Sweet potatoes are also found in West Indian and Chinese stores, and occasionally in ordinary greengrocers or supermarkets. There are many different sorts, with flesh ranging from white to deep yellow in colour. Those on sale in Britain usually have a distinctive reddish-purple outer skin. Peel and dice them, keeping them under water as much as possible to prevent discolouration. Alternatively, you can bake them and serve them with butter (if allowed) or slice and deep-fry them. They have a very sweet, slightly sticky flesh which goes well in soups, or with meat casseroles, but is rather cloying on its own.

Serving sweet potatoes with sharp fruit is a good idea, as the acidity offsets their stickiness. Try frying them over a low heat for 20 minutes (after boiling), adding slices of apple and walnuts for the last 5 minutes. This makes a good breakfast dish. Like yams, sweet potatoes can be peeled and boiled in a large batch, then stored in individual portions in the freezer, and fried from frozen.

The Chinese make a soup by boiling sweet potatoes in water or stock until they disintegrate and flavouring the liquid with root ginger. They also make a delicious snack called deep-fried sweet potato balls. To make these, boil some sweet potatoes until soft. Mash them and add rice flour (or wheat flour) to make a stiff dough. Take a small piece of the dough, press it down flat, put a half-teaspoonful of peanut butter (or another nut butter) in the centre and seal the dough around it. Roll in sesame seeds and deep fry in vegetable oil.

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If you are satisfied with your improvement, and don’t like the idea of giving up foods, you could stop here. Reintroduce tea, coffee, alcohol etc, to see which was the problem, following the instructions given below.

If you feel you would like to be better still, go on to Stage 2 of the diet. When you have completed Stage 2 (or Stage 3) you can test your reactions to tea, coffee, alcohol etc.

Some people who feel partially better at this stage, may be suffering from Candida overgrowth. Cutting out sugar could have improved the situation, but to get any further requires a full Candida treatment. If you think this is likely, having considered the symptoms of Candida, then you should try the full anti-Candida diet. Bear in mind, however, that the symptoms of candidiasis and food intolerance are very difficult to tell apart. You may be better off proceeding to Stage 2, and then trying the anti-Candida therapy if this does not work.

Feeling a lot better

Good – you can now test the various things you cut out to see which ones cause your symptoms – see the next section for instructions. Testing can begin as soon as you have been consistently well for a week. If you felt terrible at the start of the diet, then caffeine is the most likely cause. Try a fairly weak cup of coffee or tea for your first test. Bear in mind that there are dozens of other nasties in tea and coffee, besides caffeine – you may be reacting to one of these, in which case you could be sensitive to tea but not coffee, or vice versa.

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stiff and her headaches were less frequent. Since she was still not completely well, the doctor asked her to try an elimination diet, avoiding cereal grains, dairy products and eggs. Carol was impressed by the change this brought about – she felt much better in herself, less tired and able to be cheerful without making an effort. She also lost some excess weight that she had accumulated. On testing, it turned out to be eggs and wheat that caused her problems. Having improved so much, she was now able to notice the specific effects of certain other foods. For one thing, she noticed that foods containing a lot of additives made her feel tired and unwell, with vague muscle aches. Decorating the house also produced these sort of symptoms, and she found later that solvents such as white spirit and dry-cleaning fluid regularly had this effect.

As this case shows, there are often several different factors at work in individual patients. It is not unusual for food intolerance to go hand-in-hand with Candida overgrowth and sensitivity to synthetic chemicals. How these three problems might interconnect is still unknown.

