In a recent
study by researchers, who are a team of medical professionals, in Israel presented their experiment and results at a meeting of the American Academy of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology. There experiment is helping to discover new ways to help people with an
allergy to lactose to help handle consuming dairy. For their experiment they gave
people with lactose allergies very little amounts of dairy. They were monitored by allergist, Michael Levy, from Assaf Harofeh Medical Center in Zerifin. He would give
them increasing amounts of dairy until they reached 120 milligrams or an amount
of dairy they could handle. The researchers then asked the patients to consume
that amount two times a day, every day. Every month the researchers would examine
them again and either keep the patients at the same level of diary or increase
the level of diary. Their results were somewhat consistent. Over half of their
patients were doing well with their program and could consume 7,200 milligrams
of milk protein. But others could only consume very little amounts.
I found
many themes of nature of science in this article. One of them is that a
person’s view and experience can influence that data. This is because some of
their patients may have limited the amount of milk protein they consumed
because they were afraid of having an allergic reaction. Other themes of
science include science is collaborative and science is subject to debate and
tentative. This is because other universities have conducted similar tests like
this experiment. But in contrast, they have found differing results to the
experiment done in Israel.
The article I read
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/348637/description/Therapy_for_milk_allergy_offers_hope_and_caution
This website helped me to see the names and credibility of the researchers involved in this experiment http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749(12)02997-1/fulltextHelpful websites
http://www.livestrong.com/article/438055-therapy-for-lactose-intolerance/
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/lactose-intolerance/DS00530/METHOD=print
The findings by the researchers in Israel make sense. It is like any other thing that a person can build up their tolerance for, such as: spicy food or milk. Lactose intolerance is caused by a deficiency of lactase, an enzyme produced by the lining of the small intestine. This study is very dependent on who the researchers used as test subjects for the experiment. This brings about another NOS theme- the importance of repeatability. Lactose intolerance can vary due to many factors such as age, ethnicity, diseases and cancer treatments that have taken place. The Israel researchers may have found their more positive results because they did not vary their subjects enough, or did not test enough people.
ReplyDeleteThe source I used is:
Deletehttp://www.mayoclinic.com/health/lactose-intolerance/DS00530/METHOD=print
To be fair, though, lactose intolerance isn't exactly the same as eating spicy food. It would probably be better to compare it to some other allergic reaction, like a peanut allergy, or to a toxin, like snake venom. Both of those have a much more quantifiable reaction than discomfort in one's mouth. That said, the basic premise is still the same: Mithridatism is a somewhat effective and widely used technique to gain immunity to certain toxins. It has been shown to be effective in adults for building resistance to various animal venoms, and occasionally in children for treating peanut allergies. If you're interested, I've linked an article below. This practice isn't actually very well documented, which is odd considering that this has been a thing for well over 2000 years.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridatism
-Sebastian Wolf