124 Diet Wise
making you ill. We know there were several from the fact that you now feel
better.
Incidentally, trouble foods rarely come singly. Many patients, I find,
mistakenly expect to find one big troublemaker and that all the rest will be
fine. This is not so: if you have developed one intolerance, you will almost
certainly have several. Harris Hosen, one of the father-figures among
American allergists, showed in a study of fifty consecutive patients that the
average number of food allergies was between nine and ten per patient,
though some had as many as twenty-five.
My own experience accords well with this.
How do we now pinpoint the correct foods? To do this you must eat
each item under test conditions and see what happens. Those that cause
symptoms are allergies and should be avoided. Any that appear harmless
may be returned to your diet and continued with, as before.
We call this challenge testing.
Of course, like many patients, you may be feeling so much better
that you don’t want to hurry to change anything; you would rather not carry
out any testing for the present. That is understandable.
But I’m afraid we cannot allow things to linger. The longer you stay
off a food, the more likely the reaction will settle down. Even a gap as short
as three weeks might be enough for the food to appear safe and pass the
challenge test stage. That would be unfortunate because you would be led
to believe it was a “safe” food, when in fact it would soon flare up and start
causing trouble once more.
Think of a log fire that dies down to embers. It may glow very little
and seem safe to put your hand in the ashes. But if you threw on more fuel
you would soon see it burst into flame once again.
Patience is needed
Most of you, as I know from experience, probably can’t wait to get off the
diet no matter how much good it has done you. If you find it tedious and
restricting, this is understandable. Yet a word of caution may be needed: the
foods you miss the most and are so anxious to start eating again are very
likely to be the ones that were making you ill in the first place. Don’t forget
that addiction and subsequent cravings are strong indicators of an allergy
or maladaptation. You might be lucky in this respect; there are no hard and
fast rules. But be warned: it will pay you to keep a tight rein on any residual
longings you may have. You must dismiss from your mind the notion that
you can simply go back to eating as you did before: something has to change,