If you used to enjoy yummy cheese, yoghurt, ice cream, milk on cereal or a milky dessert, and maybe milk drinks as well, it is no fun having to exclude all dairy foods. However for most people this can change. It can be such a relief just not having to be really careful that there is no milk at all in your other foods. Of course if you, or your child, is anaphylactic, or exquisitely sensitive, to milk, or you are breastfeeding a very milk-sensitive baby, complete exclusion is necessary. But in … [Read more...]
Thinking about cures for food-chemical sensitivity symptoms
For hundreds of years people put up with various symptoms that we can now greatly decrease with diet therapy. It would be life changing to have a new treatment that meant that people who had several of the usual symptoms, or families that have the range of symptoms, could eat foods that usually produce distressing symptoms. However just thinking about the range of symptoms is enough to make us realize that this is a very complex issue. Since I met my first diet responders in the late 1970s I … [Read more...]
Old news may be new to you
There is much to keep up with about food sensitivity. Some interesting comments in a special newsletter in 2013 include stories about food sensitive people, how the diet designed for one family member can be useful to other family members, that diet can help with the distress of reflux in infancy, and the importance of pain as part of IBS symptoms. We can think about why diet is still controversial in the medical world, and the top 10 ideas people need to learn about in food sensitivity. You … [Read more...]
Supersensitivity in Food Sensitive People
When I was growing up I suppose I was like most people. I thought the amount of light, noise, smell, touch, and taste that I find acceptable was much the same as everybody else’s. Perhaps, with a dietitian’s interest in food, I did acknowledge that there were people we described as having a “cast iron stomach” and at the other end of the spectrum those who were food gourmets. However, when I began working with a low chemical diet I met people with a wide variety of sensitivity to all sensory … [Read more...]
Finer points of biscuit ingredients, and floury potato texture
Sam: I note that in your book Tolerating Troublesome Foods you classify commercial sweet biscuits as Risk Rating 5 and wheat as dry white biscuits as Risk Rating 2. Would a milk arrowroot biscuit therefore be a Risk Rating 5 whereas a teething rusk be a Risk Rating 2? Although an adult in age, I eat very much like a kid (fussy eater, slow eater, eat simple foods, eat mild tasting foods, eat foods separately/sequentially, eat frequent small meals, drink plenty of milk). I'm not sure whether this … [Read more...]
Tummy aches, gut problems, joints and limb pains, gut spasm, anxiety
Hello from Holly. I am curious. My child has apparently got problems with connective tissue-joints, gut etc (EDS III/hypermobility). However, we also discovered, working with a dietician and I guess my gut instinct, that dairy, wheat and things like apples do not agree with her. She has no known IgE allergies, but clearly reacts to some things in a hay fever type way, or gets gut reactions (and I think behaviour change, which is really understandable!!). Only recently started reading your … [Read more...]
Is the caffeine all that is important in coffee?
Would you get relief from coffee withdrawal by given decaf coffee? A study published in this month’s journal of Psychopharmacology says that if you do, you are being hoodwinked. However there is another possible reason why some people were said to be responding to a placebo effect. Some subjects in the study said they had relief form caffeine withdrawal when they were given a drink that had decaf coffee. If we think about it those who give up coffee with caffeine are not giving up just caffeine. … [Read more...]