20 Apr 09 FOOD INTOLERTANCE: SUSAN’S STORY

A few months later, Susan read a magazine article about something called ‘food allergy’, which seemed to cause the sort of symptoms she had. She asked her doctor’s opinion about this and found he was very dismissive of the idea -as far as he could see, her symptoms were nothing like those of food allergy. Another year went past in which Susan became steadily worse. Then a new doctor joined the practice, and when she next rang for an appointment, it was suggested that she see him instead, as he had a special interest in patients like herself. When Susan went to see the other doctor, he explained that symptoms such as hers could sometimes be caused by food, although there were other potential causes as well. He went on to explain why his colleague had dismissed the idea of her having food allergy – the condition he treated was quite different and he preferred to use the name ‘food intolerance’. While he could not guarantee that this was her problem, it was certainly a possibility. He suggested that she try a special diet which avoided all the foods she normally ate. Susan began the diet on a Monday with high hopes, but by Tuesday she felt very ill indeed. Her tiredness was far worse, and she experienced a severe migraine attack – the worst one she had ever suffered – that lasted through Wednesday as well. On Thursday she felt completely ‘washed out’ from die migraine, and Friday was little better. In desperation, she rang the doctor, but he told her that this sort of reaction often occurred – in fact it was a positive sign that foods were the source of the problem, so she should persevere with the diet.

On Saturday, Susan woke up quite early before her alarm clock went off -which was most unusual, because she normally had great difficulty in waking up. As she got out of bed, she noticed that her knees did not give their customary painful twinge. She tried walking downstairs and then running up them again. To her amazement, she found that the pains she had endured for two years had suddenly vanished.

As the day went on, she realized that she felt altogether different – she was no longer tired, her head felt clearer, and there was no headache or migraine, unlike most weekends. Indeed she felt better than she had done for many years. Over the next few days, it became obvious that her bowels were also a great deal better.

When she returned to the doctor, Susan was jubilant – she simply couldn’t believe how much better she felt. Even her irritability, which she had thought was just part of her personality, had now vanished. The doctor explained that she must now reintroduce foods, one at a time, to see what effect they had. Over the next two months, she tried out all the foods she normally ate. Some of these had no effect, but others made her very ill – milk, wheat, rye, barley, yeast, oranges, lemons, beef and tomatoes were the main culprits. By avoiding all these foods, and adding some other, more unusual foods into her diet instead, Susan remained well. Migraines, which had previously afflicted her once or twice a week, were now a thing of the past.

After eight months, the doctor suggested that she try out some of the incriminated foods, to see what effect they had. She found that she still reacted to milk, but was fine on the other foods. The doctor advised her not to eat them more than once every four days. A year later, Susan discovered that she could now drink milk again without ill-effects. Interestingly, she discovered that she could also drink alcohol, in moderation, and eat chocolate, as they no longer seemed to trigger off migraines. By this stage, she had begun to forget what a migraine felt like!

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