In 2006 I suffered a 60db single-sided sudden sensorineural hearing loss, followed later by vertigo attacks and a diagnosis of Meniere’s Disease. I have since made a full recovery after suffering for 4 years. In my case these symptoms were the result a simple but powerful food allergy, which itself was brought on by stress.
I have no other typical allergy symptoms of any kind. I’ve constructed this site in the hope that it may help someone else overcome the same or similar problems. None of the ENT’s I used had any clue that an allergy could be the cause of my disorder. None of the allergiest I used had any clue that you can cure an allergy.
I have no idea how common it is for an allergy to be the ongoing cause for these symptoms, but I suspect it may explain why some people spontaneously recover from these disorders while others continue to suffer, and why steroids (an auto-immune suppressant) and Zinc sometimes works as a cure.
In 2006 I had a single-sided hearing loss that was brought on by extreme emotional stress. I remember going to sleep the night before and telling myself to swallow all the tension so I could sleep, the very next morning I awoke with a 60db loss in one ear.
In addition to the hearing loss I also suffered from loud tinnitus and distorted hearing. I was placed on a low salt diet, which did nothing to help me and gave me mild vertigo each time I performed it. I did get some good results with Zinc, but nothing consistent.
Once I was diagnosed with an allergy, all I had to do was remove the allergen, which in this case meant a change in diet. I was extremely careful not to eat any pre-packaged or restaurant food, since they could contain small amounts of allergen. I treated the allergy as a serious life & death condition and carefully restricted all the food I ate to avoid any accidental ‘poisoning’.
Two weeks after completely stopping milk & chocolate my hearing came back, suddenly & spontaneously, without the use of steroids or zinc or anything else. Unlike the slow progression when I used steroids, the change back to normal was relatively sudden.
Since then I’ve had normal hearing with only some relatively mild residual tinnitus; however over the course of the next two years I periodically become allergic to new foods (e.g. eggs, yeast, pears, honey, etc.) and relapsed. I would then have to retake the allergy blood tests to find what had changed and avoid even more foods. During this period I very-very slowly reintroduce chocolate which I remained non-allergic to until finding the cure for the allergies (see below).
I should add that I also discovered I have one environmental allergy to dust mites. So I’ve done everything I can to eliminate or reduce my exposure; removed bedroom carpets, use dust-mite proof mattress & pillow covers, etc.
“According to immunologist Dr. Michael Levi, an allergy is like a “phobia” of the immune system. In the 1950’s Levi won the World Health Association Award for his research demonstrating that viruses were infectious. As a result of his many years of work with the immune system, Levi contends that, when a person develops an allergy, the immune system has in essence formed a kind of phobic reaction to a certain type of substance, and then begins to panic when it gets around it. Symptoms of an allergy are produced by the results of this type of phobic reaction. Levi also asserts that other forms of allergies are like a “tantrum” of the immune system — that is, the immune system is throwing some sort of fit because it was not being taken care of properly, or was getting so fatigued and tired that it was striking out as a person or a child might have a tantrum.” -Robert Dilts
Form: http://www.nlpu.com/Articles/article9.htmToday, a phobia can be treated and resolved quickly and effectively due to recent psychological advances. When Dr. Levi made the claim that an allergy was a phobia of the immune system, pioneers in the field of rapid change psychology got thinking: “If we can treat a phobia quickly” they thought, “and an allergy is a type of phobia, perhaps we can cure allergies with similar methods.”
From http://hypnosismontreal.com/a-cure-for-allergies.html
To me it was clear from the very beginning that psychological stress caused my hearing loss in the first place. And because an allergy is another form of a phobia and behaves as a conditioned response, similar psychological treatments can be used to cure it. The following two articles quoted above provide background material on allergies as a “phobic response of the immune system.”
As a result I have had complete success eliminating all my allergies simultaneously by undergoing Ericksonian Hypnotherapy along with Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). The process took 15 minutes, was targeted directly to my allergies and was pain free, no further treatments were required (I did have a prior session to learn self-hypnosis). The practitioner who treated me, Doug O’Brien, also provided an audio recording of the session which I repeated several times post-treatment to reinforce the reprogramming; I found having the recording extremely helpful.
I also found Dr. John E. Sarno’s book The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain (1998) very helpful.
Now for the science! Because I relapsed I had arranged a blood test to find out what else I had become allergic too (yet again) but as events turned out I took the blood test 7 days after being cured and my blood test proved the complete success of the treatment. My IBA scores also showed improvement, this may have had something to do with taking a lot of L-Glutamine (12grams a day). However, the L-Glutamine did not cure me.
Resources:
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http://www.houseearclinic.com/allergies.htm - the only medical practice I could find that acknowledges the connection between allergies and hearing disorders, including sensorineural hearing loss & Meniere’s Disease; please note that I am not a patient
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Two labs that provide reliable IgG food allergy blood tests
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https://www.neurorelief.com (I used this lab)
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http://www.thepaleodiet.com/ - The Paleo Diet (book). Going cold-turkey on an elimination diet will also determine if the problem is the result of a food an allergy (instead of the blood test), but will not help if it’s an environmental allergy; it’s also much harder to do but can provide relief earlier
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Allergies as “phobic responses of the immune system”
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Short article: http://hypnosismontreal.com/a-cure-for-allergies.html
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Long article: http://www.nlpu.com/Articles/article9.htm
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The Ericksonian/NLP practitioner who cured my allergies, Doug O’Brien
can be contacted here http://www.ericksonian.com -
Books by Dr. John E. Sarno on stress & the mind-body connection
- Mind Over Back Pain (1982)
- Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection (1991)
- The Mindbody Prescription: Healing the Body, Healing the Pain (1998)
- The Divided Mind: The Epidemic of Mindbody Disorders (2007)
If what I’ve published helps even just one person, it will be worth the effort.
“whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.”
– Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 4:8 (37a)
