Problem Situations You May Encounter in Elimination Dieting 207How to proceed
With all this bad news, if you are taking a corticosteroid, you will want
to see if you can reduce or stop this as a result of tackling your allergy
problem. Extreme caution is required, but that is not to say you should not
make an attempt, or several attempts, to do so. In hitting at the root cause
of your illness it is perfectly logical to expect to be able to manage without
any further treatment. It is important to tell your doctor what you propose
to do. Only the very poorest practitioner, barely clinging onto the status of
a healer, would oppose you in your wishes. A good doctor can be a great
support through what may be a difficult and certainly trying time.
The essence of coming off steroids is to steadily reduce the dose.
There are bound to be repercussions, and it is hopeless to expect to succeed
without at least some flare-up of symptoms. Thus you should wait until the
plan shows some sign of working for you before you start. On the other
hand, don’t wait too long, because the administration of steroid drugs will
cloud the issue when it comes to testing and self-diagnosing your allergies.
Be patient: you may have to try many times. There will be failures in
which you are forced to return to a higher dose because of unpleasant
consequences, but each time you should be able to come nearer to your
objective. If there are any criteria which you can measure, so much the
better; this may help by giving you a yardstick of progress. For example,
an asthma patient may be able to chart the number of uses of nebulizing
inhaler; as the need declines, this would show on the daily record.
Similarly, a colitis sufferer might measure bowel evacuations. It is
surprising how, on occasion, things progress without a patient feeling any
different; the objective measures will help him or her to know whether to
continue in a given direction or retreat.
SUMMARY
a. Eating out on the diet is difficult and likely to compromise
the stringency of the elimination; it is better to avoid doing
so. Take food with you when you travel; plan ahead at a restaurant.b. Vegetarians are affected by allergies in much the same way that
the rest of us are: likely foods relate to frequency of eating.
The elimination stage is more restricted because of the