antibiotics over-prescription and adult-onset allergies

Besides over-prescription of antibiotics in childhood leading to allergies/asthma/eczema in adulthood, the way that food is grown and processed in our country is another contributor to wheat allergy and gluten intolerance. (check out Michael Pollan's books: http://www.michaelpollan.com/indefense.php)
Interestingly, friends from overseas come to the States and can't tolerate the white flour here; it seems that a croissant or baguette in France is made from a better flour because of the different growing methods and processing/storage of wheat over there as opposed to what happens here in the U.S. And vice-versa: I can almost tolerate gluten and wheat in the EU.

So however much penicillin I took for ear infections and tonsillitis as a child is only part of the saga. Nowadays for example, homeopaths try things like taking dairy out of the diet for a child with an ear infection -- and the infection can clear without antibiotics. Dairy creates mucus whether you're allergic to it or not... but if you are reacting to different foods that you eat daily, the process of chewing and swallowing that food irritates the inner ear and sinuses on the way down. Then you get a cold and it all goes haywire; take the allergen(s) out of the mix, and the reaction goes down and hopefully that helps the body fight off the cold and ensuing infection on its own.

Last February I had a sinus infection and then an ear infection and ruptured ear drum--!? And then about a month of fluid behind both ears…what my homeopath had to say about my experience was that since I changed my diet (no gluten, dairy on a rotational basis - once every four days), I then had this illness that was just like in childhood but worse, like a regression. So I was having I guess a "healing crisis." I have heard this term before, but actually experiencing it on multiple levels over the last year has been very enlightening.

And the other part of the story in this multi-faceted problem, not just for me but for the general population, is the fact that antibiotics wipe out intestinal flora that we need to help our immune system and to fight allergens: wipe out the good flora and the bad flourish. It is really frightening how the medical world hands out so many pharmaceuticals as band-aids instead of getting to the root of people's problems. These band-aids cause even more problems--I am a walking example of this. We are left to wonder in my case: what if I didn't take all those antibiotics and just tried removing dairy and/or wheat? Yay, modern medicine.