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Golden syrup Treacle Molasses Maple syrup Malt

Barley sweetener (macrobiotic sweetener) Jam, including ‘no added sugar’ jam Chutney and pickles

Most alcoholic drinks, except very dry wines

Cakes and Biscuits

Ice-cream

Puddings

Chocolate and other sweets Fizzy drinks and fruit squash

Any food labelled: corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, glucose, maltose,

sucrose or sugar Baked beans, including ‘no added sugar’ brands Peanut butter (except sugar-free brands, sold in health food shops) Some other apparently savoury foods contain sugar – some tinned soups

for example, and some meat pies Some medicines, especially syrups and coated tablets Dried fruits, which are rich in natural sugars, should not be eaten Anything that tastes sweet should be regarded with suspicion, unless

designed for diabetics

Quite often, the initial response to nystatin is severe and unpleasant, but this is not usually a reaction to the drug itself. What happens is that the drug kills off a lot of the resident Candida, the yeast cells burst open, and some of the cell contents are absorbed into the bloodstream, producing an exaggerated version of the usual symptoms. This is known as a die-off reaction or Herxheimer reaction. The best way to avoid this problem is to embark on a low.

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While the doctors concerned with ‘masked food allergy’ protested at the redefinition of allergy announced by their colleagues, they lost out to the newly arisen orthodoxy. There was pressure on them to conform, both from the medical establishment and, in some cases, from large food manufacturers who were funding research, and were alarmed at the idea of whole sections of the populace discovering they could not eat wheat or milk – the two most common culprits as identified by the alternative allergists. There are very few processed foods that do not contain wheat or milk.

Some of the doctors involved in such unpopular research were highly respected medical scientists, with promising research careers ahead of them. But all this pressure eventually forced them out of the medical mainstream and into private practice, where they continued to use the term ‘allergy’ in their own way – to mean simply ‘altered reactivity’. This tradition has continued in the USA, and many American doctors working in this field still use ‘allergy’ in this much broader sense. Other doctors, especially in Britain, prefer the less controversial terms ‘food intolerance’ or ‘food sensitivity’.

Another trans-Atlantic difference should be pointed out here. The American doctors working in this field describe themselves as clinical ecologists because they are concerned with the effect of a great variety of environmental factors – such as pollens, synthetic chemicals and air pollutants – as well as food. Some of their British and Australian counterparts also use this title, but most reject it because of its perceived links with the worst sort of fringe medicine and bogus diagnostic methods. Nevertheless, most of the British doctors who study and treat food intolerance also consider other forms of allergy and sensitivity, including chemical sensitivity, a subject that is discussed in detail in Chapter Nine.

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Besides causing allergy directly, soaps and detergents enhance other allergies. These cleansers break down keratin, the tough protein component of skin, and the protective surface oils, therefore speeding up the absorption of allergic chemicals through the skin.

One woman, who has been highly allergic to such substances as pollen, moulds and foods from early childhood, told us that she had been spared the miseries of skin allergies until around 1970, when enzymes became the ‘in’ laundry additives. Her legs broke out in oozing, weeping eczema like rashes. She remains free of the problem, however, as long as she uses only enzyme-free detergents.

You, too, can spare yourself the agonies of allergy to soaps and detergents by following a few simple guidelines.

• Buy only white, unscented soap that’s free of antiseptics, lanolin, enzymes and so forth. Baby soaps and soaps for washable woolens and fine fabrics are the safest.

• In general, simple, basic formulas are less prone to cause reactions than complex ones. Read labels.

• Even the mildest laundry soaps and detergents must be thoroughly rinsed from clothing and bed sheets.

• Pour or measure detergents or bleaches carefully so that they don’t splash on to your hands and arms. Or buy bleach sold in tablet form or packaged in premeasured envelopes.

• During the winter, when dry air makes skin more easily irritated by clothing, presoak laundry and use about half the amount of detergent the manufacturers recommend.

• Remove your rings when washing or using soaps, waxes and polishes to avoid trapping soap next to skin.

• Better yet, use protective gloves to do any kind of housework. For wet jobs, use rubber gloves over powdered cotton gloves to prevent excessive perspiration. To reduce irritation, wear the gloves for thirty minutes at a time rather than pulling them on and off several times in the course of a day. Even with protective gloves, don’t make the scrub water too hot; the heat will penetrate and irritate your hands.

• For dusting or other dry, dirty housework, wear cotton gloves to keep your hands from getting too dirty. That way you don’t have to scrub your hands with soaps to get them clean again.

