The Daily Camera - Portraits - Monday - July 1, 2002

Allergy Sufferers Find Relief from Chiropractors

Ashley Frank

For as long as she can remember, Lindla Akey has suffered severe allergies.   A filed of goldenrod would turn her eyes and nose into a leaky faucet.  

The worst symptom says Akey, who is a professional opera singer, was a swollen troat that made it hard for her to breathe.   Medications dried her out.   Her voice lost its tone and strength.  

In August, Akey made an appointment with Evan Katz, a local chiropractor who has been seeing patients in Boulder for three years, to treat a wrist injury and subsequent back pain.   After being manipulated and twisted about, she noticed a difference - not only in her bones, but in her sore throat and stuffy nose.   Akey is convinced that earlier chiropractic care is the reason her allergy medications have remained untouched during this allergy season.

"I truly think that because I've had a total chiropractic alignment of my whole body, it has been able to compensate for a lot of things, like changes in environment and allergens," says Akey, who lives in Boulder County.  

Akey is one of a small but growing group of allergy sufferers that is discovering that seasonal symptoms may respond to chiropractic adjustments.   People who traditionally go to the chiropractors for help with back and neck pain may also get relief from allergies, chiropractors say.  

Katz explains that chiropractic adjustments have the potential to help the body's ability to defend itself from allergies by alleviating extra stress put on the nervous system by neck and spine joints that are not functioning properly.

The backbones are the protective cover for the central nervous system and every organ and system in the body is controlled either directly or indirectly by the nervous system, Katz says.   This means that if the nervous system is not 100 percent, any system, including the immune system, which controls allergic response, can be negatively affected.

Not all-medical practitioners agree.   Stephan B. Whitehead, an allergist at Boulder Medical Center, is largely skeptical that chiropractic care can directly benefit the immune system or allergies.    "There is no evidence that chiropractic care is helpful to impact the allergic response," he says.  

Some mainstream practitioners are open to the possibility that chiropractic care may help allergy symptoms, despite a lack of clinical studies.

Akey says she simply knows her body is functioning better.   " my body seems to better tolerate everything that is going on," Akey says.   "My chiropractic care has really helped me in a lot of different ways.   Everything feels more healthy from my organs to my respiratory system to my immune system."

Best of all, her voice is back in full force.

"I now have expanded my lung capacity, " Akey says "My voice is strong, crisper, with a better quality of tone."

Katz points to an August 2000 article in the Journal of Spinal Cord Medicine - a peer-reviewed medical journal - to support a purported link between the spinal cord and immune system.   According to the author, Mark Nash from the Department of Orthopedics and Rehabilitation at the University of Miami School of Medicine, "Many persons with spinal cord injury situations sustain episodic autonomic over stimulation, which is associated with suppressed immune functions."

This means that if the autonomic nervous system, which controls the functions of the lungs, heart and liver, among other organs, is hyperactive, the immune system cannot function at its highest capability.

Don Ward, an osteopath and family medicine practitioner, who works for Kaiser Permanente, says chiropractic care could be a good adjunct treatment for allergies, along with antihistamines, a healthy diet and conscious avoidance of allergens.  

"(Chiropractic care is) a viable option for patients who choose a drug-free approach to helping with their allergies," Ward says, adding that he has had a few patients get allergy relief from chiropractic care.

Osteopaths are skilled at body manipulation, but Ward does not personally use manipulative therapy for allergies, he says, He's open to the concept but adds that it's difficult to scientifically evaluate the effectiveness of any manipulative therapy because the only evidence of its effectiveness is anecdotal.

To be safe, Ward suggests that patients consult a personal physician before seeking any kind of alternative therapy.   Allergy symptoms can mimic those of other diseases, such as asthma, he warns.   "It is important to get a proper diagnosis."

Katz points out that chiropractors do not practice with the specific goal of treating allergies.   The purpose is to treat the mechanics of the body, in turn enabling it to funcion at a higher level.   The objective is to "treat the cause, not the effect," he says.

Chiropractic care is about "getting the nervous system to function at its best and making sure that the spine isn't subluxated (partially dislocated) so that the body can be as healthy as possible."   Piere Brunschwig, a local family medicine physician at Helios Health Center, who also practices holistic medicine, is open to Katz's claims even though he says chiropractic care is not his first suggestion to patients with allergies.

For sure chiropractic helps the nervous system, and there is a link between the immune and nervous systems,"   Bruschwig says, "but I would be curious to see studies on whether chiropractic would help the immune system in a positive way."

Physicians add that allergy sufferers should take basic precautions such as shutting windows at night and avoiding certain foods and pollens to prevent allergic responses.