Allergies Ended

 

B-Complex vitamins didn’t raise my vitamin B12 levels, at all. But, Surprise! Surprise!! They ended my allergies.

Initial allergies

I’m not sure why it happened the way it did, but when I was five or six years old my mother took me to a Circus which was setting up tents in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, where we were living with my mom’s parents while my father was in Japan. This was not long after the Second World War.

It was dusty and hot as we watched elephants carrying stout center posts with their trunks, setting them into place with help from men on the ground, and finally hoisting them upright.

As we were walking around the circus grounds that were coming into shape we passed a young woman in a brief outfit sitting on the edge of the work but within the central circus area. I remember her as forlorn yet somehow commanding in her red sequined swimsuit-like costume. Her dark hair was pulled back from her forehead and temples but found its release at the back to adorn her shoulders in languid, necklace-like curls.

Just as we passed, my mother said that she had wanted to join the circus and be a trapeze artist.

I remember finding the thought confusing even though it seemed to make clear that the sitting woman was a trapeze artist. There was all this dust, and yes there were elephants, but grandma and grandpa’s brick house with its thick grass lawn and frame of flower beds, the hollyhocks and peonies, I could not see how the tents and dust, even with the elephants and red sequins, could be preferable.

I don’t remember anything else ~ though I think we got an ice cream cone or something to eat, maybe it was the opposite of ice cream and was a hot dog ~ until we were sitting in the bleachers watching the circus acts. It was then that I got my first attack of allergies. By the time the show was over my eyes were red and itched beyond anything I had ever experienced. My whole face was swollen.

When we got home Grandpa said it was ragweed and that I would probably grow out of it by the time I got married. That was his standard saying. For instance when I’d cut my finger he’d say, “Don’t worry it will heal by the time you get married.”

 

Over the decades of my life, during which time I never married, I have often thought of my first allergy attack. I can’t help but think it was stressful that my mother was unhappy with what I found so comforting and that she would trade what I felt was secure for something that seemed exactly the opposite.

Being little at the time, I didn’t think then and there about the implications, rather the images contrasted in my mind. I have mainly thought in images most of my life.

Worst Allergies Coincide with Stress

In retrospect the worst allergy seasons I’ve had have been accompanied by stressful situations. For instance I had horrendous allergies when I moved to Santa Fe and was preparing to teach 6th grade (I had not trained to be a teacher, rather I had studied philosophy and English.)

The allergies I had after I moved to London were worse. I could barely see they were so bad. I blamed the honeysuckle and pulled it out with my bare hands, which immediately made the itching worse.

Astonishing Results of Nutrition

A decade after London I was back in Santa Fe and read Know Your Nutrition by Linda Clark. I hadn’t read about vitamins and minerals before, though I had read Culpepper on herbs over and over again when I found it among my roommate’s books when we lived on Berger Street.

To my astonishment, Know Your Nutrition said health problems result from not having enough vitamins from different foods. I wondered if it was true.

To test it out, I made a list of my health problems. For each health problem I wrote down the foods containing vitamins linked to those problems. They were listed in the book. Next, I bought all the foods and ate them.

The first thing I noticed was how long it took to eat all the right foods. Two grapefruits, for instance, nuts, an orange, I forget what else was on my list. But it took forever to clear the list each day. There was always something I was supposed to be eating.

 

Then Allergies Ended

I don’t remember feeling particularly different, but come allergy season ~~ nothing ~~ no itching, sneezing, swelling face. Allergies Ended. And, so easily.

So, what do you think? Did I decide that I would always eat these healthy foods? No, I decided that I’d grown out of my allergies just as Grandpa had always said.

After I Drew the Wrong Conclusion

Even though my allergies ended, it took so much time to eat all the things from Know Your Nutrition that I stopped and lost track of my list. I even forgot that I’d put all that effort into seeing if food made any difference. Because, you see, I’d discounted the food altogether.

Come allergy season I was sneezing and itching. I hadn’t grown out of my allergies. But, I didn’t look for my list of foods, I just continued to have allergies for some years.

B-Complex Makes a Difference

The next thing that happened was learning I had “profound vitamin B12 deficiency”. Not knowing any better I bought a MegaB complex from K-Mart. I bought the middle of the range, neither the very high dose nor the lowest.

Because of its reasonable price I felt free to use many of the tablets, always with a lot of liquid. I took a tablet or two almost every quarter hour, with tea or Dr. Pepper or water.

  Vitamin B Complex

The first thing I noticed was that I wasn’t as tired, so I figured the MegaBs were working. Then came allergy season and I was not affected by Chamisa, the wild sage that grows rampant in Santa Fe, forming banks of yellow blossom along streets and making a sea of sulfur yellow out of vacant lots.

 

I couldn’t believe the Chamisa wasn’t reddening my eyes and making me sneeze. To test whether Chamisa would affect me, I walked to a shrub, taller than me and laden with bright yellow flowers, buried my nose in the flowers, and inhaled deeply. No sneezing, no itching eyes. I could smell the flowers without them making me uncomfortable. It was wonderful! And, totally amazing that my allergies had ended.

