Carl Hanson was crippled with back and joint pain when he first sought help from Dr. Robert Fortier-Bensen. Hanson already had been to a half-dozen doctors and had undergone surgery to repair herniated disks when he heard Fortier-Bensen was an expert in pain management. What the patient found out was that the milk and other dairy
products he ate to maintain his health were making him sick.

  Instead of putting Hanson on painkillers, Fortier-Bensen, medical director of the Center for Functional Medicine in Mandeville and Gulfport, Miss., looked instead for food allergies. The process was neither quick nor easy, but the result was a dramatic reduction of pain without pharmaceuticals and a lessening of other symptoms as well.

  "When I came to Dr. Bensen I was in bad shape," Hanson says. "I had some herniated disks in my back and I also had osteoarthritis. I had been through six or eight other doctors and was just getting worse. I had reached a point where I
was not functional." To Hanson’s surprise, instead of recommending additional surgery or medication, he prescribed
an elimination diet to explore whether allergies were exacerbating his physical decline. They found he was allergic
to dairy products.

  "Many people have food allergies and food intolerances, and they don’t recognize it," says Hanson, who now is lifestyle education assistant for Fortier-Bensen’s clinics. "I had food allergies all my life and didn’t know it; it had caused all sorts of problems. I was 37 before I realized I had a terrible allergy to dairy products. It gave me continual sinus problems and lots of other things. As soon as I got off dairy, my sinuses cleared up and I haven’t had sinus problems since. I didn’t know what it was like not to blow my nose 50 times a day."

Whatever works

  A physician and surgeon, Fortier-Bensen is unusual in that he melds his conventional medical knowledge with nutrition, acupuncture, lifestyle changes and other therapies, treating the body as a whole instead of addressing each ache or symptom individually. He is a clinical nutritionist and studied at an integrated medical school in Washington, D.C. The doctor calls on both conventional and alternative treatments, depending on the individual patient and their circumstances.

  "The problem is that most physicians are put into specialties and we tend to divide the body into parts," the doctor says. "Your sinuses may be running so you see your ENT and he gives you medicine for that; you have a urinary infection so you see your urologist and he gives you medicine for that; your joints hurt so you get medicine for that. You’re taking all these medicines and no one sits down to see how they relate. You have a less than holistic viewpoint.

  "In Carl’s case, he had surgery; it didn’t help because it was a Band-Aid. His was an inflammatory process caused by allergy. He had headaches and fatigue. We did simple things, but … he was willing to make a lifestyle change."

  Lifestyle changes alone don’t always work and aren’t always practical, however. In the case of environmental allergens – the dust, pollen, molds, dust mites
and other products of nature – and pollutants, getting rid
of the offending substance isn’t always an option. To fight back, patients can use medications such as antihistamines, decongestants and nasal steroids, or chronic sufferers can take weekly shots that increase the body’s ability to cope with
specific allergens without sending the immune system into overdrive.

  "What goes on in an allergy attack is your immune system is over-reacting to something in your environment; it’s trying to protect you, to fight infection," says Dr. Brandon Dorian, an allergist and pediatric rheumatologist at Ochsner Foundation. "It produces antibodies, proteins that fight bacteria. After breathing in oak pollen in the spring for several seasons, many people will begin making an allergic antibody which releases histamine." That’s the component that makes your nose itch, your throat scratchy and brings on sneezing.

  "The most important allergy problem in this area is
actually a perennial problem: dust mites. They love our humid climate," says Dorian, who began suffering from a dust-mite allergy shortly after he moved to New Orleans from Colorado, which has a drier climate. "The dust mites live in fabric. After breathing in dust mites all night long, a lot of people will have sneezing and a runny nose for the first few hours of the day." Patients can do a lot to alleviate that problem by encasing their pillows and mattresses in zippered synthetic covers, he says. Other suggestions include getting rid of carpeting and extra fabric accessories in the bedroom. For other of Mother Nature’s gifts, the treatment becomes more involved than a plastic cover.

  "Most things you become allergic to are airborne," Dorian says. "Cypress trees pollinate during the winter. There are a few other trees that pollinate during the winter, and then during the spring, the rest of the trees are pollinating, the grass is pollinating during the summer, weeds in the late summer and fall.
We’ve got pollens and spores here that can keep you wheezing and sneezing most of the year."

  For those who suffer temporary or periodic allergy attacks, Dorian prescribes antihistamines, nasal steroid sprays and sometimes antihistamine-decongestant combinations. Those are considered safe for most people, except those who suffer high blood pressure or men who have problems urinating due to prostate problems. If allergic reactions persist or are affecting a person for most of the year, the Ochsner doctor recommends allergy shots once a week for a year (less often after that) as a long-term solution. Working on the same theory as vaccinations, the shots introduce small doses of the allergen protein through injection, increasing a little each time to allow the body to become accustomed to the allergen and lessening the intensity of the immune system’s response.

