104 Diet Wise
Fasting is the undercut
One logical way to find out whether you have food allergies or intolerance
is to fast: if you stop eating and your condition clears up, there are few
who would argue that food is incriminated. Surprisingly, most people feel
terrific on a fast. Instead of being tired, miserable and hungry, the majority
of patients report a zest and clarity of mind which they never knew or had
forgotten existed. “I could have appeared on ‘Mastermind,’” said one lady
(meaning the TV program of the day; now superceded, I suppose, by “Who
Wants to be a Millionaire?”).
However you will be surprised to learn that I do not recommend
fasting as an approach to the problem, no matter how logical. I have seen
patients get into all kinds of difficulty with that method. Often, all foods
will begin to react violently and getting back to any kind of safe eating
platform is very difficult.
Some people should not fast on any account and to do so could
be considered dangerous. The most obvious case is diabetes, where blood
sugar control may be lost. But children should not fast, nor pregnant
women or anyone in a very weak condition; neither should any person with
schizophrenia or who has threatened or attempted suicide.
Only if you are robust and determined, preferably under the
guidance of someone who knows the likely pitfalls of fasting, should you
attempt this fast track approach. I will give you full instructions in Chapter
14.
Bowel transit time
The success of exclusion dieting rests on continuing for long enough to clear
the bowel of all banned food residues. This usually takes about four days,
but varies slightly from patient to patient. Thus it is possible to predict with a
fair amount of certainty that symptoms will have cleared by the morning of
the fifth day. Prior to that there are several days of ‘withdrawal’ symptoms,
the severity of which again varies from one individual to another.
The masking phenomenon I have described depends upon a
previous ‘dose’ of the foods still being in the body at the time of the next
ingestion of that same food: thus at the end of the clearing period there
are no more hidden allergies – not to food, at least. This is why the patient
feels better.
The corollary to this is that there is no “masking” effect and any
food now eaten will produce a marked reaction in accordance with the