How do you decide which pages to add to define your new direction for dietitians? Which do you delete? Can you summarise sections or have the manual get longer but less useful? Above all a manual has to be user friendly with pages that say all that needs to be said for those investigating diet. It does not have explanations of why you have altered your work, but your user of the manual hopes you have thought well before making updates. I have just updated my manual for diet investigation of suspected food sensitivity, using the Diet Detective Method, and have had to deal with these questions. Instead of having allowed foods, presumed in unlimited amounts, and disallowed foods, even if in very small amounts, I thought it useful to provide lists of amounts of allowed foods for the baseline elimination diet. So did this mean I could eliminate pages such as Borderline Foods listed after the early clinical research? They were important at the time as they showed I had attended to them as possible confounders, but does that matter now? Do people trust that I sieved through all the research? What about the page on the review of amines? As long as dietitians have pages that make sense to them and their patients, why bother with these, now less relevant, explanations? Do they know they can go to my website and go to the many Articles and read articles on Amines and other useful information? Many key interesting ideas are summarised there. What if I have written a self-help book on the process; should I now include a page on how to make the most of the experience of other food sensitive people? I think so. What if my manual has differences with other available ones? Dietitians know that this happens in most areas of diet therapy. It makes them think of why this could be and how they will use this in the best care they can give their patients. The latest edition of the Manual is now available on my website for $15 as a download, with my other books. If you bought one of my manuals in the past I am happy to make an offer to provide a complimentary copy of the latest pdf version by email, so you can keep up with my thinking. Send me an email – breakey@ozemail.com.au – and let me know what year you obtained your copy. Joan.
Dear Joan – I purchased your book Tolerating Troublesome Foods in 2012 when I started my symptoms of severe food sensitivity – salicyaltes, amines, glutamate and solanine – I have been on an elimination diet ever since with some new foods added over this time but still not very advanced and still get symptoms, so suspect it is my environement as well. I have all the charateristics of strong smell and taste and rely on this very much. Have seen a specialist allergist but reacted adversely to the medicinal treatments , so continuing with my research and interested in the latest addition of your manual.
Louise Green
Dear Louise, Thank you for writing. I am glad you have Tolerating with all the information on what can affect reactions, and the factors in the environment so you minimise those as much as you can. We have to live in the real world where smells may have to be put up with where they cannot be avoided. It does make diet food testing complex. It is true that two heads are better than one. If you can find a dietitian you can discuss
your symptoms and add on individual information for those eg constipation or looseness, use of fibre, or FODMAPS if bloating is present.
The manual is written for dietitians, and the update was for dietitians thinking about their work, or those who had already bought a copy.
The companion book for people investigating diet is Are You Food Sensitive? which goes through the process with more explanation. So it would be the
best option for you. It has detail about many aspects to have you think about them, and applying them to yourself. You can obtain it from the site in the same way as you bought Tolerating, https://foodintolerancepro.com/buy-food-sensitivity-products/ or you can get it via Kindle for reading, for about $7.00 [US$5.00]. I wish you well in getting your diet right for you. Joan