100 Diet Wise
doesn’t have any meaning for you, then try to think of it as a list of things
you couldn’t give up easily.
The first list may be quite revealing. It is amazing how many people
already know that foods can make them ill and yet never realize that their
diseases are so caused also. Sometimes a patient will inform me that he or
she cannot eat pork because it causes unpleasant symptoms, yet he or she
has bacon for breakfast almost daily! Similar cases are milk and beef or
chicken and egg (each pair comes from the same animal).
The second list contains clues to likely addictions. However,
these are not necessarily the foods that are making you ill. Tea, coffee and
chocolate are highly addictive substances. I try to get patients to think of
them as drugs because they have true pharmacological actions on the heart,
kidneys and brain. Chocolate can on occasion make people very ill and is
one of the well-known triggers of migraine, but unless you eat it regularly, more
than once a week, it is not what we are looking for. Nevertheless, put these binge
foods down. Make no mistake, they can cause symptoms.
How good are you on your BEST day?
Finally, we get to look at something cheerful. This is really a crucial self-
inventory question that you should ask yourself. How do you feel on your
best days? Do you actually have spells when you are completely free of
symptoms?
This is important if you do because, as I explain to patients, you
can always be at least as good as you are on your best days. It’s another
Scott-Mumby maxim that if you can feel good for one day, you can feel
good every day. Follow the logic: if you can be pretty well sometimes it
means there is no serious defect in your body, nothing is broken that can’t
be fixed. Doctors will tell you that you will experience pain every day from
arthritis. But what if some days the pain isn’t there? Doesn’t that ruin the
explanation that the pain comes from the arthritis? Pain may come and go
from day to day but joint damage does not.
I recall a case of a man in his fifties, let’s call him James, who lived a
pretty poor lifestyle and had a serious limp, due to severe arthritis of the hip.
He was scheduled soon for a hip replacement. I persuaded him to try the
plan described in this book and grudgingly he did so. He was very surprised
that by the end of the first week the pain and limp had gone. Unfortunately,
after only three weeks of relief he reverted to his old habits.
This is a very instructive story because James could not cope with
continuous attention to diet and so gave in to the pressures to have the hip