62 Diet Wise
Many of the symptoms, as we shall see, relate to mind and brain
function and chronic fatigue, fuzzy thinking (which we call “woolly brain
syndrome”) and unpleasant moods are the norm for this final stage.
Stress overload
In support of the connection with Selye’s GAS model, I can state that many
allergy-based illnesses come on or get worse after periods of acute stress
such as an episode of a severe infective disease, bereavement, divorce or
redundancy. It is as if the extra burden becomes too great for the body,
already under siege, which then moves rapidly from Stage 2 into Stage 3.
While adapted, the body could cope – barely – but not in the face of extra
stress.
Unfortunately, patients often do not recover once the stress is
removed again; after the allergies or maladaptation have been triggered, so
to speak, they cause illness in their own right. This disease is further stress,
which causes further illness, and a vicious circle seems to come about with
the result that the patient may still be ill years after, say, his or her father died,
even though that was what seemed to have brought on the illness in the first
place. This is important because it is a situation from which the only escape
seems to be solving the allergies.
The final supportive evidence for Selye’s theory working in this
context is the following observation: the more you eat of a food the more likely
you are to develop a maladaptation to it. Overeating a substance will cause it to
disagree with you. The food itself becomes a stress and will accelerate Stage
3.
This is almost certainly the reason why wheat, milk, sugar and so on
are such common food allergies. Not only are they not really ‘natural’ foods,
which makes them stressful, but they are considerably over-consumed by
the population as a whole. Most diets are heavily loaded with bread, milk,
sweeteners and cereal products. This may suit the fast-food chains, but I
doubt if Mother Nature is amused.
You will hear me say over and over in this book that repetitive
eating causes food reactions.
Now the new genetic incompatibility theory
None of these empirical observations on stress and overload contradict
the emergent science of nutritional genomics. In this model we know that
certain foods are not tolerated because the individual lacks genes which