The Hidden, or “Masking Effect” Explained 61In human terms, the organism would feel ill. Hippocrates called it the ponos,
or strife, of disease, and without it no disease exists. Selye called it Stage 1.
Then, gradually, adaptation occurs. The organism learns to cope
with the problem. The symptoms reduce or disappear, and the disease
submerges; the human subject feels well again. Selye recognizes this as
a separate development, or Stage 2. It appears that there are no further
problems. Yet all the while an insidious attack is taking place. This steadily
erodes the body’s defenses until eventually they are exhausted. The process
may take months or decades, but it advances inexorably as long as the stress
is present. Finally, when the body can simply cope no more, symptoms
reemerge, and this is Stage 3. The organism is sick, as before, but now in
difficulties because there are no defenses left. This is the stage of chronic
illness.
Following from the concept of adaptation, we can consider this
new development to be maladaptation, which in my view would be a far
better term than either allergy or intolerance. Maladaptation to foods is so
common I consider it to be almost universal. Answer the questions honestly
in the next chapter and you will begin to see what I mean!
Selye’s General Adaptation Syndome is an attractive theory and fits
many observations I have made among sick people. It also parallels very
closely the histories of allergy or intolerance sufferers, which is why it is of
special interest to us. Many people I question can remember being made ill
by certain foods as children: their parents insisted they eat the foods because
‘They are good for you.’ In time the foods were tolerated (the person became
adapted to them: Stage 2); but now, years later, the unlucky individual is sick
with asthma, arthritis, migraine or any one of a host of diseases, and often
we track down these very foods as being the cause of the problem. This
is Stage 3, and the body has no resistance left so the condition is chronic.
Incidentally, the mechanism of addiction to a food coincides with Stage 3:
not only is the patient unable to oppose the food physically, but it is as if he
or she is unable to oppose it mentally either and has to have it.
Stage 4 overload
Selye did not postulate a Stage 4 but I am adding to his theory here by
suggesting that the masking step goes beyond Stage 3. In this additional
aspect, which we can consider as a fourth stage, the food relieves the
symptoms temporarily. But the patient is now on dangerous ground and
the destructive results of the continued daily or hourly stress can cause a
breakdown of almost any organ in the body.