In a recent study, one of our products, Vital Oxide, has proven effective against the Swine Flu virus. Under specific testing conditions the study found that within five minutes Vital Oxide demonstrated “complete inactivation” of the virus.

The swine flu, or H1N1, virus has received considerable attention in the past few months due to reported cases and fatalities throughout various parts of the world. According to the World Health Organization, “73 countries have officially reported 25,288 cases of influenza A (H1N1) infection, including 139 deaths.”

The mission of Vital Technologies is to produce green and environmentally friendly products to help protect schools, hospitals, daycare centers, cruise ships, and homes from harmful bacteria and microbials. For more information on this study, check out this exciting press release from Vital Technologies, the maker of Vital Oxide.

Symptoms of a coffee allergy can include runny nose and watery eyes, wheezing, coughing, nausea and vomiting or stomach cramps, and digestive trouble such as diarrhea. Skin irritation such as rashes may also develop.

A coffee allergy may be induced by one or more of several coffee components.

The protein found in coffee is one possible reason for an allergic reaction to coffee. Symptoms to coffee proteins are severe, including difficulty breathing, tongue and facial swelling, and shock.

Pesticides and herbicides are another possible culprit of a coffee allergy. Coffee drinkers who notice a reaction when consuming one brand of coffee but not another may be experiencing a chemical sensitivity to pesticides and herbicides. Consuming organic coffee may solve the problem. Symptoms of such a sensitivity include rash and a headache.

Keep in mind that other components of coffee can cause reactions that, while unpleasant, may or may not be indicative of an allergy. For instance, caffeine, whether in coffee, soda, chocolate, or tea, can cause jitters, headache, irritability, and insomnia in many people. These symptoms are not suggestive of an allergy. However, caffeine can cause allergic reactions such as a rash.

Lactose intolerance - again, we are not speaking of an allergy to milk - is another reason one may react to coffee. Obviously, reactions to dairy may be solved by drinking coffee black.

If you suspect an allergy to any of coffee's components, have your allergist test for them.

An experimental asthma treatment cut the rate of extreme asthma attacks by 32 percent and reduced trips to the ER by 84 percent, Fox News reports.

The device is called Alair. It's a thin tube that is inserted into the lung's air passages to kill off some of the muscle tissue. This in turn reduces the narrowing of airways.

Dr. Mario Castro from Washington University in St. Louis explains, "In asthma, what happens is these patients develop enlarged smooth muscles surrounding their brochial tubes. This contributes to asthma attacks. The idea is to decrease that."

The study conducted by Dr. Castro and his colleagues followed 297 patients in six different countries for a year. Two-thirds of these patients received three treatments with Alair, while the remaining third were given a placebo. Results were promising with 79 percent of patients who received Alair treatments showing improvement.

Alair is an ideal solution for controlling asthma cases that do not respond well to medications. The treatment already has been approved in Europe. A decision regarding approval from the U.S. FDA is expected in the fall.

Our AchooAllergy.com staff is excited, because our web design team recently decided to renovate our web pages for SEBO vacuum cleaners. SEBO is a German company that is well known for its high level of quality and its excellent engineering. One of the most popular vacuums that SEBO produces is the Felix Premium Onyx upright vacuum.

The Felix Onyx has a few interesting features. The Felix adapts to the level of cleaning needed with an adjustable power control on the handle. You can choose how aggressively to clean the carpets or how gently you want to treat the upholstery. Additionally, the Onyx keeps an extremely low profile of less than 6 inches. That flexibility means that you can reach underneath your bed and underneath other furniture with ease.

In my eyes, the most distinct feature of this vacuum is the large carrying handle on the vacuum’s body. While vacuuming, you can use the large, ergonomic handle on the body of the Felix to change the upright into a handheld vacuum. By combining that feature with the quick release hose handle, you are able to clean stairs and reach above-the-floor areas without major interruption. The Felix only weighs a little more than 10 pounds so anyone should be able to transport this vacuum cleaner.

This vacuum is light, but it still comes with a power head that can clean most carpeting. The Felix Onyx comes with the SEBO ET-1 power head. This power head has a 12-inch cleaning path. For hard floors and expensive rugs, you can turn the brush roller off by simply pressing a switch on the power head.

Today with over 3,000,000 upright vacuum cleaners sold, SEBO is one of the global leaders in commercial upright vacuum cleaners. You can bring a professional cleaning machine into your home with the SEBO Felix Onyx upright vacuum cleaner.

Posted by Jamie on Wednesday, June 10, 2009

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Strawberry allergies are fairly common. Symptoms are similar to those of many food allergies with the most common symptom being oral allergy syndrome. Oral allergy syndrome includes symptoms like tingling, itching, and swelling in the mouth, throat, tongue, and lips. Hay fever-like symptoms, such as watery eyes, sneezing, and a runny nose, are also possible strawberry allergy reactions. Hives and contact dermatitis (skin irritation where strawberry allergen makes contact) are also common reactions. Severe symptoms include respiratory problems, asthma, and anaphylactic shock.

People with strawberry allergies need to avoid eating and coming into contact with strawberries. Avoidance is not always as straight-forward as it seems. Strawberry leaves are sometimes found in herbal teas and cosmetics; strawberry flavoring is used in skin care products and medicines; and shampoo, conditioner, air freshener, laundry detergent and other household products may contain strawberry components. Allergic individuals should read the labels of such products carefully.

