Minutus

The anaphylactic response is an emergency first aid issue - but the
cause is the underlying chronic disease of allergic type.
Both need to be addressed.
I used to be atopic (allergic type) myself though I no longer have
that problem. Before I became a homeopath, research in allergy was my
field. I do sympathise with the life threatening nature of any
anaphylactic response and did not mean to suggest it was not relevant.
I controlled my own anaphylactic responses (for example if someone
used a knife on a banana and then cut something I ate, I'd have
anaphylactic response to the banana) with huge amounts of crystalline
ascorbic acid. I'd have to take at least a heaping teaspoon within a
minute or so, plus another one after 5 minutes, another after 20 mins
and so on till the response stopped.
My older son had similar response to yellowjacket stings (as do
I) and they would not let him carry an adrenalin syringe in preschool
(even though he knew exactly how to use it - and it would be too slow
to go get it from the nurse's office) so he also carried a 35mm film
container of crystal ascorbic acid and a bottle of water and some
sugar everywhere he went, and knew how to use it. Ideally the
ascorbic acid can be used in a glass of very warm water (to absorb
fast), with 4 times the sugar, so as to taste like lemonaid, but when
anaphylaxis is too fast, there's no time for that. By the 2nd dose
it can usually be arranged to taste better.
I once had an accidental banana episode without my kit. It was
at my aunt's house and she knew about my allergy. But a friend of
hers had brought desert which I did not realize and I had a taste and
realized some banana was in there. I grabbed the car, and drove like
a maniac to a nearby pharmacy, fully ready to break a window to get
in if needed, ran in and started swallowing vit C. It worked and I
did manage to tell the store I was having an emergency and would pay
for it later.
It's all very well if one one prepared, it is so scary when it
happens the first time. My son's first time with yellowjackets was
when we were camping in the middle of nowhere and the kids
inadvertently "found" a nest. It was a fellow camper who knew the
ascorbic acid trick and supplied it.
I'm sure several factors all play a part - constitutional type
predelictions, actual exposures to "foreign" protein that gets into
the blood, immune system damage from vaccines, dietary trends.
In my case, the yellowjacket issue is strange in that my father (who
had no other known allergies at all) was badly allergic to them as he
found out by accident, I am and my older son is. That seems a bit
much for coincidence.
My banana allergy is far easier to explain in that my mother told
me I could not get enough of it as a baby. (I have a kidney defect
that pumps out the potassium and I wonder if I wanted banana to
supply it.) Anyway I do not remember liking it as a baby. I do
remember telling my mother it made me sick when I was about 7, and
she did not believe me. We were staying at a hotel on vacation and
she hid some banana under the gravy (to prove to me I could eat it
and was making a fuss about nothing). I was lucky to survive the
incident and had to be rushed to hospital. She did not disbelieve my
allergy after that. In THIS case I have to presume that the
vaccinations I had (lots and lots of them) predisposed my immune
system to Th-2 side then somehow banana got past the gut wall and
into the blood.

So I am sure that all the different things that can contribute to a
person becoming badly allergic to something, can do so in different
ratios in different situations. However in ALL cases, I am convincer
that a h-2 skewed immune system is a prerequisite and that the atopy
is reversed if that can be remedied.
Doing so will not necessarily remove the allergic response to
something the body already has antibody for and "sees" as "foreign",
but no new allergies will develop - so previous bad allergies may
need to be avoided for a long time if not indefinitely.

It may be that homeopathy can individually also overcome specific
allergic responses. I say this because I made a remedy to
yellowjacket, from a local one, and used it at 9C as a deterrent to
the local nasty yellowjackets, spraying it around me or at them, to
chase them (which it did). During the making of the remedy, I got
powder on me at various lower concentrations (sloppy technique when
triturating) and for months after that got "stung" now and then, in
random places, gradually tapering. I suspect that aggravation due to
remedy making actually may have removed my allergy - but I have not
done the ultimate test and got stung. I can say I no longer have the
fear I used to have when just seeing one of the critters. And that
also leads me to think the allergy may be gone.

Not sure if any of that discussion is useful in some way:-)?

Namaste,
Irene

--
Irene de Villiers, B.Sc AASCA MCSSA D.I.Hom/D.Vet.Hom.
P.O. Box 4703 Spokane WA 99220.
www.angelfire.com/fl/furryboots/clickhere.html (Veterinary Homeopath.)
"Man who say it cannot be done should not interrupt one doing it."

