Every practice has a handful of patients that are hard to figure out what is going on with them. Their problems are many and it seems as if everything you do fails and makes them worse. It is this way at our practice with a couple of patients that seems as though they are incurable. I try and try and nothing helps. So, when I saw one of these patients a few months ago I was discouraged because he was a mess. Everything he ate made him dizzy, weak, or itchy, and he had terrible gas pain. In fact, he could only eat basically 3-4 foods and even occasionally they would affect him. He loved to exercise, and that was out of the question. He would always take the stairs instead of the elevator, not anymore. Taking one flight of stairs left him very short of breath, and with terrible leg cramps. So bad he would have to rest several minutes to recover. What a mess he was. So like all good doctors I suggested he see a specialist but they too were stumped.
So he was back at my office and one of my little pearls of medicine is that if a patient has seen every specialist, taken every lab test, and still not better it maybe allergies. But the allergist was not helpful. What was going on? After a lot of thinking what to do, it seemed logical that maybe he has a genetic problem. Remember for anything to happen in our bodies it starts with our own genes. There is a pathway in the body called the histamine pathway. Histamine is very important to life. They protect us from infection, they help the immune system and they form memories in the brain. To have an allergic reaction it has to come through the histamine pathway. We give patients antihistamine like Zyrtec or Benadryl to stop the histamine from causing hay fever or a number of rashes or allergic reactions. Without histamine you can’t even remember your name. That is why people who use histamine on a regular bases have a 54% increase to dementia. So, it is not always good to rely on these types of drugs to treat chronic allergies.
In this patient these antihistamines did nothing. There are 12 genes that make up the histamine pathway. Which of these 12 genes could be faulty. Either running to fast or too slow or just plain dirty. So we did a genetic test that looks at the histamine pathway and all 12 genes. It told us if they ran fast or slow, and if they are clean or dirty. Sure enough 4 of his 12 genes were not functioning at 100%. If you know biochemistry which was taught in the 1st year of medical school, you can tell exactly what to do to optimize their genes. Cutting to the chase he turned around within a few days and is back to normal which includes eating and exercising. So if you find your just not getting better have your doctor look at the genetic pathway in your body. It may actually be an easy fix.
If you want more information about what I am doing specifically with genetic testing visit our website at www.youngfoundationalhealth.com
John Young M.D.