Definition Time 41allergy response: so-called haptens. Furthermore, chemical pollution, such
as traffic fumes, has been admitted as a trigger for symptoms in sensitive
individuals. The acceptance of food allergy in recent years has moved
outside the acute antigen-antibody model, known as Type I hypersensitivity,
and now includes recognition of serum antigen-antibody complexes, giving
rise to widespread organ sickness, as I and other pioneers have been writing
about for decades.
It often comes as a shock to patients to realize that doctors rarely
seem excited and enthusiastic about each new breakthrough in healing.
Medicine has a particularly bad history in this respect: almost every new
advance has had to be fought for in the teeth of severe opposition. There
seems to be a peculiar, almost sinister, aspect to the medical profession
that makes it resistant to new ideas. Unfortunately, of course, this works
to the detriment of patients, who trustingly believe their own physician to
be abreast of new developments without realizing that he or she may be
actively opposed to an idea without ever having tried it out personally.
Practical experience validates food allergies
One of the reasons the food allergy and genetic food intolerance phenomenon
was opposed for so many years was that tests for it are unreliable. Most
physicians, as you know, like lab work. They even give it more respect
than the patient’s own story: “We have your lab work and there is nothing
wrong with you,” is a common way of dismissing a suffering patient who
apparently cannot be helped. It is a mystery to me why colleagues never
seem to ask themselves the obvious question: Is there anything wrong with the
lab reports? Are we missing something here?
Most of them would never dream of testing for food allergies and
have never even heard of gene testing to establish food incompatibilities, so
it is not surprising they miss the problem and tell the patient “It’s all in your
head.” Unfortunately, even the conscientious physician is likely to be misled
by current methods of detecting food allergies. The old-fashioned scratch
of prick tests hardly ever show reactions, even when the patient reports
being violently ill after eating the food. Newer tests for genetic profiles
remain very expensive and are simply not used routinely.
So what do we do?
It’s simple really. We rely on practical strategies. With or without
supportive blood work or metabolic profiling, if the patient recovers after
avoiding a food, that means it is highly likely to be a problem, whether it is
allergy, intolerance or the toxic overload effect described in Chapter 8. Even