• Use long-handled brushes as much as possible to keep sensitive skin on arms from being splashed with hot, soapy water or paints, varnishes and lacquers.

Incidentally, the tips suggested above will be helpful whether your skin is allergic or just easily irritated. And they’ll help you tolerate contact with other sources of chemicals besides soaps and detergents.

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How to avoid bee stings

• Stay away from beehives and known nests. Call a beekeeper or the local council if bees choose your immediate environment to form a colony.

• Have wasp and hornet nests removed while they are still small enough to handle.

• Persons allergic to insects should be wary of power mowing, hedge clipping, scything and the like.

• Avoid looking and smelling like a flower during bee-sting season: avoid bright-coloured clothing. Light green, white, tan and khaki are the safest colours. Forswear perfumes and sweet-smelling lotions, creams, shampoos and hairsprays if you plan to be outdoors.

• Don’t wear floppy clothing, and do tie up long hair; both can entangle the stinging insects and anger them into doing their worst.

• Don’t go barefoot or wear sandals – the foot is vulnerable. Stay away from clover patches, flower gardens and other places where bees are busy.

• Keep an insecticide spray in the glove compartment of the car (along with the insect-sting kit) for use if a bee flies in, a very common occurrence.

• If an attack seems imminent, do not swat at the bee or bees and do not flail your arms. Retreat slowly, keep calm and make no sudden movement. If retreat is impossible, lie down and cover your head with your arms.

• Be wary of litter bins and rotting fruit under trees -favorite attractions for bees and wasps.

• Discourage allergic youngsters from eating sweets, ice cream cones and drinking soft drinks outdoors during warm months. They attract bees, wasps and hornets.

How to avoid ant stings

• Avoid anthills and mounds.

• Keep arms, legs and feet covered since they are the areas most frequently stung.

• Do not leave food uncovered or uncontained within the house, since this is an open invitation to ants.

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Penicillin. This is not one drug but a general name for a group of antibiotics. Different types of penicillin, made from special moulds, control specific types of bacterial infections -making penicillins the most useful and widely prescribed drugs in the world. Doctors find, however, that from 1 to 10 per cent of the population is allergic to penicillin. Fortunately, most reactions are mild. The chance of a dramatic, explosive reaction is relatively remote; the odds are somewhere between 1 and 4 in 10,000. Even then, only 2 in 100,000 of these result in death. The remainders are kept in check by emergency medical action. (Strangely enough, people who are allergic to penicillin moulds, such as those sometimes found in cheese or around the house, can generally tolerate penicillin.)

Doctors have begun to realize that many people who think they’re allergic to penicillin aren’t really allergic to it after all. Penicillin allergy, it seems, often fades with time if the drug is avoided. Researchers at the Clinical Research Center at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for instance, tested 300 children who were reputedly allergic to penicillin, to find that only 19 per cent were indeed allergic. The authors conclude that the incidence of penicillin allergy is over-estimated, and that the allergy is not necessarily permanent.

In a similar study, a team of two doctors and a nurse tested nineteen children who had been judged allergic to penicillin three to five years earlier and found only five were still allergic (Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology).

In still another study, researchers tested almost 800 people presumably allergic to penicillin. Nearly half of them were no longer allergic (Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology).

These studies don’t mean you should throw caution to the wind and disregard any bad experience you may have had with penicillin. On the contrary: it’s important to know if you have an authentic, active allergy to penicillin. Certain conditions – for example, serious infections, a chronic disease such as cystic fibrosis or venereal disease — depend heavily on penicillin for their medical management. In such cases, doctors conduct a skin test with benzylpenicilloyl-polylysine (called Pre-Pen), which they consider to be the most accurate, lowest risk predictor available for penicillin allergy. Sometimes a doctor can manage penicillin allergy by giving stepped doses of penicillin to desensitize an individual to the drug. If using penicillin is out of the question, the doctor will look for a safe substitute.

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In fact, the smorgasbord of household pesticides sitting on the grocery shelf next to the mops and pet foods gives us a false sense of security about their safety. Few people realize they are applying highly toxic chemicals to their environment, so if we’re going to beef about supermarket oranges blitzed with malathion, we shouldn’t use pesticides in our own backyards and kitchen cupboards, either.

