Allergies and cancer may be connected, this stud of over 34,000 Seventh-day Adventists suggests. But the connection is hardly straightforward. The risk of breast cancer "increased with increasing numbers of allergies," for example, while "ovarian cancer risk was decreased." And "among males, reaction to medic tions is associated with a . . . 33 percent increased ris of all cancer[s]," while "females experienced a 21 percent decreased risk associated with reaction to medications." - P. K. Mills et al., "Allergy and cancer: Organ site-sp' cific results from the Adventist health study," American Journal , Epidemiology 136 (1992): 287-95.
Editor's note. From the natural-healing perspective allergies and cancer are both imbalances. The immune system overreacts in allergies, while it underreacts in cancer. Perhaps such opposites occur together because they counterbalance one another, as when a dowr ward push on one section of a waterbed causes compensating- rise in another.