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What to Do if the Diet Fails
I
f you feel no different on the diet, or perhaps even feel worse, do not
at this stage assume you have no food allergies; in fact, if you feel worse,
that might be good evidence that you do. The probability is that you are
eating much more of an allowed food which disagrees with you. No food
is absolutely safe. If, for example, you are allergic to certain meats or fruit,
then you are hardly likely to feel well on my exclusion diet!
Fortunately, few people feel worse on the diet; but if it happens
this can yield useful information. How to proceed in that event is described
below. If you are already aware of an item that you are consuming heavily,
suspect that item and proceed immediately to the modified test procedure a
few pages hence. If nothing seems obvious, keeping a food diary for a few
days (as directed at the end of the previous chapter) should yield plenty of
suspicious candidates for testing.
As stated earlier, one prime culprit I find from my practice is potato.
It is a staple that is consumed heavily, daily in most British people’s diets, and
so, not surprisingly, quite a common allergy. When patients are prevented
from eating their ‘normal’ quota of bread, cakes and carbohydrate ‘fillers’ as
they tend to be christened, potato becomes the only available substitute, and
it is not unusual to find people eating it twice, even three times a day while
on the elimination program.
Casebook 9.
It is far from being harmless: I have seen several very severe cases of potato
intolerance. I have already reported the case of a little boy of eighteen
months with life-threatening aczema due to potato (Casebook 6, page 90).
Years later an unfortunate lady I recall came to see me with severe eczema;in