Why Does Dust Make You Cough Or Sneeze?

Both sneeze and cough are productive reflexes that clear the upper airways of bacteria, viruses, pollutants, and irritants including dust. A sneeze will remove dust that irritates the upper nasal lining and a cough will expel dust that is irritating the bronchial passages.

What is Dust?

If you were asked to describe "dust", your first inclination might be to think of it as being dirt. The truth is that dust is so much more complex than dirt can ever dream of being. Dust can include all of the following and more: bacteria, viruses, fabrics, feathers, saliva, mold spores, fungus spores, pollen food particles, human skin flakes, animal dander, dust mites, human hair, plant particles, insect particles, outside dirt, and chemicals.

Taking a look at this list, you can see many of the items that make up dust are allergens in their own right; you can imagine why your body wants to get rid of them; especially when they gang up on you. Sneezing and coughing are you body's natural defenses against these bullies.

The EPA says that indoor air can 70 times more polluted than air from the outdoors; much of this can be attributed to dust. Cough and sneezing are not the only symptoms caused by indoor air pollution; eye irritation, sinus problems, headache, and even fatigue are others.

Limit Exposure to Dust

If you suffer from dust allergies, your best treatment is to limit your exposure to dust. There is no way to eliminate dust all together but there are a few steps you can take to minimize how much accumulates and floats in the air.

Vacuum floors, rugs, furniture, and drapery often. A vacuum cleaner with a built in HEPA filter can help minimize the dust that is forced back into the air during the vacuuming process. Avoid sweeping and using feather dusters as they stir up the dust exasperating your symptoms.

Using an air purifier in your home can filter out allergens in the air and minimize the amount of dust that accumulates. Consider placing one in the central room of your home or in your bedroom. You may also want to consider using air duct filters that will continually filter large quantities of dust from all areas of your home.

Close windows on windy days during allergy season. One large gust of wind can blow pollen into your home coating surfaces, lingering in the air, and instantly attracted to existing dust present. If the trees are moving outside, close up your windows.

The next time you cough or sneeze because of dust, know that it is simply your body's reflexes working just as they should.

Allergy Shots For Dogs - Done the Right Way

Allergy shots for dogs make it possible for our pets to escape the itchy discomfort of allergy symptoms completely and permanently. That's a wonderful thing, but it will not happen overnight.

When it comes to inhalant allergies (atopy in dogs) you must pick a vet that has substantial experience in curing this type of allergy, and not just the occasional try. Inhalant allergies in dogs are different than food allergies because the former are treatable with allergy shots, the latter are usually not.

So, when it comes to dog inhalant allergies, most family vets have limited experience in administering skin tests and what is more difficult, understanding the results and how they may inter-relate to blood tests and other parts of the diagnostic jigsaw puzzle. Inhalant allergy diagnosis is a true art form born from extensive experience and wide knowledge of this form of allergy. This is far out of the league of the average family vet.

Some family vets do have the experience and knowledge to do a very good job. So, you need to research a vet before approaching him or her for allergy shot therapy.

The wise family veterinarian know their strengths, and as a matter of course will immediately refer a dog with a moderate to serious inhalant allergy (atopy) to one of many veterinary dermatologists.

Veterinary dermatologists are trained in the fine points in understanding inhalant allergies and their associated canine blood test, allergy skin tests, diagnostic evaluation, and the all-important pet allergy shots. It is the vaccine in the shots that will make allergy desensitization a success or failure.

Especially in difficult cases, you need a 'top gun' to get top results. If you live in the country you may need to drive to the big city, or take the subway across town to a university animal hospital. It may not be convenient but it will be worthwhile.

Here are some basic guidelines:

With dog allergy shots, your dog will need a daily needle or shot, at least at first. It is far better if the owner can administer the shots rather than driving to the vet dermatologist every day. It is also less expensive. It is not difficult to give a needle to a dog, and you will be shown exactly how to do it correctly and safely.

You should keep in mind that it is common for dog immunotherapy to take 6 to 12 months. There is no way of knowing when or if the shots will eventually work, especially if the dog has multiple allergies. But with a 75% success rates (or partial success rates), the odds are in your favor.

Be prepared that 25% of the time dog immunotherapy does not work.

You should keep in mind that success is not always 100%. There are times when a dog will need to have a fortnightly, monthly, or quarterly booster shot to maintain the desensitization. This is no big deal.

Allergy shots for dogs are a golden opportunity cure or control an allergy in a firm manner. It is the preferred manner in dealing with inhalant allergies in dogs. Locate a good vet dermatologist and have it done the right way.

