What to Do if the Diet Fails 139Did you carry out the diet correctly?
This is a vital point: if you didn’t do it exactly as written you may have denied
yourself the beneficial result. This is not like a slimming plan in which you
can cheat just a teeny bit and it doesn’t matter. You must remember what
we are trying to do, and that is to clear your bowel completely of the suspect
foods. If after four days of being careful you then slip up and eat something
forbidden, it means that we have to wait another four or five days for it
to clear. In the meantime you may make no recovery, and we shall learn
nothing. If you lapse again in this manner, you’ll get nowhere.
So – did you stick to it rigidly? This isn’t a moral or character-building
point but a very practical one.
One of my patients is so sensitive to tomatoes that he cannot enter
a room where they are being cut up without having an immediate asthma
attack (incidentally, he was eating them regularly when we commenced the
plan but the severity of the condition was completely masked). I have several
cases of individuals who cannot touch an egg, or even handle an object that
has contained egg, without getting a skin eruption. These are, needless to
say, extreme cases. I am only making the point that quantity is unimportant,
tiny amounts count, therefore lapses may defeat the whole plan.
It does happen that certain individuals feel better even if they
restrict foods carelessly and make mistakes. But they are lucky; you mustn’t
count on chance. It is more scientific to make things work in your favor.
Nothing could be more disappointing than to struggle through two weeks
of deprivation only to find you did not get well because of carelessness.
You might even be misled into thinking that you were not a food
allergy or intolerance case and miss the very cure that you are seeking. If
you have not followed the diet correctly you have little choice other than to
start again and follow it as written for at least seven more days before making
up your mind as to the result. If you then feel no better, you may assume that
the diet did not help and proceed as given in this chapter.
Bowel transit time
Sometimes what prevents success is that the bowel is sluggish. Food may
take as long as two to three weeks to pass through, even when stools are
evacuated each day. Ironically, the bowel can be stuffed with old hardened
food residues, while food eaten later hurries past. Of course, foods will not
unmask properly if they are present in the bowel. This can make matters
very confusing.