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Alpha Health Education |
Sick All Over 2 The Concept of Delayed Pattern Food Allergy
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Topics Food Allergy Rescue Starter Pack Allergy Center HomeAllergy: What you need to know... Immediate and Delayed Food Allergy Drug Allergy Allergic Disorders and Diseases Immunology Diagnosis and Tests Books to Read
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Makes More Sense After You Get Better This symptom complex didn't make much sense without a standard method of diet revision to reveal the food origin of the disease. The basic idea is demonstrate clearing of symptoms using a food holiday or a very simple safe set of foods. A food holiday is the most important initial experiment since the sick patient stops eating the foods that are making him or her ill, the illness subsides and symptoms clear. About 15 years ago I began to recommend an elemental nutrient formula (ENF), free of protein and peptide antigens to replace food on a food holiday and the results were often dramatic. 10 days became the standard food holiday because most symptoms improved within 10 days, although for the sickest patients, up to 20 days was sometimes required before the symptoms cleared. Some times, the improvement was obvious in a few days, but we recognized that most patients felt worse for a few days before they started to improve. Many of the ever-enlarging pool of patients who are not well but who do not have the markers of specific disease can be included in the sick-all-over syndrome. Patients with in-between disease have some of the symptoms and signs that suggest the diagnosis of specific disease but not everything fits together. Most chronic diseases take many years to evolve so that many in-between patients are on their way to the final disease product. The concept of delayed patterns of immune response ("food allergy") to food materials provides both a theoretic and practical basis for interpreting symptoms of patients who were sick all over. Development over Time Although physicians like to be presented with an acute illness, apparently of limited duration, and like to begin their histories with the statement that "the patient was well until 2 weeks ago when she..." - closer scrutiny of the histories of many if not most patients reveals an evolution of symptoms over years. Patients often discount or fail to report long-term, chronic or recurrent symptoms. They often believe they will be considered hypochondriacs if they tell it all. Many years may be spent in an adapted dysfunctional state (ADS) with stable symptoms or smooth adaptation to a slowly decreasing level of function and/or a slowly increasing disability. Symptoms of a mild ADS are often intermittent and ambiguous. A new factor such as move to a new home, a change in eating habits, a viral infection, an injury, childbirth, or a drug reaction may precipitate sudden "avalanche" with collapse into a more disabling illness. The Intensity of Sick All Over Syndrome Patients with non-specific hypersensitivity illness of moderate intensity tend to become disabled without objective signs of their disease. Often the laboratory investigations reveal nothing, even when symptoms are moderately severe. These patients are most often constrained by three symptom patterns - fatigue, cognitive dysfunction and chronic pain. As the illness intensifies, patients tend to shop around for help and will "try anything" that might help. Physicians often treat this presentation as "depression" and prescribe antidepressant drugs. Some of the patients with mild to moderate hypersensitivity disease have collected together in various support and lobby groups. The syndrome is called by different names and the support groups have quickly developed ideologies which provide an identity and a political presence for the sicker patients. The main groups are chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), myalgic encephalomyelitis, fibromyalgia, and similar patients can be found in candida groups. The central feature of CFS is chronic and disabling fatigue with reduced exertional tolerance. The fatigue was typically associated with cognitive dysfunction and patients were often disabled by the combination. The CFS lobby has been the most effective in getting first media and now scientific attention. Viral theories of the disease are most popular, and for a while, many physicians were diagnosing chronic Ebstein Barr Virus infection, based on finding serum antibodies to the virus. These syndromes overlap with the diagnosis of depression and, since depression has never been a clearly defined entity, more confusion and potential conflict has arisen between physicians who diagnose "depression" and patients who are convinced that they are ill, not depressed. Researchers pursuing the nature and cause of CFS and several support groups assume that the viral theory is correct. The CFIDS journal even advised CFS patients to take precautions against spreading the virus. But a careful study of 147 individuals with CFS failed to show any correlation with viral infection The same study did support the hypersensitivity concept. A variety of immune cell and immunoglobulin abnormalities show up in the food allergy complex, but none to date have proven consistent markers of the disease. As expected, a review of immunological testing in patients with chronic fatigue shows scattered abnormalities. Food and environmental hypersensitivity, presenting as chronic fatigue or related syndromes, is a complex illness which takes months or years to resolve. I see patients who have lost tolerance to many foods and only feel well if they live on a minimal diet, supplemented with an elemental nutrient formula for several months. They also report intolerance to chemicals in their environment, and often need special protection. The History of "Allergic Toxemia" A.J. Rowe, T.G. Randolph, and Fredrick Speer were among the first American allergists to associate chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and recurrent flu-like patterns of illness with food and inhalant allergies. Rowe described "allergic toxemia" in 1930 with the symptoms of drowsiness, mental confusion, lack of initiative and ambition, irritability, fatigue, aching, and a feeling of being poisoned. Rowe developed a system of elimination and rotation diets to treat "allergic toxemia" and reported that a wide spectrum of mental-emotional and physical symptoms could be relieved by diet revision. Randolph and Speer also associated a similar symptom complex with food and inhalant allergies.Speer referred to the "allergic-tension-fatigue" syndrome and described "motor fatigue". A number of popular books have followed and advanced the idea of diet revision to solve these non-specific illness problems. The idea in all this literature was that the immune mechanisms responsible for broad clinical spectrum went beyond the mechanism revealed by skin tests and that diagnosis and treatment of food allergy involved empirical diet revision. Several diet revision ideas were advocated; most began with an attempt to show that the patient would improve by eliminating higher risk foods for several days to weeks. Opinions varied about which foods were the best tolerated although milk, wheat, eggs, are always included in the higher risk food category; rice and cooked vegetables in the lower risk category.
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