Smoking may create or aggravate existing respiratory allergy because cigarettes may contain (besides tobacco) many potentially allergenic ingredients, such as licorice and molasses.

An allergic person, child or adult, should avoid small rooms and enclosed spaces where crowds gather and smoke (such as the smoking section of movie houses) because hot tobacco smoke is a nonspecific irritant besides being a potential allergen.

Pyrethrum

Pyrethrum is a powder prepared from the dried flower of the pyrethrum plant, which is related to the ragweed plant. It is used as an insecticide to spray plants in backyards or in moth killers to preserve winter clothing and carpeting.

Kapok

These fibers are used for filling life preservers (because they remain afloat for hours without much absorption of water); for insulation purposes; and for less expensive sleeping bags and mattresses. (Kapok was used in the past as a filling for pillows to avoid highly allergenic feathers. However, this practice has now stopped because of the development of foam rubber, plastics, and synthetic fibers.) Kapok seeds provide an oil used in making soap and in the preparation of certain foods.

Flax

Flax is the Latin word for the linen plant which provides linseed oil and linen fibers. Linseed oil may cause allergies when eaten, inhaled, or touched, and linen fibers may cause eczema and rashes when they are used in clothing.

Flax fibers, seeds, or oil may be inhaled when one is near flaxseed meal (which is a food given to cattle and poultry) ; in beauty salons and barber shops (as some wave sets, shampoos, and hair tonics (Kreml) may contain it); using bird lime, carron oil, flaxseed poultices, furniture polish, linseed oil, paints, varnishes, linoleum, printer’s and lithographic ink, some soft soaps, and some depilatories; or using damask, table linen, cambric, handkerchief linen, toweling, oilcloth, and sewing thread.

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Research shows that over a third of people in pain get relief from inert

tablets that they believe to be painkillers. Headaches, migraine, insomnia, epilepsy and rheumatoid arthritis are among the conditions that are susceptible to placebos.

In some cases, the symptoms may have been psychosomatic in origin, which would account for the good effect of the placebo. It may be that the patient feels gratified by someone taking his or her illness seriously, or it may simply be the power of suggestion – because they feel they are being offered a cure, they actually begin to get better. In other cases, there may be a mixture of organic illness and psychosomatic illness behind the symptoms – the two can coexist, one feeding on the other. Again, the placebo could be powerful because it meets some psychological need for attention and treatment.

With diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, it is less obvious how the placebo effect works. However, the immune system plays an important role in rheumatoid arthritis, and this may provide a clue. A new form of treatment, or a new and more enthusiastic doctor, may act as a morale-booster which has a beneficial effect on the immune system – the sort of effect that the psychoneuroimmunologists are currently studying. Placebo effects are also seen in allergy, perhaps for the same reason.

A characteristic feature of the placebo effect is that it does not last all that long: it is usually only a matter of weeks, and two to six months is about the most that can be expected. If a patient responds to a new treatment and is still well after a year, it is unlikely to be a placebo effect.

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