That’s when I remembered that once before my allergies ended. This time, however, I didn’t think I’d grown out of my allergies, it seemed pretty clear that the MegaBs had made an extreme, extremely amazing difference.

My Allergies Haven’t Come Back

It was over ten years ago that my allergies ended. Since then as long as I remember to take MegaBs of some sort for a month or so before allergy season, and during the season, I have not had allergies. Maybe fifteen sneezes in the whole of the fall or spring.

On the other hand, when I forget to prepare I cannot bring my allergies under control once they’ve started. As an aside, I don’t buy the strongest MegaBs because it seems better to take a lower dose more often, with a lot of water.

  Super B Sustained Release

Update: In one of Dr. Gundrey’s excellent infomercials he suggested using Timed Release Vitamin C. I’ve always thought Timed Release rather gimmicky, and untrustworthy. But, given he seems pretty good on nutrition, I tried Timed Release vitamin B complex before going to bed. I hoped to not have to take more B during the night. It worked great. Now I use it during the day, too.

What B-Complex didn’t do

The reason I bought MegaBs was not because I wanted my allergies ended, it had not even occurred to me that might happen. I bought them to increase my B12 level because my doctor said my B12 level was way too low.

Given my great success with vitamin B-Complex tablets, I anticipated my B12 level being dynamite come the next test. But, I was wrong. My B12 level was unchanged. My serum B12 level had not gone up at all.

Sometime later a doctor told me I had to have injections to raise my vitamin B12 level. When I had regular B12 injections I felt a lot of improvement in areas governed by B12. But, having B12 shots does not keep my allergies away, or even reduce them.

It was a few years before I learned that sublingual methylcobalamin works as well as injections. Once I learned that I switched from the injections and have not looked back.

My conclusion

Allergies are linked with stress. B vitamins help us cope with stress. It’s possible my allergies ended because B-Complex helped me cope with stress.

Would B-Complex help drug allergies?

Because my hayfever allergies ended when I used B-Complex, I wonder if B-Complex could help with my allergy to penicillin. The allergy developed when I had pneumonia and appendicitis attacks together, repeatedly, when I was six or so.

I had so many penicillin shots that there was no place left to give me another, and I hated them. When I got huge hives, they couldn’t give me any more shots … until they skirted the allergy by adding a sulfa drug to the penicillin.

That sulfa drug may be the first cause of good bacteria in my digestive system being compromised. There was something about how that could happen in Know Your Nutrition.

Good vs. Bad Bacteria & Vitamins

When good bacteria are compromised, bad bacteria take over, sort of like weeds in a garden. Once there’s a lot of bad bacteria it affects the stomach lining in such a way that the lining stops making the stomach acid we need to release some vitamins and minerals from food.

 

That means that slowly, over the years, we have lower and lower levels of some essential vitamins and minerals.

If we have no knowledge of this we may think that old age or some disease is affecting our lives, when in fact we simply need to “fertilize” our bodies.

Fertilizing, so to Speak

Compost for gardens is much better than bagged fertilizer; so too, eating vegetables and fruits to be healthy is better than taking vitamins. However, a problem arises when deficiency in a vitamin is so great that the amount of time it takes to eat enough of a particular food to replenish that vitamin is so gigantic that it’s unworkable. Your schedule doesn’t allow it. i.e. Methylcobalamin lozenges make a good fertilizer.

Overall it seems younger people are not as deficient as older people, so they don’t need to take as many vitamins, or as much of any one vitamin in order to restore health.

How Much Do You Need?

Methyl-B12 1,000 mcg 100 lozenges

The key seems to be how much stress you’re coping with, or, if you are failing to cope, how much stress is overwhelming you.

This is not to say that it is the same for you and your twin, or you and the love of your life. The only way to find out is to keep notes so that you can see what happens when you take a vitamin in some specific amount over some period of time.

It’s important to remember that vitamins work much differently than drugs. When we take drugs we expect and often get rapid results. That’s the opposite of results from vitamins.

Vitamins work with our bodies, so they need to go into the tissue and become a part of it the way that they were before our bodies became depleted through hard work and worry, or even while enjoying extremely good times. I think we often fail to realize that being excited with happiness can be a stress on our nerves, sort of like, “some sugar is good, too much sugar can create problems.”

As an example of how long it can take for a vitamin to work, when I first had vitamin B12 injections, I was having an injection a month. It took three months for me to have really noticeable differences in how I felt, re depression.

A B12 shot is about equal to using one 1mg Methylcobalamin lozenge a day for a month.

Another example is when I switched from Ibuprofen to Serrapeptase to control pain. After three uncomfortable days, my body began healing. Healing is so much better than pain suppression.

Still another example is using vitamin C to control or eliminate toothache from an impact. I had the most horrible toothache. My face was swollen from the infection. But, I couldn’t afford to go to a dentist.

By luck I tried taking quite a lot of vitamin C, more than 24 grams a day. I’m tall and heavy, so while that amount worked for me, it may be way too much for someone else. On the second day the pain was nearly gone, the following day the pain was entirely gone.

If you try vitamin C to get rid of an infection, be sure to take it with lots of water. I took mine at the rate of 6 grams with a huge mug of tea every four hours.