30 Diet Wise
It was no ordinary puffiness but a huge increase in size: her head
would feel almost too heavy to lift because of the great weight of fluid. She
looked like a gargoyle, grotesque and unnatural, so much so that her friends
could hardly recognize her. Of course, she was quite unable to work for fear
of scaring her clients. The protuberances would disappear as mysteriously
as they had come, only to return at some point later. Doctors were unable to
diagnose the reason or to help. It was no use staying permanently on drugs
when there was no way of knowing when the condition would strike next.
The attacks were getting to be more frequent, and by the time we met she
was depressed and desperate.
My first question was “When did it start?” She remembered the
occasion clearly. It was in a traffic jam, she had been driving her car and
had, like most of the other drivers, become steadily more frustrated and
overwrought mentally. The fumes had been choking, and the heat (it was a
summer’s day) had made her feel faint and weary. When the traffic eventually
got on the move again she had found herself in tears: perhaps it was due to
stress, or to the fact that her eyes felt red and itchy – she wasn’t sure. But
by the time she got home and looked in the mirror the truth was obvious:
some strange and frightening reaction had caused her face to puff up and
her eyes to turn bloodshot and sore. After that the problem recurred with
increasing frequency. It would be tempting to assume an allergy to traffic
fumes, but it is worth noting that she was exposed on a very large number of
occasions to equally high concentrations and had no reaction. Furthermore,
she would sometimes get this swelling without even going out of doors.
Inconsistencies like this are fully explained in this book.
Having drawn up a full history of her case, I found plenty of
supportive symptoms, such as aching muscles, a general slowing down,
insomnia and flu-like attacks (that were not flu), to suggest allergy, including
food allergy, as the cause of the trouble. So we discussed the plan given in
this book and she decided to give it a try.
To cut the rest of the story short, the treatment was a complete
success. She carried out tests on herself using the procedure outlined in a
later chapter and found it was best to avoid certain foods: wheat, corn, chicken,
cheese, egg, milk and coffee (the items in italics were the worst offenders).
Since then there has been no recurrence of her condition; not only that, but
she feels fitter and healthier than she can remember being in years. I fully
expected to have to delve into chemical sensitivities, but this turned out
to be unnecessary. Not that this proves she is not intolerant of chemicals;
simply that, with her diet under control, she can cope with these as well as
the rest of us can.