Interestingly, as a recent Swedish study discovered, white strawberries do not cause allergies; only red strawberries cause allergic reactions. This interesting fact seems to be because the white strawberries do not contain the suspected protein allergy which is apparently related to the strawberry's color. Breeders are working on making the white strawberry as flavorful as red ones.

As is often the case, strawberry allergies are intertwined with another allergy: An allergy to strawberries often coincides with birch pollen allergies because their allergens are similar. It is common for those with birch pollen allergies to develop a secondary allergy to strawberries. However, the reverse is not true; those with strawberry allergies are not more likely to be allergic to birch pollen.

For more information, visit our Food Allergy FAQ and our Food Allergy/Anaphylaxsis Solution Guide.

A recent study conducted by researchers at Duke and Arkansas Children's Hospital suggests that long-term tolerance in children with peanut allergies may be achieved through carefully administered doses of peanuts.

The therapy consists of exposure to the peanut allergen at doses starting as small as 1/1000 of a peanut and increasing in size up to as much as 15 peanuts a day. This incremental dosage of peanuts changes how the body's immune system responds to the presence of the peanut protein that causes the allergic response.

Doctors involved in the study reported their findings of key immunologic changes, the factor that indicates the children's tolerance is likely long-term.

The body appears to build tolerance quickly, as tests of several immunologic indicators suggest. Dr. Wesley Burks, Chief of the Division of Pediatric Allergy and Immunology at Duke states, "At the start of the study, these participants couldn't tolerate one-sixth of a peanut. Six months into it, they were ingesting 13 to 15 peanuts before they had a reaction."

The treatment is still in initial stages and is not currently recommended for patients. One remaining question is whether the decrease in response to the peanuts coincided with a natural outgrowing of the allergy. The next phase of testing is conducting a blinded study in which treated children are compared to a control group.

Nevertheless, the study is promising for families who struggle with peanut allergies. The allergy is among the most deadly. In fact, almost half of the 150 annual deaths attributed to food allergies are caused by peanut allergies. However, as Dr. Burks states, the treatment "gives other parents and children hope that we'll soon have a safe, effective treatment that will halt allergies to certain foods."

NOTE: THIS TREATMENT SHOULD NEVER BE TRIED WITHOUT STRICT MEDICAL SUPERVISION.

Last week, one of our intrepid staff members signed us up for a Twitter account, and we have not looked back. We are excited that our fellow allergy sufferers, fans, and Achoo the Blog readers will benefit from our Twitter presence with up-to-the-minute news about our company and products. Twitter also allows us to offer special deals and giveaways to our most loyal customers and Twitter followers.

To celebrate our recent Twitter launch, we are giving away a Comfort-Aire 30 pint dehumidifier with a value of over $200. All you have to do is be one of the first 100 people to sign up to follow AchooAllergy on Twitter. Using your Twitter account, direct message us the word #contest to be included in the drawing. The only way to qualify for this special offer is on Twitter. Don’t hesitate to sign up, because our goal is to have 100 followers by this weekend.

Comfort-Aire dehumidifiers quietly and efficiently remove moisture from the air in your home. Because of the compact size of the 30 pint, this dehumidifier can blend into any room in your home. This unit has an automatic shut-off feature that ensures that the drain container will never overflow. It also has an auto restart feature to protect against power outages.

Confused about Twitter or not sure what I am talking about? Twitter is a free social networking and blogging service. It lets users send short updates to their friends, family, and co-workers who have to subscribe to their Twitter page.

Get started following our Twitter updates today! Click on the Twitter link on the right hand side of this blog or check us out at @AchooAllergy.

On June 1, Miele launched the latest upright vacuum cleaner in their S7 series, the Miele Twist. Like the S7 uprights that were originally launched in late 2008, the Twist is a quality vacuum cleaner but at a slightly lower price point.

Closest in features to the Calypso, Jazz, and Salsa, the Miele Twist has the same great features of these vacuums with two exceptions. The Twist lacks the LED lamp. In its place the Twist has a solid rubber bumper across the front. The second difference is the HEPA filter. The Twist comes standard with Miele's Super Air Clean filter, BUT is able to be upgraded easily to Miele's Active HEPA filter at any time.

Similar to the Miele Pisces canister vacuum, the Twist comes in a Royal Blue finish and retains the best features of this series, including the Swivel-Neck design, durable ABS construction, amazing wand reach, two separate motors, automatic height adjustment and large capacity, self-sealing HyClean dustbags.

Priced at the very bottom of the S7 line, the Miele Twist is an excellent starter vacuum for someone interested in the Miele uprights, but not willing to pay for the top of the line models.

Although many people believe they are allergic to chocolate, true allergies to chocolate - specifically, the cocoa it's made from - are actually rare. In addition, many reactions to chocolate are not true allergies, but are rather intolerances to other ingredients in the chocolate, such as milk, nuts, gluten, corn syrup, dyes, or other additives. Alternately, people may be sensitive to the naturally-occuring chemicals in chocolate like caffeine, theobromine, or phnylethylamine.

Whatever the case may be, common reactions to chocolate in those who are affected include headache, heartburn, skin rashes, and breathing problems. Sensitivity to chocolate ingredients can also trigger asthma attacks.

One reason for the prevalence of reactions to chocolate is that a good part of mainstream chocolate products in the United States contain several additives; it's these that people react to. The purest forms of chocolate contain cocoa liquor, cocoa butter, sugar, maybe vanilla - and nothing else. Mass produced chocolate, on the other hand, is often primarily composed of the additives mentioned above (corn syrup, dyes, etc.).

If an allergist has diagnosed you with an actual cocoa allergy, of course you need to stay away altogether.