Ralph was repeatedly caught lying and stealing. He frequently beat the family dog and succeeded in killing one pet gerbil and mutilating another. He built model planes but only, it seemed, to have the pleasure of smashing them. He also broke several chairs and damaged the furniture.

His I.Q. was above average, and all the standard physical and psychological tests revealed no organic problem. Yet he had great difficulty sleeping and could only sleep at times with the motor of a hair drier running near his bed. (The reason for this quirk was never explained.) If another family member entered his room, he ordered him out. The final straw for his parents was when they returned from a party and found a distraught baby sitter sobbing in the living room. Ralph had pounded a hole in the plaster wall between his bedroom and the living room and was climbing in and out.

Since Ralph’s mother suffered from ecologic illness of her own, I suggested that both she and the boy be hospitalized together. In this way they could help each other and observe one another’s progress. There was a bit of self-interest in this, too, since I knew that it would be extremely difficult to care for a wild twelve-year-old for three weeks in a closed hospital ward. I call this joint treatment of several family members “observed togetherness.”2

The boy’s medical history suggested that he might have food allergies. For instance, he was tremendously fond of orange juice, preferring it over any other beverage. He loved hard candy (which is almost pure corn sugar). His mother, Lorraine, age forty-one, had been subject to rheumatoid arthritis involving the elbows, knees, ankles, hips, and back for the previous eight years. She had also had sinus symptoms, headaches, and chronic fatigue, on and off, for years.

Basically, the patient fasts for five days and then is allowed to test one food after another in a search for definitive reactions. One of the first foods Ralph was tested on was orange juice, because of his addictivelike craving for it. At first he seemed normal, but within about two hours he was flushed in the face, had started to pack his bags, and insulted his mother and the staff. When his father told him, over the phone, that he could not come home, he hung up on him. Ralph struck his mother twice before his father and I arrived on the scene simultaneously. The room was completely disheveled. When I suggested that the oranges were the cause of this reaction, he started screaming and tore his symptom chart to shreds.

A few days later he had a similar but less severe reaction to grapefruit, another member of the citrus family. He also had less troublesome reactions to pork, peanuts, corn, peas, and bananas. Once all of these foods were scrupulously avoided, Ralph’s behavior improved greatly. When I last saw him, he was doing fine and had developed an excellent insight into his problem. His schoolwork and interpersonal relationships were now generally excellent.

An interesting side note concerns Mrs. Hodgson. As she went through the food tests, she discovered that a number of frequently eaten foods—including carrots, rice, pork, halibut, oranges, wheat, corn, peas, and grapefruit—caused acute flare-ups of her arthritic pain. By avoiding these foods and then rotating her diet according to the rules that I shall explain, she reaped equal benefit from her stay in the Ecology Unit.

The case of Ralph Hodgson illustrates the role of food addiction in causing the plus-two reaction of hyperactivity. The fact that he and his mother were both helped at the same time shows that sometimes problems which appear to be entirely “emotional” turn out to be environmental.

When two family members have been at each other’s throats, it is sometimes advantageous to hospitalize them both at the same time. In this way they see that it is not their personalities which are at fault, but that a physical problem lies at the base of their difficulties.

*58\110\2*

Susceptibility to biological drugs is a problem which allergists see fairly often but frequently do not know how to interpret. The patient gradually develops strange symptoms, months or even years after beginning a course of antiallergy injections with biologically derived drugs. These reactions continue or get worse following each injection, even when the doctor reduces the potency of the dose. Quite commonly the physician concludes that the patient is a hypochondriac, complaining about the alleged side effects for psychological reasons. The problem is usually chemical, however.

In the early 1950s, several patients became ill each time I tried to give them provocative skin tests with food extracts. One patient had no skin reaction to this test but suffered rapidly progressing headaches, nausea, dizziness, and faintness immediately after four injections.

Suspecting some sort of chemical susceptibility, I found that the food extracts which I was using in the tests were preserved with phenol, a coal-tar derived chemical, otherwise known as carbolic acid. (This is the same common chemical also found in the lining of food cans.) Some food extracts without phenol were therefore prepared. The same patients had no adverse reactions to these samples. This test was performed blind, as well; in other words, patients were alternately given phenol-containing and phenol-free injections of the same substance, without knowing which was which. Invariably they became ill from the phenol-containing solution, but not from the phenol-free one. Dr. Jerome Glaser of Rochester, New York, made similar observations, independently, at about the same time.

