42 Diet Wise
the layman easily understands the concept of “something to avoid,” which
is pretty well the broadest interpretation of allergy or intolerance I use here
in this book. The mechanism isn’t important; recognition and avoidance is.
We can use a practical, working definition of an allergy, whether to
a food or any other substance. A substance is considered to be an allergen
if:
• firstly, the patient feels better on avoiding it;
• secondly, he or she becomes ill again on re-exposure to it;
• and thirdly, no other obvious cause for the symptoms can be
shown.The ‘eight nails in the shoe’ trap
The first two criteria must be capable of being repeated on more than one
occasion. Yet there are certain catches to this that must be understood, or
the unwary or casual observer will be tripped up. For example, the patient
may not feel better merely by virtue of avoiding one allergy substance. If
several others are also causing trouble, why should that person feel well,
unless he or she avoids them also?
This is what Dr. Doris Rapp, one of the great American ladies of
medicine, refers to as the “eight nails in the shoe” trap. If you have eight
nails sticking up in your shoe, you will surely limp. If you draw four or even
six of these, it may be no use – you still limp because of the remainder. You
need to get rid of all eight for a proper recovery.
Metaphorically speaking, it is the same with allergies and intolerance.
Numerous patients have come to me and explained that they had tried giving
up, say, milk for a few weeks and felt no better; therefore they couldn’t
possibly be allergic to it.
To begin with, very few of them succeeded in avoiding milk
altogether since it occurs hidden in bread, biscuits, sausages and margarine,
for example. The other point is that you have to avoid enough foods to feel better
before you can infer that you were allergic to any. This will be explained to
you in the course of this book and, indeed, is one of the many principles
that you will need to learn to be fully diet wise!
Furthermore, if you do not allow yourself a sufficient amount of
time away from the food before testing it you may get no obvious reaction,
even from a bad allergy food when you return to it. This is probably the
biggest single reason why so many people fail to detect their own allergies
and why so many doctors are blind to the problem, especially in connection
with food.