If you already have a copy of my Diet Wise already, don’t rush for your credit card. You won’t need it!
However, there’s plenty of interest to read in the rest of this newsletter. The fact is that I have renamed my Diet Wise as One Diet for Life
Why?
Because I believe in the book so much and the good that it has already done, the lives it has changed (and, indeed, the lives it has saved!) It really is the foundation of a whole movement for good living.
Over the years we’ve been told and signaled may times that what you eat is vital for health. That’s true, in its way. But it saddens me when ignorant wannabes start talking about “superfoods” and the “ideal diet”, etc. These uneducated people fall into the usual trap of: “It worked for me, therefore it works for everybody!”
Sadly, that is the whole of what is wrong with orthodox medicine (allopathic, sometimes called). They treat the “average” person. There are NO average individuals; we are all uniquely different. The nonsensical idea that you can treat any adult individual, from age 18 to 110 or beyond with exactly the same dose for everybody is not just silly. It KILLS people.
Our responses to food are also uniquely different; foods are just a complex bunch of chemicals, after all. Over the space of 40 years, I saw someone, somewhere, be made violently ill by every food you can name. OK, not many of us eat persimmons or ostrich on a regular basis. But common foods, including but not limited to: lettuce, potato, egg, corn, wheat, beef, pork, lamb, fish, apples, tomatoes, bananas, onions (my own dear Mum’s bête noir), almonds (would you believe), cherries…
I could go on and on (and on!) but it’s pointless. Would you even believe people can be allergic to spring water: Perrier, Evian, San Pellegrino, Fiji? See, natural spring water (not the artificial, filtered tap water Dasani by Coca Cola) contains a great deal of organic matter from the ground; dead plants, bacteria and other microbes… it’s a unique fingerprint and a person can become allergic or intolerant of the waters from one spring, but not others.
When I tell people this they either go “Ooooh” with mystical intensity (or just snigger behind my back)! But it’s true.
You never know what you might react to. Because of the sneaky “hidden allergy” effect, you could be eating something every day that is compromising your health. I like to tell the story of a woman who had severe headaches every day except Sundays and Mondays. It turned out she was reacting to corn starch: the gum used on office envelopes at that time. Whenever she licked the office mails and sealed them, it gave her a headache next day.
This phenomenon cuts across set beliefs that few people ever question. Stephen Pratt, thanks to dear old Oprah Winfrey, made $millions on his book “Superfoods”.
But two of his “superfoods” were toxic to many people: tomatoes (in the nightshade family) and oats (a mild gluten food). Pratt had got his “expertise” from Googling about lycopene and cholesterol. He knew NOTHING about the fact that all of his superfoods could make a person ill. He was dangerously ignorant of the clinical issues.
Anti-Inflammatory Foods
This has got out of hand and people are now writing up “anti-inflammatory foods”—every one of which is highly inflammatory to some individuals; or that old chestnut “alkaline foods” (most of which are acid in part and any one of which will TURN your body acid, if you happen to be intolerant of it)
In fact I’ve always supposed the acid-alkali story got started because of me and a handful of colleagues back in the 1980s. We soon realized that when a person has an allergic reaction to a food, he or she quickly turns metabolically acid. One way to speed up recovery from symptoms was to administer a dose of “alkali salts”: a mixture of sodium and potassium bicarbonate (2 to 1). It worked a treat (we also gave Epsom salts, a mild laxative, to clear the offending food from the bowel as quickly as possible).
But we NEVER suggested that continuous taking of alkali salts or fluids was a good idea. It’s not! It just taxes your kidneys, which have to keep your pH balance exactly around 7.3. Moreover, it stupidly ignores the fact that all food passes through the stomach, which is very acid indeed (it will burn a whole in the carpet if you dropped stomach juices on it).
So What’s In The Book?
Stories, lots of stories, that will show you the incredibly diversity of baffling clinical conditions that can be caused by food allergy or intolerance. There’s an inventory of scores and scores of symptoms which, taken together, will tell you how likely it is you are reacting to foods.
Dr Richard Mackarness gave five key symptoms that point the way to allergic illness and that have special importance. He believed that without one of the following symptoms, diagnosis is unlikely:
- Over- or under-weight or fluctuating weight
- Persistent fatigue that isn’t helped by rest.
- Occasional swellings around the eyes, hands, abdomen, ankles, etc.
- Palpitations or speeded heart rate, particularly after meals
- Excessive sweating, not related to exercise
It needs mentioning that there should be no other obvious explanation for these symptoms.
But I eventually discovered probably the number one important question to allergies and health:
#1. Do you ever have good days (no symptoms)?
If you do, it means there’s nothing missing or busted. All present and correct. The fact that symptoms come and go frequently is a dead giveaway. Cancer doesn’t come and go! Neither do degenerative diseases of decay and aging! Even infections don’t clear up and then keep coming back…
No, if you are good Monday, Tuesday you are ill, but better again Tuesday afternoon, Wednesday Thursday good, then on Friday, after lunch starts again THAT’S AN ALLERGY! I promise you. That coming and going is absolutely characteristic.
And there is something else important which follows, as night follows day:
#2 If you can be well one day, you can be well every single day!
Think about that; it’s totally logical. You just have to find the trigger and knock it off!
Having established the likelihood, the book then walks you, step by step, to uncover the hidden food allergies which may be spoiling your life. The “hidden enemy” as one dear friend put it long ago (Amelia Nathan-Hill).
If you haven’t read Diet Wise but are intrigued by this new title, go get yourself a copy. We have print, digital (read-online, on your phone or on a tablet) and BOTH. It’s one of the most helpful health books every written (I know that, from all the praise it brings).
That’s all for this week. Let’s start a movement!
To Your Good Health,
Prof. Keith Scott-Mumby
The Official Alternative Doctor