How Strep A Test Can Solve Your Throat Problems

There are different kinds of tests performed to ensure right diagnosis of complications in a person's throat. Tests enable doctors to identify the right treatment. A sore throat can lead to a more serious infection thus it requires thorough testing. It can be experienced by any one at any age. Although this problem normally just goes off after a short period of time, there are cases when they can be quite stubborn. Sore throat due to bacteria buildup does not take long to heal but if there is a viral infection, medication is required. Viral infections may be hard to treat and so it is important to consult a doctor if you find that you have throat infection which is taking too much time to clear. If you have had a sore throat before, then you already know how uncomfortable it is.

The causes of throat issues can range from simple problems such as voice strain to tumors in the throat. You should visit your doctor to know the right diagnosis. It will help you realize that it can be another cause of another problem; hence, it becomes even harder to determine the true causes on your own. It is important to not take for granted any swelling you feel or roughness in your voice. Your throat doctor will try to identify what type of problem you have and this will help him get the right treatment for your condition. You have to know that there are some infections that run through the blood line. It is identified by your parents' genetics. If most of the time you experience having infections, then there is a high possibility that your children will get them also. Your doctor will take a Strep A test and the lab technician will examine the saliva to determine the type of infection you have. You should carefully listen to what your doctor recommends. Your doctor's advice will go a long way in helping you undergo the right treatment for your throat condition.

If you want to control your throat conditions, then you should go for a test. You have to clearly identify what is causing your illness. There are many effective ways that you can do once you are able to identify the exact cause of your infections. If it is due to allergic reactions then you must avoid using the product that is triggering the allergy. One most common reason for throat infections is due to bad lifestyle like smoking. There are several ways to control any bad habits you have and these could help you solve your problems of having a sore throat. There are alternative treatments that can also help you treat your conditions that can be done at home. You have to clean your house to avoid the growth of molds and get rid of dusts.

The Strep A test will ensure that you will only apply appropriate medications. Take note that if your throat is infected, your doctor will give you the most suitable medication based on the results of your test. You should however only consult a doctor that is specializing in throat infections.

Ringing in Ears Allergies and Cure

Ringing in ears allergies are not the only things that can cause ringing in ears. The sounds that are driving you crazy are actually symptoms of some other root problem, and, although ringing in ears allergies certainly can produce the ringing sounds there are many other underlying conditions that can do so.

So the first thing you need to understand is that ringing in the ears is not a disease, but, a symptom of some other underlying conditions that you may have (e.g. allergies) and which your doctor would normally look for once having established that you have ringing in ears. He or she would then decide on the most appropriate treatment for you. But many times you can report with tinnitus and no obvious underlying conditions can be found, which makes things kind of difficult.

The main causes for ringing in ears are damage / problems caused by noise, sinus, stress, and Meniere's disease. These are things like ear infections, damaged hearing, impacted ear wax, high blood pressure, allergies, and so on.

And apart from ringing in ears, sufferers can also hear sounds that are described as ticking, clicking, whooshing, buzzing, hissing, etc. It is also believed that the type of sound you hear is a function of the underlying cause or causes.

Traditional medical treatment consists of things like, drugs, complementaries like acupuncture, audio devices to mask the sounds, relaxation exercises, etc. Surgery is an option but only in particular circumstances and is really only used as a final resort. But the main thing about all this is that there is not a proven cure for ringing in ears using traditional medical treatments, so that, around 93% of sufferers never get full relief from their symptoms.

There are millions of folks who have ringing in ears and who just can't get relief. If the sounds are only occasional and not of a particularly high volume then you can probably just about put up with it, even although it's very annoying. And many times that's just what some doctors recommend. But for vary many people (perhaps you're one) tinnitus just drives them crazy. It prevents natural sleep patterns, leads to fatigue, undermines job performance, leads to depression, affects relationships; basically it just screws up your life.

That's why many folks nowadays are taking their cure into their own hands and researching (as you are right now) for any information they can get on alternative treatments. But of course to do this properly and get the right cure for you (because everyone is different) you will have to spend a lot of time and energy on research, interviews with medical experts and other sufferers, finding and pouring over medical journals, etc. Also, you are better to use the word 'tinnitus' when searching as that is the medical term for ringing in ears.

Luckily there's one tinnitus (cured) sufferer who has already gone through this whole process. It took over 2 years of research, testing and development, but, the outcome is a proven alternative treatment for tinnitus with a 80% success rate (compare that with the 93% who don't get relief using traditional methods) and very many satisfied ex-tinnitus victims worldwide. At its heart is a series of 11 secret techniques to stop the ringing. And the beauty for folks like yourself who just want to get their life back on track fast, is you just download them straight to your computer.

