Sulfur can bring on acute mental and physical symptoms. One woman, in a food test with peaches, did not react to uncontaminated peaches. But when she ate peaches which had been dusted with sulfur, within twenty minutes she began complaining of nervousness and tenseness. She began sweating profusely, only to get the chills moments later. After half an hour, she reported feeling nauseated. Five minutes later she vomited. Forty minutes after the test began she remained cold, her skin was clammy, and she was pale and depressed. Although her stomach was pumped, she continued to have severe stomach cramps, aches, fatigue, and depression for the rest of the day.

Some patients have wondered why they are unable to eat French fried potatoes in restaurants but can eat them at home with no trouble. The answer is that almost all restaurants buy preprocessed French fries which have been dipped in a solution of sulfur dioxide to stop them from browning. The same sulfur treatment is often given to potato chips and even to freshly cut apples and peaches in restaurants.

It is even more surprising to learn that some fresh produce, notably asparagus, is pretreated with a solution of sulfur dioxide to give it a more “attractive” color.

The processing of corn begins with the soaking of the whole kernel in a sulfur dioxide solution. This practice avoids fermentation of the corn while it is being processed but also seems to impart sulfur contamination to all manufactured corn products. This includes com meal, cornstarch, corn flour, corn syrup, corn sugar, and corn oil.

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Because corticorsteroids have so many different functions in the body, there are various unpleasant side-effects from using them as drugs. These effects mainly occur when the drugs are taken by mouth. Long-term use of these drugs at high doses can result in Cushing’s Syndrome, characterized by deposits of fat around the face (‘moon face’), and on the shoulders and abdomen, water retention producing puffiness, bruising, acne, muscle wasting and weakening of the bones leading to easy breakage. In children, there is also stunted growth. All these changes are due to the effects of corticosteroids on other body processes, as described above. Some of the effects are reversible, if corticosteroids are withdrawn, but there can also be permanent damage.

In using corticosteroids to suppress allergic reactions, the trick is to persuade the drug to damp down inflammation without carrying out any of its other actions. This has been achieved, to a large extent, by modifying hydrocortisone and the other adrenal hormones chemically.

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In practice, the skin is scratched and the food-extracts-plus-enzyme applied to it in a small plastic cup. The same dose is given to all patients, and a comprehensive mixture of food extracts is generally used – not just those to which the patient is sensitive. This is said to work, and it obviously means that an elimination diet is less important. One drawback of such ‘blanket therapy’ is that there may be a worsening of the symptoms in the early stages because the patient becomes sensitized to some of the foods in the extract that were not a problem previously. Subsequent treatments apparently cancel out these effects.

An advantage of this technique over neutralization therapy is that the treatments are only needed about once every three months, and the frequency falls to once a year after a time. However, there have been far fewer trials of the method, and it is difficult to say what proportion of patients might be helped by it.

There is a modified form of this treatment in which the mixture of food extracts and enzyme is injected into the skin.

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The Pill is a more difficult issue, for it is, without doubt, the most effective and convenient form of contraception, and giving it up may not be easy. But it can easily contribute to migraine, headaches, fatigue, and a variety of other symptoms that are also attributed to food intolerance. Some doctors believe that it has more general ill-effects on our health, and that everyone with suspected food sensitivity or Candida infection should come off the Pill, regardless of what type of symptoms they have.

You may feel perfectly happy with the Pill, because you had no problems when you first began taking it – but as the case-history, this can be quite misleading. Even if you have had short periods (up to six months) off the Pill before, without noting any improvement, it may still be contributing to your symptoms. Nobody knows why the Pill should have these rather odd, insidious effects on some women, but they have been observed often enough to merit being taken seriously.

In general, it makes sense for any woman who is thinking about trying an elimination diet to come off the Pill first, and if migraines are among her symptoms the arguments for it are even stronger. Ideally, she should give the Pill up for a trial period of three months before starting the diet, to see what effect this has, and to regain some sort of equilibrium. For anyone with severe symptoms, waiting three months to begin the elimination diet may not be a very appealing prospect, however. So if you have tried coming off the Pill before, without any obvious benefits, then you could just wait for two or three weeks before starting Stage 1.

