Getting Over Other Food Intolerances

[Laura Wesson]

Anybody have ideas about how to do something about non-gluten food intolerances? Besides just waiting for them to go away? I have a lot of them, and I still get sick from foods that I've carefully not eaten for years. My food reactions are mostly a groggy bleary state that goes on for a few days.

Somebody sent me an interesting email once. She said she had gotten over her corn intolerance by eating a tiny bit every now and then. I think it might have been every 4 days. After a while, she said, she was able to eat more corn, and then she could eat corn freely.

Of course if doing this, you'd have to be careful to not just set up a masked food intolerance again. The test for whether this method actually cured an intolerance, or just masked it again, would be to not eat the food for a week, then try it, and see if you get sick.

I don't know whether this person's "cure" for her corn intolerance would have passed that test. I might try it, with one of my problem foods. The idea would be to take an amount that is just small enough so you don't have a noticeable reaction, and see if that amount goes up over time.

From what I've noticed, smaller and smaller amounts affect me for less time. I get sick from tiny amounts of foods, but I don't stay sick as long as with more food. So there's some amount that's tiny enough that I wouldn't notice being sick at all.

I know you can re-mask a food intolerance, because I did that once without realizing it. I was taking some chromium pills, and I was really out of it for several hours after taking the pills. (I had a different explanation for it at the time). Over a month or so, my reactions to the pills faded away.

But later, once I had carefully done elimination diets etc., one of those pills made me really sick for several days (the food intolerance reaction).

There's EPD - enzyme potentiated desensitization. Our wonderful FDA banned it in the US, but it's offered in Canada. I could see a doctor in Canada, I guess. There's some actual medical research supporting EPD for allergies, and it's supposed to help with food intolerances. I prefer treatments that have some science behind them.

Laura

[dbmamaz]

I kinda want to try NAET, but havent gotten there yet. Lots of people insist it sounds like quakery (and it does sound like quackery) but others swear it worked for them.

[Laura Wesson]

I kinda want to try NAET, but havent gotten there yet. Lots of people insist it sounds like quakery (and it does sound like quackery) but others swear it worked for them.

EPD has a whole lot more evidence backing it. There are double-blind studies on Pubmed, on EPD for inhalant allergies. It might even be better than allergy shots. Nobody knows much about what goes on with food intolerance reactions, so they don't know if EPD works for them. I read a book, "5 years without food" or whatever, by someone who had Crohn's and food intolerances to almost everything, who said that EPD helped her. And they say that EPD works for non IgE food reactions.

The acupuncture in NAET might have an anti-inflammatory effect, maybe? I read something about it, and it does sound extremely and thoroughly quackish, in the concepts and the elaborate rituals etc. But it might have some kind of good effect.

Laura

[Laura Wesson]

actually EPD is available in the U.S., it got turned into LDA or low dose antigens.

Laura

[Rachel--24]

I have come to "know" alot of people who have tried various treatments for allergies/intolerances. I've heard alot more positives regarding NAET and BioSET for desensitization treatments.

It could be that I've just come across alot more people doing these treatments in comparison to EPD but just thought I'd mention that most people I know of who have done NAET have reported good results.

I've done BioSET myself but my sensitivies are extensive and I was more interested in getting to the root of the problem rather than trying to desensitize myself to everything (which would be a never ending task).

Also, if you do not address the underlying cause many times these treatments do not hold. The sensitivities come back because the body is still dealing with the same issues which brought the intolerances on in the first place.

Personally, I'm more interested in what works for people than I am in double blind studies.

I am definetely interested in scientific evidence....however, I dont *need* this in order to believe that something can be beneficial for me.

My suggestion as far as what to do about the non-gluten intolerances would be to try to determine what is causing them ....and then treat those issues. As far as I know thats the most effective way to overcome the food intolerances.

[Laura Wesson]

Well, I said that the acupuncture in NAET might help people. There's evidence that acupuncture is antiinflammatory. Although the antiinflammatory actions aren't more than symptom control so far as I know.

That was my tentative conclusion after reading about it, that there might be something helpful in it, but surrounded by a lot of hocus-pocus.

You can read things online about people proving that their diagnosis of "allergies" in NAET was, at least in individual cases, random.

Perhaps just seeing an acupuncturist would be as helpful as the NAET (minus the psychological boost of being told it's a special treatment for food intolerances).

We all have to figure out our own ways of trying to guess what might be genuinely helpful. I know there are a great many natural remedies which don't seem to do a thing. A lot of us have been through this - someone suggests something or other, we try it, doesn't help, go on to something else. In this maze of ideas and techniques, scientists are gradually sorting out what works and what doesn't. But before they get through that long process, we as individuals have to discriminate between the baloney and "maybe helpful" using our own judgement as best we can.

You can also read accounts by people who weren't helped by NAET at all.

In the UK allergy shots are illegal outside of a hospital, I've heard, because they were considered too dangerous. EPD is given in doctor's offices. I'm not sure if EPD is the main allergy treatment in the UK, there are also allergy drops (sublingual allergy therapy). Those are not said to work for food intolerances.

EPD has been restricted in the US, and NAET has not, because people in EPD actually get injections. They contain allergens but in a much lower dose than allergy shots do. It's potentiated by an enzyme that's injected with the allergens. The FDA regulates injections. THe LDA version of EPD was developed which sidestepped the restrictions on EPD somehow.

There are only about 60 doctors who give the EPD/LDA in the US. You can read rave stories about EPD also. One guy said he went on a months long binge of re-tasting all the many foods he'd had to avoid for years. I can imagine!

Laura

[Laura Wesson]

Personally, I'm more interested in what works for people than I am in double blind studies.

That's exactly what double-blind studies are for. To figure out whether it works on average, how much, and to control for placebo effects.

Because people's symptoms come and go, they often are trying more than one thing, human beings are VERY complicated, with many interacting factors.

Although it was not my intention to get into a discussion of the value of science.

I was more interested in whether anybody has tried the at-home kind of desensitization that the one person who emailed me said had worked for her. And whether it worked for them. I'd already heard about NAET.

Laura