Types of Allergy Tests

It used to be if you wanted to find out what you were allergic to you had to undergo a long series of tests that could take weeks or months. If you were allergic to something unusual or rare it could take years or, more commonly, you never would find out. If your allergies were seasonal, they probably disappeared before the testing clinic found an answer and you would give up on the clinic testing and go back to life as before. Much of that procedure today has been speeded up and is more straightforward but if you are being checked for allergies there will probably still be several types of tests performed.

There are three basic ways that a clinic or hospital can use to test you for allergies. The most commonly used is a skin test. This involves putting a small amount of the allergen on your skin. Allergen, by the way, is the medical term for the substance suspected of causing your allergy. Most often, the allergen is applied to your forearm but it could also be done on your back or upper arm. Then the skin in that area is irritated by pricking it with a needle or scratching the skin. This allows the substance to get under your skin. If you are allergic to it there will usually be an allergic reaction in less than 10 to 15 minutes. Usually the reaction just involves redness, itching and swelling of the skin but testers have to be careful with skin tests because in some cases the reaction may be severe and involve respiratory complications. A variation of the skin test is the intradermal allergy test. This test uses a small needle to inject the allergen just beneath the skin. Skin tests are usually used to identify things in the air that you inhale that might be causing your allergy or allergies to insect or animal bites.

A second type of allergy testing is called elimination testing. This is most often used to identify food and diet allergies. In a very controlled environment, various foods are either added or removed from your diet and your reaction is monitored. Often the food is disguised in some fashion to prevent psychological factors from interfering with the test. Sometimes if you think you are allergic to something you abnormally influence the result. Obviously, this method is very time consuming and can only be used if the reactions are relatively mild.

The third and perhaps the best method of allergy testing is the blood test. As the name implies, this involves taking a small sample of your blood and sending it off for laboratory testing. The lab procedure is complicated but basically, they will expose your blood to various allergens. If you are allergic, your blood will create what are called IgE antibodies to fight off the allergen. Depending on what kind of IgE antibodies are created and how many are created the lab can both identify your allergy and tell you how severe it is. RAST and UniCAP are the two main specific types of modern blood testing for allergies. UniCAP is almost a fully automated procedure that can check for several 100 allergens and will even assign a number from 1 to 6 to identify the severity of the allergic reaction. The major disadvantage of blood testing is it requires specialized equipment. Usually your clinic or hospital will have to mail the blood sample off and will not get results back for several weeks.

Fix a Dog Allergy

Aside from needing their basic needs fulfilled, dogs may also need help regarding some health problems. Dogs are actually susceptible to medical conditions like allergies which the owner should quickly take note of and have cured to prevent the condition from worsening.

Making Your Dog Itch: Allergy Possibilities

Allergies cannot be prevented unless the owner is aware of which allergens his dog is allergic to. Here are some helpful tips and hints to fix this problem just in case they come up.

Inhalant Allergy

Most common of these dog allergies is inhalant allergy. The most common symptoms are scratching of the genital areas, abdomen, armpit or face, and prolonged chewing and licking. Upon close inspection, the dog develops a reddish area caused by too much licking.

If you suspect that your dog has this allergy, then you must bring him to your vet. A veterinarian can diagnose this accurately through allergy testing.

Bacteria allergy

Bacteria can be another cause of dog allergy. Bacteria allergy (specifically Staphylococcus allergy) is not a very common condition. Only a few canines react negatively to this bacteria; most other dogs have become accustomed to it.

If your dog is allergic to bacteria, they can easily develop crusts on his skin or even lose some hair on the spot that he normally scratches. You need to bring your dog to a vet before the patches of exposed skin becomes infected.

Flea allergy

Flea, per se, does not cause the dog's allergic reaction but the flea's saliva is the main culprit. A vet or even the owner can easily figure this out.

If you see your dog scratching himself frequently, then you should check his coat thoroughly to see if he has fleas. If you see fleas, that's a pretty good indication that it's causing your dog's discomfort. Since there can be other causes aside from fleas, though, it's better to bring your dog to a vet and have him diagnosed and tested for allergies. If it's flea allergy after all, then you should ask your vet for his recommended flea shampoo and medication.

Food Allergy

Allergy to food is also possible. Manufactured dog foods are a combination of a variety of ingredients, one or a few of which can be causing your dog's allergies. Your dog may have this type of allergy if he keeps on scratching or sneezes a lot, vomits, loses control of his bowels, etc.

Diagnosis of food allergy can be quite difficult. You need to fix a different meal for a certain period of time to see which is causing the allergy. Thus, in one period, you can give your dog chicken meat. Then, on another the diet can be restricted to pork and so on and so forth. Should the dog develop an allergy at anytime a certain ingredient was used, you'll know that it's causing the allergy so you should avoid serving your dog this food again.

