invite you to share material with us that you think would be of interest to our readers.

Topics featured in this article:

1. Nutrition for gut immunity
2. Tracking down a mystery tic trigger.
3. Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker on Surviving Mold
4. A fist bump instead of a handshake?
5. Human resistance to antibiotics—focusing on a cause

A fist bump instead of a handshake?

Ever have that feeling after shaking hands with someone that you may have just exposed yourself to a cold or the flu? After this, it’s not always possible to find an excuse to quickly slip away and wash your hands. Research out of the UK to be published in the American Journal of Infection Control says that a fist bump only transmits 1/10^th the germs that a handshake does. Could this start a new trend? Sure! Why not? Read ‘Fist Bump’ May Beat Handshake for Cleanliness.

Tracking down a mystery tic trigger

My son is going into sixth grade and has displayed motor tics since third grade. Teachers would tell him to stop his humming or sniffing but he would reply, “I can’t stop it.”  He also has vocal tics.

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I noticed once while going to the movies that after he had some popcorn he started sniffing and clearing his throat nonstop. So, I tried to keep him away from popcorn because of this episode.  My son has allergies so we had assumed that his periodic humming or sniffing was due to this. The allergy doctor tested him and found he was allergic to mold, trees, and cat but a corn allergy did not show up.

There were years that I barely served corn, but he would eat it at other places. This year I started buying whole corn again and it triggered my son’s Tourette syndrome symptoms intensely. At times he couldn’t breathe without humming or sucking in air loudly.  It was so difficult for him; his body would jerk and his eyes kept blinking.  I don’t know how he could read in school.

I told him I wanted him to stop eating corn but he insisted it didn’t affect him.  Yet every time he’d eat whole corn his symptoms would explode.  He finally had to experience this for himself by eating corn to be convinced.  He’d show no real signs at the time while eating the corn, then hours later his symptoms would explode with him humming, sniffing, sucking in air loudly (a whooping sound), and blinking. Finally he realized that whole corn was causing his problems.

My son hasn’t touched whole corn and he’s almost been symptom free.  Corn oil in foods doesn’t really seem to bother him, though popcorn can trigger his symptoms. Corn tortilla chips cause him slight tics but it’s not severe enough for him to want to stop eating them. When he eats whole corn, it causes him to have severe tic symptoms that can last up to two weeks.

He’s on allergy medicine and allergy eye drops as prescribed by the doctor. After eating corn though, these medicines don’t prevent his tic symptoms but he says his nose feels clearer when he takes his prescribed allergy medicines.

Editor: This is a good example of why we shouldn’t give up when looking at triggers. Keep a journal with specifics—as in this case, not just “corn” the the type of corn product and whether it had additives, and if it was organic or not. The more details the better. Sometime when you have time thumb through your journal, and answer may jump out at you that you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker on Surviving Mold

From Bulletproof Radio, last month

Human resistance to antibiotics—focusing on a cause

A White House advisory committee is expected to acknowledge the link between this resistance and livestock being fed antibiotics. The report is expected in the next few weeks. See Panel’s report likely to tie farm antibiotics to human resistance.

Nutrition for gut immunity

Dr. Ingrid Kohlstadt’s website, Ingridients.com has a helpful article on nutrition for optimal gut absorption and health.  She says:

The gut is continually deciding what food to absorb and discard. The gut’s immune system is highly specialized to serve as the first line of defense. When the gut is weakened by one condition, it becomes susceptible to others. Nutrition can be used to strategically keep the gut strong, despite illness.

Read her recommendations here.

Do you have articles to share? Please drop us a line! 

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