For many years I maintained a set of phenol-free food extracts for the diagnosis of patients susceptible to this form of the chemical problem. In recent years, far-advanced and complicated cases have been better handled in a hospital setting.

Reactions to other biological drugs, such as insulin, liver extract, epinephrine, and so forth, can also be traced in many cases to the preservatives in the drug. This can be troublesome indeed, for drugs such as epinephrine, a hormone of the adrenal gland, will rapidly disintegrate without a preservative.

*28\110\2*

Prolonged irritation to the membranes of the nose and sinuses can result in swelling, and this may eventually produce nasal polyps in some people -small grape-like protrusions of the membrane. The polyps are harmless but they may obstruct the nasal passage making breathing difficult. The sense of smell can also be lost, and there may be symptoms similar to sinusitis if the opening between a sinus cavity and the nose becomes blocked. The polyps can be removed surgically if they do cause discomfort. For some inexplicable reason, many cases of nasal polyps are seen in people who are sensitive to aspirin.

One final problem that should be mentioned in connection with rhinitis is post-nasal drip (sometimes known by the general name ‘catarrh’. Excess mucus from the nose trickles down the back of the throat and thus into the trachea – the main tube leading to the lungs – to be coughed up later. Post-nasal drip can follow various infections, but it is sometimes allergic in origin.

*49\180\8*

Phase 2 (adaptation phase) of the allergy addiction state is similar to the stressed state of the adrenally competent person. The allergy-addicted person feels fine so long as she/he makes regular contact with the substance she/he is allergic to. The adrenally competent, stressed person feels OK so long as she/he continues to push her/himself. Avoidance of (he allergic substance and slowing down brings on the symptoms.

Phase 3 (exhaustion phase) of the allergy addiction state sees the symptoms returning so frequently and lasting so long they eventually remain permanently. No amount of contact with the allergens responsible can now alleviate the symptoms.

The adrenally incompetent, stressed person is now permanently fatigued and no amount of willpower can spur him or her on. The symptoms that used to afflict them only during periods of inactivity are now there permanently. Like the allergy-addicted person the chronically stressed person takes the view that these symptoms have appeared out of the blue for no apparent reason. Just as allergy-addicted people can’t believe the habitual eating of their favourite foods is the cause of their symptoms, the adrenally exhausted people can’t believe their lifestyle is the cause of their symptoms.

Those hard-chargers that see the light and slow down, frequently admit they were hooked on work, exercise, sport or socialising, or two or more of them. Being able to compare their present state of well-being with their previous chemical (beta endorphin) and hormonal (adrenalin) highs, they can see this clearly. Not that giving up hard-charging is easy; they go through much the same withdrawals that heroin addicts, smokers and the allergy-addicted go through.

For some, the irritability, restlessness, depression and aggression they experience is sheer hell. They pace the floor like caged lions, curse my existence and snap at anyone who comes near.

For hard-chargers, the real challenge begins when they are well and bursting with natural energy. Hard-chargers have an innate drive to push themselves to their limits of tolerance that must be constantly monitored and vigorously controlled. Those who accept this as their new challenge remain well. Those who don’t, push on to their new outer limit of tolerance and eventually experience the return of all their symptoms.

Hard-chargers must realise that the programs in this book are not a license to push themselves ad infinitum. The programs don’t make them invincible, they only extend their outer limits of tolerance, and if anyone can find their outer limits of tolerance, it’s a hard-charger.

*218\18\9*

Stress is the great inhibitor of digestion and absorption. Adrenalin shuts down the digestive tract by directing the blood away from it to the muscles, brain and eyes to prepare us for action. Food in the pipe at this time just sits there doing nothing save causing the abdomen to bloat and distend. (The digestive system is simply an 8.5 m (28 ft) pipe stretching from mouth to anus.)

Insidious malnutrition afflicts those who are too busy, committed, or anxious to sit down to eat and to relax after eating to let the food digest. The great irony here is that nutritious foods like wholemeal bread, nuts, seeds, fresh fruits and vegetables, with their high fibre and complex carbohydrate content, are harder to digest and absorb than the refined foods of white bread, tinned fruits, TV dinners, pies or potato crisps, that have a slower passage through the pipe and are more likely to yield their limited nutrients to absorption.

The fact that whole, natural foods require adequate rest and relaxation for their digestion is often missed by the hard-charging, health buff type who works forty to fifty hours per week, jogs three nights, plays competition sports such as squash or touch football and is always eating alfalfa sprouts, wheat grass, wholemeal bread, nuts and seeds on the go and yet feels tired all the time.

