My struggles with allergies

On one night I was tucking my 5 year old boy to bed,

My son was complaining that he had itches all over his stomach. I looked at his stomach,turns out he had allergic blisters around his belly. I talked to my wife on what he just had, she said he just drank his milk half an hour ago. I discussed this with my son, telling him the cause might be the milk that he drank earlier on. I negotiated with him, told him he should hold back on milk for 2 days and see if he stop itching in the night; If it turns out hes still itching, he is free to drink milk whenever he wants. 2 days went for him without drinking milk and he was itch free for those 2 days.

About a week ago late November 2019, he returned from his school and asked my why milk caused problems to his body while he had to answer in school that milk is good for your body.

I had to tell him this story ….

Throughout my life, I struggle immensely to reduce my allergic tendencies to my environments. There are times when I couldn’t lay down to sleep at night due to asthma, I would be sneezing or coughing at school. Doctors would just tell me I have allergy, and give me inhalers to cope whenever my asthma flared up. I hated those things to the bone, because I would feel worse afterwards whenever I used those inhalers.

Everything turned around after I graduated from college; the times were changing, and doctors are open to holistic knowledge. I met 2 doctors that changed the way I viewed my allergy. One was a marine doctor in Surabaya, he graduated from Germany and opened a public clinic. He explained at that time that my allergies happened due to the fact the cells in my body was deficient in calcium, so he gave me calcium shot and calcium supplements for a month. His treatments reduced my allergic tendencies for about a year; by then I knew if my allergies flares up, I should be taking calcium supplements and I would be fine.

It boggles me how it was possible for my body to be so deficient in calcium, until I met doctor Tan Shot Yen and got yelled at. So doctor Tan Shot Yen really hate milk… well, she is REALLY .. REALLY AGAINST GIVING HUMANS COWS’ MILK …. So I took her advice and stopped drinking milk and reducing my protein intakes especially red meat. Lo and behold, i stopped sneezing and my body felt better. So what happened? I looked in the internet and found this article

https://iphysio.io/osteoporosis/

Research suggests that the more animal protein you eat, the higher your risk of hip fracture becomes. Cross-cultural studies show strong links between a high animal protein diet, bone degeneration, osteoporosis and the occurrence of hip fractures. In rural communities in China where most of the protein in the diet came from plant foods rather than animal foods, the fracture rate was one-fifth of that in the US.

This is one of the articles that I’ve found recently, but you can search throughout the internet to find articles with the same conclusions. We have always think by drinking milk, we would increase the calcium intake which will support our bones, but turns out the protein in milk not only inhibits the calcium absorption, but it might instead causes calcium loss throughout our body (Which explained my calcium deficiencies). Worst case? The excess calcium would just stick to your arteries causing blockage, which in turn resulting heart attacks and strokes.

So what happened during my childhood that caused all of my allergies? I remembered it vaguely that I would always drink milk everyday, even to the point I could skip a meal just because I had milk and it would be enough. I was suffering, but i did not know the cause nor how to handle everything that went wrong; and that problem causes ripple effects to my adulthood.

It is really hard to explain to your kids how harmful can something like milk can be when his school is teaching him milk is good and he should drink daily in order to get calcium into his daily diet. I told my kids cows get calcium into their milk by eating grass, so thats why they should eat their veggies. The reason why I’m writing this article is I to implore parents to review the food they are feeding to their kids; just because your government say something is good, it does not mean it would be good for your kids unconditionally.

Written by AB