  "For those not getting satisfactory results through medication and dust mite eradication, allergy shots can provide some real long-term relief. A large proportion of patients who receive allergy shots are able to get off their medications for nasal allergy problems."

  To determine which specific proteins need to be injected, doctors conduct a skin-prick test in which individual allergens are introduced into a patient’s skin one at a time through a needle prick. Pricks that develop a mosquito bite-like welt indicate which substances cause allergic reactions and which should be incorporated into an allergy-shot program. For many patients, periodically taking products such as Claritin and Allegra – which block the histamines the body releases, thus quelling allergic symptoms such as itchy nose and sneezing – for seasonal environmental allergies is a reasonable way to manage the problem, Dorian says. Even when a patient suffers chronic allergies, the immunizing shots aren’t always the right answer because it’s not a quick cure and requires patience and fortitude.

  "The problem with the allergy injection system is not that it doesn’t work, but that it takes a lot of injections over a long period of time for it to work," Dorian says. "You have to come into an office once a week for the first year, and then stay for 30 minutes after you receive the shot to make sure there is no adverse reaction. It’s a big commitment of time, but I’ve got plenty of patients who come in and get them because it does work."

  For food allergies, deleting the problem causer is best, though not always easy. The Center for Functional Medicine’s Fortier-Bensen says the strategy also demands commitment and constant vigilance on the part of the patient. It also requires education about how to avoid certain foods, what signals your body gives you when it is under duress (such as headaches, lightheadedness, aching joints) as well as what types of lifestyle changes would be beneficial. In addition, the nutritionist also helps patients pinpoint and bolster dietary deficiencies to make their bodies stronger overall.

  "Most of it is stuff that just makes sense," he says. "A lot of patients that I run in to know something is wrong and that they probably are allergic, but they don’t recognize it." He starts with a diary that tracks everything a patient eats and a diet that eliminates possible irritants, then gradually introduces them back into the diet to see if there is a reaction. The most common food allergies are to foods containing dairy, wheat and citrus products. Less common but often severe are intolerances to peanuts and a substance found in tomatoes, tobacco and peppers.

  The symptoms of allergic reactions can mimic other conditions and diseases, including diarrhea, sinus problems, achy joints, headaches, a rapid pulse after eating, abdominal discomfort, skin rashes, fatigue after eating, mood swings, irritability, nervousness, depression, and hot flashes and menstrual irregularities in women.

  "We learn to ignore our bodies," says patient-turned-educator Hanson. "Men are really bad about that; men chronically ignore what their body tells them. Women tend to be a little more in tune." Just recognizing the allergy is only the beginning. The harder part is maintaining the modifications that will stave off adverse reactions.

  "Because I’ve been through what most of [Fortier-Bensen’s] patients are going through, I have some practical alternatives to what is bothering them, such as substituting rice milk for cow’s milk," Hanson says. Other problems are more difficult to overcome, such as allergies to gluten, which comes from wheat and other grains, because manufacturers place it in products one wouldn’t suspect, like mixed snack nuts. Once patients become accustomed to reading labels and avoiding substances their bodies don’t like, they find a major improvement in their quality of life. "They feel an across-the-board improvement," he says, including less painful inflammation, better digestion and a clearer mind.

  Fortier-Bensen admits finding possible culprits takes a lot of time on the parts of the patient and doctor. As a homeopathic doctor, he conducts lengthy interviews with patients to learn their habits, physiology and other pertinent details and to determine the most efficacious method of treatment, using both conventional and alternative therapies. One of the hardest things is keeping patients on course during the lengthy process.

  "Everything about a person affects the body’s physiology," Fortier-Bensen says. "Patients sometimes are used to conventional medicine working the same for everybody, because it’s so strong it shuts down the allergic response. But Claritin and some other medicines put a great stress on your liver. You’re forcing the body to alter other things. We don’t know if we’re meant to constantly take all these things for a number of years."

  It’s not likely that the market for products to quell allergy symptoms will dwindle, however, because as many as one in five Americans suffers some kind of food allergies and millions of others have reactions to insect bites, dust mites, molds, spores, pollens, dust and other environmental irritants. Fortier-Bensen says he’s not trying to keep people from using the products that will make their life more comfortable.

  "You need to get to the cause," he says. "By using a multi-level approach to medicine, you can integrate the best of both worlds: conventional and alternative medicine. It takes both. I don’t make judgements about which is better. I just use what works best for the patient at the time. That’s good medicine."

  Although alternative therapies generally are not covered under current insurance plans, Fortier-Bensen says he believes an integration with conventional medicine will evolve.

  "[Homeopathic and alternative medicine] eventually will become commonplace," he says. "Consumers are the ones who are going to drive the demand for it because it not only will help them live longer but healthier lives. We’re all going to die, but you want to have a rectangularization of life, some quality of life. Medicine can keep you alive, but it can’t necessarily help you live well."