(Sorry - off topic for a minute but the question was asked and I think it's important for the large numbers of peanut sensitive patients).
Oils as Adjuvants -
Many studies and texts (re: adjuvants) as recently as last year state oil emulsions are still frequently used but do not have to be disclosed. However, Merck states they no longer use the ground-nut (which was peanut) based adjuvant Arlacel A because it caused hyper immune responses. Freund Complete Adjuvants (FCA's) are still used for testing in lab animals for antibody production. The FIA's were used for decades in practical veterinary vaccination. They were tested on humans (members of the military) beginning in the 1950's. It was discontinued in human vaccines in the mid-1960's due to adverse reactions. See Merck patents below for more info.
The FCA, Freund's Complete Adjuvant (contains mycobacteria derived from Tuberculosis), is the original which was produced using low quality mineral and other oils. Freund's Incomplete Adjuvants do not contain a mycobacterium. New variations of FCAs have been created since using higher quality oils. While they are less reactive, they still induce considerable side effects in animals according to a report given by ECVAM (European Centre for the Valuation of Alternative Methods [in animal testing]) on the John Hopkins Research Center site.
From the report: Combining different immunostimulatory agents can increase the potency of an adjuvant. Oil emulsions are frequently combined with other agents. The biological function of these adjuvants is related to their ability to adsorb protein antigens, thereby ensuring that soluble proteins will be taken up as particulate antigens by antigen-presenting cells.
Pharma has yet to understand that diluting components of a vaccine doesn't render it harmless.
See Merck patents below. Particularly telling is the second to last sentence where Merck talks about the adjuvant stimulating a hyper-sensitivity state.
Truly,
Erica
From 1997 Merck U.S. Patent of "Vaccinal fluid water-in-oil emulsions containing a metabolizable oil":
Vaccination, by stimulating the immune defense system, is a means for the preventive control of infectious agents. Vaccines currently use as antigens either living microorganisms whose pathogenic power has been attenuated or killed microorganisms, or indeed even purified fractions from these microorganisms. The sub-units or inactivated vaccines very often contain an adjuvant substance which is intended to increase the immune response. The function of the adjuvant is to increase, on the one hand, the level of the humoral and cellular immune response and, on the other hand, the duration of this response. Consequently, the adjuvant makes it possible to reduce the number of injections and the antigen dose included in the vaccine, thus keeping the vaccination at an acceptable cost. In addition to the desired effect on the immune response, the adjuvant substances can induce local or general toxicity: inflammatory edema, abscess, fibrosis at the point of injection, pain, fever or stimulation of a hyper-sensitivity state. An adjuvant must be effective but must also be acceptable as regards toxicity.
Mention may be made, among the many immunity adjuvant substances, of gels derived from aluminum (hydroxide, phosphate), which are only used in human medicine, saponins, which are complex heterosides and which are employed in the veterinary field, and also emulsions which seem to be one of the most active excipients. In particular, emulsions containing mycobacteria in mineral oil and Arlacel A®, which is defined as a dianhydromannitol monooleate, as surface-active agents are widely used under the name of Freund's complete adjuvant for laboratory animal immunization. Nevertheless, the use of killed mycobacteria has two major drawbacks: local reactions at the point of injection are very significant and the animals are sensitized to tuberculin; this leads to this adjuvant being rejected in veterinary medicine. The same adjuvant without mycobacteria, known as Freund's incomplete adjuvant, is less poorly tolerated and is still widely used in laboratories for producing hyperimmune sera. However, emulsions prepared with the Freund adjuvants are very viscous and have little stability, which prevents their industrial development.
However...
The use of emulsions in vaccines has remained anecdotal for a long time; tests which were carried out, in man in particular, with, on the one hand, an influenza vaccine with an adjuvant of Freund incomplete type and, on the other hand, an emulsion containing groundnut oil, Arlacel A® and aluminum stearate, known under the name of "adjuvant 65", finally led to the banning of such formulae from human medicine.
This patent related to Merck U.S. Patent of "Water-in-oil adjuvant composition" (1974):
Preparation of Peanut Oil Adjuvant Influenza Vaccines with Pure Isomannide Monooleate at 5, 3, 2 and 1% and Pure Aluminum Monostearate at 2%

The peanut oil adjuvant obtained in Example 5 is used to prepare an influenza vaccine by emulsifying it with an equal volume of a phosphate buffered saline solution containing 2800 CCA units/ml. of bivalent infuenza virus (1600 CCA units/ml. A 2 /Aichi/2/68 and 1200 CCA units/ml. of B/Mass./3/66).

The specific oil employed in the novel adjuvant composition of the invention is not critical. Any physiologically acceptable injectable oil or mixtures thereof including those oils which satisfy the specifications of the United States Pharmacopeia or National Formulary may be utilized in the practice of the invention. Representative members include peanut oil, safflower oil, soya bean oil, cottenseed oil, mineral oils of a pharmaceutical grade such as light paraffin and a light mineral oil, chaulmoogra oil, corn oil, persic oil, olive oil, sesame oil, almond oil, castor oil, squalane, isopropyl myristate and coconut oil. Of particular preference are peanut oil and highly purified light mineral oil.

Rochelle wrote:
That tells us something about the problem. An allergy to nuts must be a very modern problem caused by pesticides!!!