These types always seem to have a brother-in-law who ‘is a bit of an under-achiever’, doesn’t exercise, eats pies for lunch in the pub, is a bit over-weight, but seems energetic, enough and never catches the amount of colds and ‘flu that 1 he hard-charging health buff catches. In short, he annoys the hard-charging health buff who cannot understand why this brother-in-law seems to have a higher resistance to infection and a greater joie de vivre than the hard-charging health buff, who is so fit and has such regular bowels. The regular bowel movements are, unfortunately, where most of the hard-charger’s food intake ends up.

Often the hard-charger tries to rectify the situation by coming in late from a busy day and cooking a balanced nutritious meal. Being that it’s late and there is a busy day ahead, the hard-charger goes to bed with a full stomach, a practice that interferes with digestion as during sleep all body processes slow dramatically, including those of digestion and absorption. The hard-charger wakes next morning and cannot face breakfast as part of last night’s meal is still lying undigested in the stomach.

Young, New World civilisations have a lot to learn from the historically successful and well-established Old World civilisations. The Italians, for instance, have some of the sanest and most health-promoting eating habits of all. They have their main meal in the middle of the day and they take the afternoon off to relax, enjoy and digest it. Before their leisurely midday meal they often sip such appetisers as Campari and Vermouth to enhance the flow of their digestive juices in readiness for the food. With the main meal they eat bitter salads that help to maintain the acidity of their stomachs. Optimum stomach acidity is needed to ensure digestion of protein and absorption of minerals. They get maximum nutritional benefit from their food which gives them energy when they need it most, during the waking hours. Could this be one of the reasons Italy has contributed so much to the world of art, music, architecture, education and scientific thought?

Cultures that are predominantly Anglo Saxon-Celtic tend to have their main meal at the end of the day. Although this is not as wise as the Italian practice, it’s OK if the evening meal isn’t too big or eaten too late and if the rest of the evening is spent relaxing. However, watching drama and violence on TV does not constitute relaxation, for this gets the adrenalin levels up again and reduces digestion and absorption. Using the after-dinner hours to do the ironing, put on a load of washing, sit over a desk doing paperwork, phone customers, colleagues or employees to discuss work is not relaxing and will help to reduce your digestion. If you are one of these workaholic, hard-charging types, are guilty of these practices and habitually drive your car above the speed limit, you will find you will probably have a distended abdomen through the week that flattens out on the weekend—if you slow down. Many people think this see-sawing pot tummy is the result of Candida or overeating and so go on a strict, often crash diet to get rid of it. Such restrictive diets add to their already high stress levels and cause malnutrition.

*200\18\9*

If you are losing weight and are hungry, lethargic, depressed and experiencing ‘the fades’ each afternoon, you are making one or more of the following mistakes:

1. You are filling up on fruits and not including enough nuts and seeds or brown rice bubbles on the fruit salads.

2. You are filling up on vegetables and not having enough meat, seafood or poultry at the main meal of the day.

3. You are skipping meat, seafood and poultry altogether and having vegetables only as the main meal.

4. You are not having a carbohydrate food (potato, bread, pasta, rice, etc.) or a protein food (meat, seafood, poultry, egg) at the midday meal. That is, you are having salad (rabbit food) only.

5. You are not drinking enough fluid. No one aged 12 or over should have less than 9 x 230 mL (8 oz) glasses of fluid per day and most people need more. Most of the dry, wrinkled skins, constipation and gaunt, drawn, expressions that sometimes develop on the Anti-Candida Program are due to dehydration.

6. You haven’t properly addressed the stresses in your life and are doing too much and resting too little. Check to see if you are getting eight hours’ sleep. You need at least eight hours’ sleep per night for the Candida program to work properly.

*182\18\9*

Because the Metabolism-Balancing Program is a broad spectrum food program and not a food restriction diet, the evening meal can be derived from any recipe book you like. The Metabolism-Balancing Program is designed to make you feel as relaxed as possible about being on a program and to impress upon your subconscious mind that ‘being on a program’ isn’t so bad after all.

If you have high cholesterol levels there are some restrictions:

1. You are not to have rich or fatty sauces or gravies.

2. You are to go without poultry dishes and have two vegetarian meals per week in place of them. Make sure that soybeans and/ or lentils are the principal foods in the vegetarian dishes.

