14 Diet Wise
patient may have to endure psychotherapy, and when this fails to cure the
trouble, drugs may be used to suppress the symptoms.
An inappropriate reaction to food and chemicals seems to guarantee
an adverse reaction to the drugs and medicines which may be prescribed to
treat the symptoms. The patient tends to get worse and becomes a very
difficult case, ending up reacting to almost everything.
In a typical case of masked food allergy the patient may suffer
mainly from involvement of the central nervous system. Perhaps the most
distressing symptom of all is what has been described by patients as the
woolly brain syndrome. An inability to concentrate, confused thinking,
memory impairment and a tendency to just sit in an inactive torpor, are all
symptoms which cause great distress to a patient who is normally highly
intelligent, very industrious and exceptionally competent. Depression is a
common and distressing symptom. I have often heard patients with this
complaint say that they would kill themselves if they could only bring
themselves to do it. Life becomes intolerable.
This state of affairs can put an impossible strain on a marriage. In
this condition the person does not wish to be touched and may turn nasty
in response to any sort of advance from the marital partner.
These patients often come to be labeled neurotic hypochondriacs
and because they cannot explain or understand their own predicament they
often come to believe themselves to be insane or going insane. Once these
patients are put on drugs and become addicted to drugs the true state of
affairs is virtually impossible to untangle and many must be ending their
days in mental hospitals.
As I have said already, food can do you a great deal of harm.
Casebook 2.
Recently I received an e-mail from out of the blue from an old patient,
called Cliff. He had been surfing the Internet and found my website and
written to me, full of the delights of life and exploring the new technology.
He is now 88 years old.
Cliff came to see me in 1985, when he was 69 years old, with a tale
of woe. All his life he had been sick and debilitated. He suffered frequently
from what lay people called “bilious attacks” in those days: headaches and
vomiting. Nowadays we would call them migraine attacks or “abdominal
migraine” when the stomach is so upset.
Cliff ’s condition was so bad that on the train ride to the honeymoon
destination, he had needed to lie down with his head resting on the lap of