Balanced Immune Health

About 10 years ago I bought my wife a couple of small trees for Mother’s day that she planted in a couple of raised gardens in our back yard. They looked so nice at the garden center where I bought them. Their leaves were tropical-looking, kind of like palm leaves. I thought a palm-like plant would be great here in the tropics of Iowa.

They proceeded to grow at a very healthy pace. In fact they not only grew, they spread…wickedly. For the past 9 years, I’ve been regularly pulling up tree shoots from the ground, before they grow into real trees. My neighbors have been doing the same thing, pulling the invading tree shoots out of their yards, shoots that I inadvertently supplied them. I’m surprised they didn’t shoot me by now.

Now, I’m a bit more familiar with this proliferative plant: The Red Sumac.  While it does turn brilliant orange in early fall, it is more like a weed than a tree; a really big weed that spreads like wildfire.  I’ve also discovered another interesting factoid…the hard way. From time to time while mowing around the garden or pulling weeds, planting flowers, etc, I would brush up against the leaves of the sumacs. My arms or my face gently scraped against the leaves, and I didn’t think anything of it. That is until about two days later…when I began itching in those areas that came into contact with the sumac leaves. And the itching didn’t stop. It was intense and led to some poison-ivy like irritation. Ten days of calamine lotion and cold showers (to keep inflammation in check) later, it went away. From time to time, I would invariably forget to steer clear of those leaves, get a brush on the arm or face, and the whole mess would flare up again. Even pruning bare branches in the late fall, after all the leaves were gone, would still get a little itch fest going again.

Last summer, after having taken my immune balance supplements for six months, I forgot to wear long sleeves and a hat while toiling around the sumacs, and I felt the horrifying brush of those soft, green leaves again. A little irritation emerged, nothing major, and it was gone in a day or two.

This past weekend, I again got a forehead full of leaves. And absolutely nothing has developed. Not even a tinge.

Also, don’t confuse your garden variety sumac with poison sumac. That’s a different beast. Those leaves are more elliptical, not lance-shaped, and they are more potent.

A 1997 Univ. of  Mass. paper on skin irritation from poison ivy and related plants gives a nice overview of why people experience  severe itching and blistering from contact with these leaves. The basic reason: immune system over-reaction to something that, by itself, would be harmless. That’s the cornerstone of immune balance…or imbalance. The paper has a nice phrase that hits the nail on the head: “Allergy is an altered or unwanted immune response.”

Let me again emphasize that properly labeled nutritional supplementation is not meant–nor does it claim–to diagnose, treat or cure any disease or health condition.

Filed under Allergies, Immune Balance, Immune System, Inflammation, My Experience, Research, immune