Mike Adams: A Very Special Little Boy

I got his email, and I would like to say that today he let fly one of the lamest bits of advice I've ever read.

NaturalNews Tip of the day (from Mike):

Suffering from spring allergies? It might just be a chemically-induced sensitivity. Try cleaning out your personal care products and tossing anything containing synthetic chemicals or fragrance. For many people, their allergy symptoms vanish within weeks.

Alright, let's see if I can bust this fucker up. It is, of course, entirely possible that you are allergic to something that you are using: a fabric softener, a soap, a perfume ingredient. (I know these things. I watch House.) But, if you are truly talking about spring allergies, why are you blaming the stuff in your house, especially the stinky stuff? It sounds like you might have a dose of the miasma there, pardner.

When he posits "chemically-induced sensitivity" it sounds to me that he is suggesting that stinky things make you more susceptible to allergic reactions to the pollen of springtime. Of course, if you look up the phrase on PubMed, not only do they say that that specific combination of terms does not appear in the published literature, but they also return this study to you, which is freaking awesome:

Zebrafish Seizure Model Identifies p,p -DDE as the Dominant Contaminant of Fetal California Sea Lions That Accounts for Synergistic Activity with Domoic Acid.

Dude, zebrafish seizures and fetal sea lions. Science lets you do that!

Anyway, I can't find anything that "primes" you to have an allergic reaction, you know, other than the allergen. I did see something that look like it might require multiple allergens to trigger an attack, "Multiple Chemical Sensitivity," but it seems unsupported by rigorous evidence and well-designed experiments. Indeed, there is something about the purported minute substances that reminds me of a sort of inverse homeopathy. It seems that people who are exposed to the micro-levels of irritants react in the same way to placebo, so it might be psychogenic. Just the type of thing a placebo-seller could "cure"!

There are still a couple of features to this claim that I would like to address.

1) Evil synthetic chemicals. With respect to the effects of a chemical on your body, it does not really depend on where the chemical originated, only on the compound's chemical properties. It does not matter if it is synthesized by the critters in your gut or synthesized by a factory worker named Yaz Pistachio by her flower-child parents.

2) Fragrance. I'm not joking, the idea is that this is "bad air." Like this was the 18th Century.

3) "Allergy symptoms vanish within weeks." No shit. When I leave the vet's office, my animal-induced allergy disappears in an hour, at most. Remove the allergen, remove the allergy. It's a major treatment option--allergen avoidance (one that evil mainstream doctors endorse). Now, the length of an allergy season varies, but it can last weeks. Indeed, it is misleading to think of an allergy season as really ever ending...you can always be allergic to something, and filthy horny plants are always pollinating somewhere. But, for the most part, we can generally predict the seasons of strongest pollination. Here's the allergy calendar for my area. And guess how long those seasons last? Well, they are often over "within weeks." Hm. What could possibly be causing this reduction in allergies? Removing things that smell or a lower allergen count? I wonder...how Mike Adams manages to keep from drowning in the shower.

This is an excellent example of the post hoc: "A few weeks ago, I cleaned out my collection of fancy shampoos (not that I have one), and now I don't have allergies. Hurray for not-science!" The two events, of course, are completely unrelated.

HJ