At 09:38 AM 5/18/98 -0400, you wrote:
>But why do we have them?  Why would plants and pollens and molds cause
this reaction?  Aren't these quite natural substances that would have been
part of our environment while naked on the savanah?

In traditional medicine is it believed, and perhaps righfully so, that
allergies are the mark of an overburdened liver. Many of the herbs
recommended for allergies are liver tonics which when used for a time
strengthen its many functions.

So I have begun taking liver supportive herbs such as dandelion. I also
began taking vitamin c in large doses since I'm stating away from fruit,
and for me it really has made a difference. I'm taking a gram of C every
90-120 minutes. I'm also using a bit of ephedra or Ma-Huang as it does help
me and my blood pressure is low enough that it wont cause a problem if I
take some daily for a the duration of this season. One recipe I saw in a
book on Oriental medicine said to use two parts Dandelion root, two parts
licorice and one part Ephedra. I took my first dose this morning; I'll see
how I fare in a couple of days. I'm using capsules of dried herb and will
take two doses.

Both my parents have allergies, I read somewhere (I really do need to keep
tract of this) that if one parent has allergies chances are about 50-50 if
both the odds are not in your favor. Stangely enough my parents do not get
hay fever. My mother had--seems to have resolved itself--severe reactions
to animals, cats, dogs and especially horses. My father had asthma like
complaints with american cigarettes till he moved back to Canada and
started smoking canadian cigarettes, it cleared up he has since quit
tobacco completly but was just diagnose with elevated blood sugar--go
figure.

Willow