NyPo has the details:
Allergy sufferers are much less likely to get cancer than people who aren't tormented by runny noses, itchy eyes and coughs, according to a series of surprising new scientific studies.
Texas Tech researchers revealed this month that asthmatics were 30 percent less likely to get ovarian cancer than non-asthmatics. And kids with airborne allergies were 40 percent less likely to get leukemia, according to research published in January by University of Minnesota doctors.
Cornell University experts found reduced rates among lung, skin, throat and intestinal cancers.
"More work is still needed, but the numbers show allergy is a statistically significant protective factor," said Dr. Zuber Mulla, a Texas Tech epidemiologist who led the ovarian-cancer study.
"Allergies are a general activation of our immune systems," added Dr. Ronald Crystal, chief of pulmonary and critical-care medicine at New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center...
Evidence on the link has been pouring out in the last few years.
A team at Brigham Young University saw a lower risk of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and stomach cancer, while Harvard epidemiologists "observed a strong inverse relationship" between brain cancer and asthma, eczema, hay fever or allergy.
Doctors in Toronto concluded, "Having allergies or hay fever was associated with a reduced pancreas-cancer risk" -- by as much as 58 percent.
The University of Ottawa found that a "history of hay fever only was associated with a significantly lower risk of pancreatic-cancer mortality, and a history of asthma only was associated with a lowered risk of leukemia mortality."...
Some experts believe that people made miserable by pollen and other allergens have advanced immune systems and when they sneeze out irritants in the air, they also rid themselves of cancer-causing toxins.
This is welcome in the sense that at least hay fever and other allergy sufferers have some kind of payback for all they have to go through each summer, or even throughout the year in some cases.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to share a simple exercise I do to reduce or eliminate hay fever symptoms, and to enhance any medication I'm taking for it. It's based on acupressure, like acupuncture but without the needles. You can administer it on yourself without anyone else being required.
Hold your left hand out with fingers and thumb together. Note the point where the muscle between your forefinger and thumb is at its thickest. Then move your thumb away from your forefinger and place your right thumb on that point. Place your right forefinger on the other side of the "webbing" between your forefinger and thumb and squeeze, not too hard, for about a minute while breathing deeply. Then repeat on the other hand.
Direct the pressure slightly towards the bone leading up to your forefinger. You'll be surprised to find that this little exercise brings a large degree of relief from hay fever and enhances other treatment.
Don't do this exercise if you are a woman and pregnant, though, as it can induce premature contractions of the uterus. Subject to that, I recommend you give this a try.
I hope it helps.