72 Diet Wise
overload phenomenon comes into play. But the exact symptoms that
manifest depend on what part of the body or what organ system gets hit
most.
We doctors also use the more technical term end-organ failure.
Some part of the body is the weakest link and the first symptoms that
appear will refer to the functions of this organ, not to whatever the stressor is.
This is why a milk allergy can cause, say, migraines in one person, eczema in
another, depression in a third and colitis in a fourth individual.
In Chapter 10 we shall be looking at a whole list of possible target
organ symptoms and you will be amazed at the sheer variety of effects.
It has always been one of the major stumbling blocks to acceptance
of the widespread allergy, intolerance and maladaptation phenomenon, that
symptoms are so unpredictable and do not conform to any recognizable
pattern; moreover symptoms shift from day to day, and that always makes
doctors suspect hypochondria or imagined symptoms: what are referred to
as functional or psychosomatic conditions (“all in the mind”).
Now that you are becoming diet wise you will understand the nature
of the beast, but conventional doctors cannot comfortably think outside
the box which defines illness only in terms of recognizable groups of
symptoms – so-called syndromes or diseases. It is remarkably weak thinking
to me to admit that symptoms A, B and C are legitimate signs of a disease
when occurring together, but if they occur randomly these are not to be
taken seriously!
If the pioneer group to which I belong did anything majorly
constructive it was, more than anything else, to keep hammering home the
point that many mysterious symptoms, unknown maladies and highly variable
complaints were really one and the same disease: an allergy or intolerance to
a food or some other substance. In other words the appearances varied but
the underlying cause was quite constant.