Contact allergy

This is an allergy caused by an object that the dog is in constant contact with. It could be his food bowl, his collar, or another thing entirely that's causing the allergy. Since this is the least common, you must rule out all other allergy causes. After that is done, start eliminating the things he is in contact with to isolate the main cause.

Gluten and Autoimmunity: How You Could Still Be Gluten Sensitive With Negative Lab Tests

Every day patients come in to my chronic condition centers suffering from conditions like Hashimoto's hypothyroid, Lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, diabetes, and multiple sclerosis. These diseases have very limited treatment options for the patient consisting mostly of drugs and steroids. For very few of my patients these treatments help but most are frustrated saying "the condition controls me and I do not control the condition". The underlying cause of most chronic conditions is autoimmunity. Autoimmune disease is where your immune system attacks a particular area or system of the body. If you do not address why the body has turned against itself you will continue to have symptoms and even develop whole new system failures. To find out if you have an autoimmune disease I recommend antibody testing.

An antibody is a protein marker. The body's immune system produces antibodies in response to unwanted material like molds, virus, bacteria, and parasites. These substances are labeled antigens. Antibodies can be produced when the body has a reaction to a food it is sensitive to or comes in contact with a harmful chemical. Antibodies can mistakenly be produced against a bodies own healthy tissue when the immune system becomes confused. The antibody marks the tissue for removal and signals the immune response. This is the cause of autoimmune reactions. I like to check for gluten antibodies, myelin (fatty sheath around the nerves) antibodies, cerebellar (back part of the brain controlling balance, coordinated movement, and spinal muscles) antibodies.More examples of are antibodies to pancreatic islet cells often called type 1 diabetes and antibodies to the thyroid are usually associated with Hashimoto's disease.

Patients ask "Dr. Beckingham why does my immune system go crazy to begin with?" One common issue is food sensitivity in particular gluten sensitivity. Gluten is a protein that exists in wheat that acts like an immune system provoking antigen. The protein has been shown in some studies to be a food sensitivity of up to 81% of people from northern European decent. This protein is what makes our crackers stick together, our soups thick, and our salad dressing creamy. Gluten sensitivity includes wheat, spelt, kamut, oats, rye, and barley. Gluten can be hidden as soy sauce, food starch, malt extract and dextrins to name a few.

If you put a food that you are sensitive to in your system every day your immune system will continually be fired up and attack the offending food just like a bacteria or parasite. This in turn creates too many soldiers in your immune army that have no leadership. A mutiny is the common result. The mutiny manifests itself as an attack on healthy tissue like your thyroid, nerves, or the joints of your body.

Patients often tell me that they have been tested for gluten and they are negative so that can't be the problem. This is the simple answer to that question. The blood tests that people have been getting only tests for a part of gluten called alpha gliadin. Alpha gliadin is only one of the building blocks of gluten. Until recently it has been believed that alpha gliadin was the prime suspect of gluten sensitivity. Published peer reviewed journals have now shown that not only does alpha gliadin pose a threat but you can be allergic to beta, gamma, omega gliadins as well. If you are allergic to beta gliadin and have a test for alpha gliadin it will show that you are fine when in reality you have gluten allergies.

As if this were not enough you can be allergic to a substance called glutenin which is also part of gluten. You could be allergic to transglutaminase which is a gluten enzyme. I have seen patients in my office sensitive to deaminated gliadin or gluteomorphin (the addictive part of breads). A true gluten test needs 12 components in it not just the 1 alpha gliadin test which has been the industry standard for years. It frightens me to think of how many patients have been eating gluten thinking they have tested negative when in fact they have a true gluten sensitivity that was missed because of improper testing.

Why is this so important you may ask? Recent studies have shown a link between gluten sensitivity and psychiatric illness, ADHD, rheumatoid arthritis, migraines, and obesity to name a few. Why are so many people so sensitive now when 50 years ago it seemed like nobody was? Simple, the genetic modification of foods make more gluten per piece of wheat when compared to a generation ago, poor nutrition overall, chronic stress (raised cortisol hurts immune tolerance), leaky gut syndrome, the storage of wheat products in huge bins on average of 2 years so the food can get covered in enterotoxins (waste product of fungus and mold), and overall lack of adequate digestive enzymes in our body.

This is why I insist on a full gluten panel of 12 tests for my prospective patients even before I accept a case. This test can be done with 1 vial of blood sent to a lab in Arizona that tests for all 12 potential gluten sensitivities specifically.

To sum up I have seen in my practice that when followed strictly a appropriate gluten-free diet is often life-transforming for symptomatic patients.