Todd,

Great thinking here. A few similar thoughts.


From my experience with taking bee pollen to eliminate allergies, and
similar stories about people taking connective tissue orally to help
osteoarthritis, and logic, I would say that there is an immune response
that does not have the "memory" that keeps you from getting the same
strain of flu twice.

Orally consumed matter must trigger a different kind of "temporary"
immune challenge. Eliminating the challenging substance then causes the
body to back off of attacking that particular group of proteins. In
fact, the body has some sort of mechanism for "handling" large amounts
of these proteins so as not to go completely wacko (which could lead to
anaphalactic shock in extreme cases of allergic response.) This limited
response is more on the order of arthritis, or allergies, and not fever,
etc. That is how and why people can continue to consume large quantities
of grain despite the molecular mimicry -- the body adjusts somewhat to
these quantities and most immune response is suppressed (although not
all, obviously.) This suppression is temporary but real.

When proteins of that type are inhaled nasally or bronchially, in my
case, these are very small quantities compared to the bee pollen I have
been ingesting and which the body knows how to handle. These quantities
inhaled cease to trigger an allergic response.

So, to summarize, I postulate that there is a mechanism that protects us
so we can consume a very wide variety of foods without allergic shock.
This mechanism is a type of immune suppression which comes from orally
consumed substances. It is a temporary and incomplete immune
suppression.

--Richard