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If the child gets better when certain foods are excluded, then they should be reintroduced to check that they were the source of the trouble. Begin with a very small amount and watch carefully for reactions – these can sometimes be severe. Some doctors recommend that no foods should be reintroduced until the child is over a year old, to minimize the risk of future sensitivity. This is probably a good idea, but it means that you may never know if the food you avoided was indeed the guilty party, because the child is likely to have outgrown the sensitivity by the time the food is eaten again.

If these measures are unsuccessful, then it may be worth carrying out an elimination diet, as described in Chapter Fourteen. In no circumstances should you do this without help and advice from your doctor – restricting the diet of small children can be very dangerous.

In the case of eczema, it may be better to start with a simplified form of the elimination diet. Rather than cutting out a whole range of foods, concentrate on the foods that are known to be problematic in eczema: milk, eggs, beef, chicken, food additives, oranges, lemons and other citrus fruits. These should be avoided during the exclusion phase of the diet (see pp269-74) and then, if the eczema clears up, tested in the normal way during the reintroduction phase. If there is no response to the exclusion phase, then cut out nuts, fish, wheat, tomatoes, lamb, peanuts and soya as well. Should this produce no results, then you could consider trying Stage 3 of the elimination diet, if the eczema is bad enough to justify this, and if your doctor agrees.

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The other potential source of antigens in food, apart from the proteins, are small molecules such as phenols, amines and carotenoids. Some of these give the food its colour and flavour, others are there to deter animals from feeding on that food, or prevent it being attacked by bacteria and fungi. The majority of these small molecules are natural compounds, but artificial colours, flavours and preservatives greatly increase the number present in modern food.

Most of these molecules are too small to be antigens in their own right, but can act as haptens. To do this they must combine with proteins in the food itself, or with proteins in our bodies – something they may do quite easily as they tend to be very reactive. The extent to which these small molecules can act as haptens is somewhat controversial, and the issue is clouded by the fact that many of these compounds also have toxic or pharmacological (drug-like) effects on the body.

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Avoid using gas and paraffin ovens and fires if you possibly can. If you are very sensitive to fumes, replace them with other forms of cooking and heating (gas central heating and Agas are usually less

Some plants actually absorb formaldehyde from the atmosphere. They have been used by NASA on spacecraft, and are often recommended for use in office buildings where there have been persistent health problems. Try keeping any of these in your home, workplace or school to reduce formaldehyde levels.

Chrysthanthemum Spathiphylum

Coconut palm Spider plant

Dracaena Weeping fig

Gerbera

If you have any plastic items which bother you with persistent fumes, covering them with a cloth when not in use helps keep down fumes to manageable levels.

Wash new plastic items in a solution of 1 dessertspoonful Borax in a bowl of warm water. This helps neutralise fumes.

Changing wind direction may affect you if you are sensitive to pollution. Your symptoms may improve on certain days if the wind veers and carries pollution away.

Fumes from a built-in garage can seep into a house. Try and avoid a house with an integrated garage. If in flats with a basement garage, live as high above it as you can.

If you are extremely sensitive, it can help to change your clothes and wash your hair or shower after contact with fumes – say, after coming in from work, after an evening out, or after travelling. Hang clothes to air in a spare room or shed.

Using an air filter can help cope with chemical fumes.

Wearing a face mask and covering your hands can help protect you when you have to use chemicals, or are exposed to fumes that upset you.

A dose of alkali salts can help relieve, or even stop, a severe reaction to chemicals. A simple version of this is to take 1 teaspoon of sodium bicarbonate in a glass of water. Do not take this more than three times a day for adults, a Rather than buying a product before patch-testing, ask the shop assistant to apply a sample for you from a product or apply a patch from samples on display.

You can also write to manufacturers or suppliers to ask for samples to test.

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Chemical sensitivity encompasses a number of types of reactions, namely:

• true allergy

• false chemical allergy

• irritant and toxic reactions

• chemical sensitivity

True Allergy

Chemicals, as discussed above (see page 18), can cause true allergy by combining with other larger molecules and triggering the immune system defences. This kind of reaction can be detected by skin and laboratory tests.

False Chemical Allergy

In susceptible individuals, some chemicals, like certain foods, are able to cause false allergy by binding with mast cells (see page 15) directly and causing histamine release without engaging the immune system at all. This will cause classic allergic symptoms but will not show positive results in skin and laboratory tests.

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