A holistic view of allergic disease

A personal approach to the diagnosis and treatment of patients with food allergy or intolerance is presented in this paper. Patients with these problems may prove difficult to treat because of intolerance to several different foods, and the situation may be further complicated by allergy to inhaled substances. Fasting and elimination and rotation diets may be used for diagnosis, together with open food challenges. Although 'blind' food challenge may be useful as a research procedure, it can be unhelpful in day-to-day treatment. Examples of the use of this approach in patients sensitive to cow's milk protein, egg, wheat, yeast and food additives are presented and discussed. The author concludes that there is enormous suffering from ingestant allergy which could be relieved by recognizing and avoiding the causative factors.