Allergies/Asthma: The Honest Spectator

“I don’t give advice, I give information that I have confidence in, with the occasional opinion.”  This sums up my beloved friend, Henry Ehrlich, author of the popular website, asthmaallergieschildren.com.  I met Henry the same day I met the Auvi-Q®.  Two very exciting moments!  I had declared myself as the president of his fan club and our friendship was cemented.  Over the years, I’ve come to realize that he has many fans, but I couldn’t put my finger on why until recently.
Henry is not a parent of a child with food allergies, nor a celebrity and leads a very average life, or so he says. BUT, Henry has a following due to his commitment in helping parents understand their challenges, hopes and plans while remaining an honest spectator willing to share the truth.
Enjoying another Sunday afternoon phone call with Henry, I had to ask him what’s next?  Food allergy hope?  A new way to slice bread or eating spaghetti without splashing sauce? When Henry Ehrlich says, “stay tuned,” what he really means is hold on tight.  There is nothing that comes out of his mouth or in written word that is fluff or should be taken lightly.  I have a feeling something notable and profound is coming our way.
“I am currently working on a book with Dr. Xiu-Min Li about her other work that will be published by a scientific publishing company in 2016. It will go into detail about her research on an asthma treatment, which is at least as advanced as the food allergy treatment” Henry explained.  His first book about Dr. Li’s work, Food Allergies: Traditional Chinese Medicine, Western Science, and the Search for a Cure has become a food allergy books shelf standard.
I’m really looking forward to the asthma chapters. Talking asthma is a language I speak as my family has hundreds of hours of nebulizing treatments clocked and many school days missed forever. Henry voiced, “the asthma treatment ASHMI (anti-asthma herbal medical intervention) compares favorably to steroids in controlling inflammation, but without all the side effects. This is not a boast—it has all been documented in peer-reviewed journals”. My family has benefited from Traditional Chinese Medicine for asthma control.  My son went from having what I used to call, two week asthma storms, to missing only two days of schools!
I can talk asthma all day long, but Henry kept me in line and explained that, “the new book will also describe her work as a practitioner across a spectrum of allergic diseases that are so far untreatable except by the same old avoidance-and-steroids methods. The clinical piece was something I largely avoided in the first book because I wanted to explore the science before I was influenced by too many anecdotal success stories. I come from a background that regards complementary and alternative medicine skeptically. However, you can’t look at the record of allopathic medicine and the pharmaceutical industry for 100 years and not think that we might look somewhere else for answers. For food allergies and even for asthma, we can’t even get the diagnosis right a lot of the time, let alone treat them”.
I doubt Henry had planned to become so immersed in Dr. Li’s work or our food allergy community, but nevertheless, he is now hanging out with the best of us.  “I was more focused on environmental allergies and asthma because I had a history of them and so did one of my kids. However, you can’t try to cover the whole landscape without noticing how much of it is currently dominated by food allergies and I can’t help but be moved by the plight of the kids and their families”.  Henry’s journey to our food allergy world began with his cousin and pediatric allergist, Dr. Paul Ehrlich and a colleague, Dr. Larry Chiaramonte. Check out Asthma Allergies and Children: a parent’s guide if you already haven’t!
Dr. Li’s work has been strikingly life changing and moving to several parents so much that two families have created a crowd sourcing effort to fund, what Henry calls, “a fascinating little study is aimed at establishing biomarkers to help establish whether a treatment is making a patient less reactive to her allergens. I call this ‘tolerance in a test tube’.” He wrote a tidy little piece about this: Providing Tolerance in a Test Tube: Novel Study Points Way Towards Relief from Severe Food Allergies. BUT, to learn more about the study and how to offer support, visit: https://www.crowdrise.com/ chinesemedicineforfa/ fundraiser/tcmforfoodallergies
Henry might just top my list of most fascinating friends in the food allergy world. He believes in homemade food, reading the New York Times, enjoying good tea and finding a better way to live with asthma and allergies.  Did I mention he was a speech writer in his previous career and we’ve all probably heard or read his words!
 Looking for more Henry? You can find him his website, Asthma Allergies Children or participating in very lively conversation on the Facebook Book Group: Chinese Herbs for Allergies or occasionall strolling the streets of Brooklyn.