Exotic, six-syllable chemicals aren’t the only pesticides that can cause trouble. Many household insecticides contain pyrethrum, a perfectly natural product made from the flower of a plant related to ragweed. If you’re allergic to ragweed, you’re apt to be allergic to pyrethrum, too. All of which prompts Dr Randolph to warn, ‘Never, never use a pesticide indoors.’

If it comes down to either having the termites in your house exterminated or waiting for the timbers to crash down around you, ask the exterminator to apply the chemicals directly to the nest rather than zapping the entire house. If the firm won’t do that, find one that will. And have any extermination done right before you go on holiday so fumes have a chance to lie down while you’re away.

You may even be able to escape overhead spraying outdoors. A woman in Texas who is extremely sensitive to chemicals tells us: ‘The little town I live in fogs for mosquitoes. I was hit with the fumes six times before I finally convinced them that they had to call me before they started fogging. I told them that if they hit me again, they might as well not send an ambulance they should send the hearse instead. Now they have a sign on the fogger that says “Do not remove this machine from the garage without calling Mrs Scherzer.”

‘This year,’ she continued, ‘the town itself wasn’t spraying, but the county was. And the county man would come around and knock on my door at nine a.m. and say, “We’re going to fog this area at six o’clock this evening.” That would give me enough time to leave town. I’d spend a couple of days with my daughter or mother-in-law until the stuff got out of the air.’

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Doctors also tell us that a solution of mineral salts – such as plain old baking soda diluted in plenty of water – seems to help neutralize the effects of an allergic food, nipping an adverse reaction in the bud. For people watching their sodium intake, potassium bicarbonate alone is a better alternative. It’s available at most chemists.

Mineral salts are all right in a pinch – before a dinner party or other occasion where what you eat is beyond your control, or as an after-dinner bromide. Don’t make a daily habit of mineral salts or cathartics, though – they’re strictly emergency outs, to help you cope with inadvertent violations. Avoidance is still the name of the game.

Allergy doctors who prescribe the Rotary Diet encourage people with food allergies to follow the four-day plan for life, speaking well of its ability both to relieve existing food allergies and prevent future problems. (Not to mention the fact that allergy injections have a poor track record for removing problems.) Invariably, compliance comes down to two things: how allergic you are, and how essential is the offending food to your diet. If you get giant hives or splitting headaches from wheat, you’ll need little encouragement to avoid it completely. But if you feel only slight fatigue or a little depressed, you’ll probably be inclined to risk minor discomforts for the convenience of eating wheat. You really owe it to yourself to rotate, though -or to encourage your child to rotate.

We’re not so naive as to suggest that sticking to a Rotary Diet is always easy. Few people, after all, have the patience and perseverance to deal with a rigid schedule of permitted and forbidden foods with no let-up for months on end. Doctors know that, too. Kendall Gerdes, an allergist in Denver, Colorado, told us that some people are able to return to their customary eating habits as long as they periodically return to a Rotary Diet long enough to build up their resistance to troublesome foods. ‘Three months down the line,’ says Dr Gerdes, ‘I want them to go back on a Rotary Diet for three cycles to reestablish their tolerance.’

Leniency of that sort helps enormously when you’re trying to get your allergic child to stick to a Rotary Diet – although Dr Boxer told us that he found some kids are often surprisingly cooperative about food rotation. ‘We’ve got a lot of kids who are great about it,’ he told us. ‘They’ll say, “No, thanks, this isn’t my day to eat that food.” In some ways, children may find a Rotary Diet easier to follow than adults, since it all seems like a game. And they don’t have twenty or thirty years of entrenched eating habits to change.

But childhood is dotted with enough important social events like birthday parties and school festivities to tempt even the most self-disciplined child. On special occasions, it’s probably wiser to allow children to eat forbidden food and to have them feel they are different or less healthy than their friends – unless they’re going to get severely ill.

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