By Dennis Yang

Huh?  “Allergies and Erectile Dysfunction?”  Why are they in the same article?  Do they have something in common?  Plenty, as it turns out.  Here is how I discovered it.

I used to be badly allergic to cats.  It was bad enough that within a few minutes of entering a house with a cat, I would start sneezing uncontrollably, and within half an hour or so, my breathing would become labored.  This is exactly what happened whenever my wife and I visited my animal-loving parents-in-law who had two cats despite their two-week long house cleaning efforts.  On our visit for Christmas a few years ago, however, I did not have any allergic reactions for the entire trip of four days.

My sister-in-law also has cat allergies, and brought Benadryl with her for me.  A couple of hours into eating, laughing, and gift unwrapping, it dawned on her that I was not having an allergic reaction.  I was not aware of this myself because I was not even sniffling.  What was going on?  Was the house that clean?  It took a while for my wife and I to realize that the only thing that I had done differently from the previous visits to my in-laws was drinking vinegar.  Drinking vinegar?  Yes, drinking vinegar.  I had been drinking diluted vinegar for a couple of months prior to our Christmas trip that year.

I did not drink vinegar for my cat allergies, of course.  I did not even know that vinegar had such a remarkable effect on allergies.  I drank it because I heard that vinegar was the secret to the incredible flexibility of the Chinese acrobats, and I wanted to see it for myself.  I am not sure if drinking vinegar increased my flexibility much from the experiment, but I discovered that it had a remarkable ability to cure cat allergies by accident.

Formally trained as an engineer, I am a natural skeptic.  So, I performed a series of experiments to be sure that vinegar was what cured my cat allergies.  I would stop drinking vinegar, and see if my allergy would return.  Upon its eventual return, I would then start drinking vinegar again to see if my allergy would disappear again.  I would ask my friends and patients who have cat or seasonal allergies to do the same.  From these experiments, while I only gathered a limited number of data, I am convinced that drinking vinegar does indeed free one from cat & seasonal allergies as long as vinegar consumption is sustained.

What I also found from these experiments is that vinegar also had almost an immediate and powerful effect on morning erections.  I remember that my father, who practiced acupuncture and herbs, prescribed soaking eggshells in vinegar and drinking it for male virility with a warning “young males should not drink this; they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves.”  I found it to be true, albeit three decades later.

If you want to try this for yourself, you can use what I do as a guideline.

• The vinegar I drink is unpasteurized and naturally fermented apple cider vinegar.  I buy it from Whole Foods.
• To tame the smell and the taste of vinegar, I dilute it with apple cider.  I tried water, orange juice, honey, etc., and found apple cider works best for me.
• I mix about 3 table spoons of vinegar with 1 cup of apple cider, and drink it with meals.  This ratio may be too acidic for some, and may cause discomfort in the stomach.  Dilute it more in that case.  The point is getting the vinegar into the body, so the ratio is not important.
• Drinking vinegar with meals helps not only with reducing the acidity, but also the digestion of food.
• Based on the data I have gathered thus far, it takes about a week of daily vinegar consumption before seeing drastic improvements in erectile dysfunction, and a couple of weeks for allergies.

I want to point out that drinking vinegar did not permanently make my cat allergies disappear; if I stop drinking it, the allergies come back in about a couple of weeks or so, but significantly reduced intensity, i.e., sneezing in 4-5 hours instead of 1-2 minutes.  So, I drink it whenever I feel I need it these days.

I have not come across a satisfactory scientific explanation of the effect of vinegar on allergies and male virility.  What I have found out thus far is that vinegar has an alkalizing effect on the body, and this may reduce irritants in the body so that the immune system does not stay overactive.  I suspect that alkalization also improves male virility via an improved circulatory system.  If you have deep knowledge on the subject, I would appreciate it very much if you would share it with us.