40 Diet Wise
toadstool Aminita muscaria) would make everyone ill – these are poisons. But
some individuals are made ill by simple substances such as milk, coffee and
egg, and this is not normal. These foods cause no trouble for the majority
of the population, and so, for some people, this is an altered (abnormal)
reaction.
There is, however, a certain amount of overlap between allergy
and poisoning effects: for example, house gas makes us all ill in sufficient
concentration, but there are an unlucky few who react even to the tiniest
traces of it, traces so small that the concentration will not register on
instruments from the gas supply board. Are they simply being poisoned
at an earlier stage, or is this a special altered reaction on their part that we
may call an allergy? Often it is difficult to decide. But fortunately we do
not need to make up our minds between the two phenomena: in the end,
if the patient feels better for avoiding that particular substance, that is what
counts.
Doctors cling to the narrow dismissive view
Some doctors went on to extend Von Pirquet’s work and discovered that
some allergy reactions were mediated by antibodies (special chemicals
provoked by the encounter) and certain lymphocytes, a type of white blood
cell – very interesting. Next this was followed by an insistence that only those
reactions that involved demonstrable antibodies and/or lymphocytes could
be called allergies. This is an extraordinarily narrow and arrogant viewpoint.
Other reactions are then dismissed as – what? “All in the mind” is a common
label. It isn’t very scientific to dismiss phenomena for which we have no
explanation as “imaginary,” and it is especially hurtful to the poor patient,
who has not only to bear this insulting jibe but also to continue to suffer the
illness because no one will take it seriously.
I have even heard doctors insist that food and chemicals could not
possibly make people unwell, simply because antibodies cannot be shown.
They stick to this idiotic viewpoint despite the existence of hundreds of
thousands of documented recoveries. Because they believe the patients to
be neurotic or “imagining” their symptoms, their usual explanation for all
these astonishing recoveries is that the patient responds because “someone
is taking an interest” in his or her case. (Don’t laugh – I have heard this on
many occasions.) These gentlemen, and quite a few ladies, are not troubled
by mere facts, only by the entrenchment of obscure pet theories.
Since I first wrote this cry of disbelief (1984) it has now become
accepted that small chemical molecules can contribute, even to the “classical”