3. No cheese or eggs until your cholesterol levels have normalised.

4. No deep fried foods, only light stir-fries using soya oil (or olive oil if you are not amine or salicylate sensitive).

*164\18\9*

As a result, more and more physicians are using attitudinal healing as their main treatment modality. Attitudinal healing teaches enjoyment of the here and now and to not place more importance on a given achievement than on the process which made it possible. Such changes in attitude have the effect of relaxing us and removing the sensation that life is rushing past us. These attitude changes often necessitate an extension of the time frames needed to achieve our goals. They also encourage us to notice and enjoy more of the commonplace things in life that are so often taken for granted or go completely unnoticed.

The Eastern sages recognised that appropriate physical exercise was needed to help perpetuate attitudes of equanimity and appreciation of the banal. As a result such exercise regimes as Tai Chi and yoga came into existence. The slow rhythmic movements, combined with the deep, slow, rhythmic breathing of these disciplines, tone the muscles in a way that keeps them supple, young and strong. The sensory nerves that travel from the muscles to the brain carry calming nerve impulses that convey the relaxed state of the body to the mind which in turn enhances its relaxed state.

These exercise regimes compare favourably with the rip, tear and bust effect of jogging, aerobics, squash and weight training which, being more in time with a rush, do and bust lifestyle leaves the muscles full of lactic acid which makes them tight, shortened and overly toned (in spasm). Shallow breathing, stiff joints, headaches and awkward gait ensue. The uptight muscles send aberrant nerve impulses up the sensory nerves to the brain, imposing the agitated state of the body on the mind.

Such bodies and minds become rigid and lacking in stamina as evidenced by the frequent colds and ‘flu hard-charging exercise buffs catch. A fit body is one that has a strong resistance to any type of disease and can survive a winter without as much as a sniffle. Unfortunately, the Western definition of a fit body is one that has bulging, hard muscles and can be pushed to inordinate lengths. The chronic pain that lingers after a sports injury has been incurred is an ongoing stress to the body which contributes to the lowering of its resistance and stamina.

*146\18\9*

The symptoms of allergy to food are those of the classic allergic diseases – asthma, eczema, hay fever, rhinitis, urticaria, anaphylaxsis. Nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea, gut pain, gut spasm, oedema, joint pain, severe headaches and other late or remote allergic reactions are also symptoms which can be linked to food allergy.

Almost any food can cause allergy, but the common ones are cow’s milk and its products, eggs, wheat, yeast, citrus fruits, nuts, and beans and pulses. Proteins are more prone to cause allergy than other foods.

Allergy to foods can respond to treatment with anti-histamine drugs, and to sodium cromoglycate (Nalcrom). Severe allergy to foods may not be helped by these, and in these cases, total avoidance of the offending food is the best remedy.

Even if your symptoms are mild, if you have food allergy, you will usually be advised to avoid the food totally. Unlike food intolerance, reducing the amount you eat or leaving the food out of your diet will not make you able to tolerate it again.

*94\117\8*

Sensitivity to plants can cause cross-reaction to other plants, foods or chemicals. The cause is thought to be closely related chemicals that occur naturally within them. Some of the principal plants and plant products known to cause cross-reaction in people with dermatitis are:

Turpentine

This is a natural resin derived from pines, but it can also be produced synthetically. In cases of dermatitis, it is known to cross-react with Balsam of Peru (see below), benzoin (found in tinctures, creams and many home medicines), and the chrysanthemum family (see below). It may cross-react with orange and lemon peel. Turpentine is widely used in cosmetics, polishes, varnishes, paint thinners and anything pine-scented.

Chrysanthemum and pyrethrum

Chrysanthemum and pyrethrum (often used as an insecticide in organic gardening) are members of the Chrysanthemum genus and are thought to cause dermatitis by cross-reaction. They may also cross-react with turpentine (see above) and with arnica and camomile, both members of the same biological family.

Cashew nut and mango

These are members of the same family as poison ivy, which is probably the single largest cause of dermatitis in the United States. They can cross-react with each other, and with other members of their family, including the Japanese lacquer-tree (used to produce furniture lacquer) and the marking nut tree of India (producing black marking ink for laundry). Cashew oil is used in producing some phenol formalde hyde resins for clothing, in printers’ ink and in varnishes.

Tree Pollens

Some tree pollens cross-react with certain nuts and fruits. You may get a reaction when you eat these foods if you are allergic to the relevant pollens.

Allergy to beech pollen can make you cross-react to hazelnuts. Allergy to walnut pollen can make you cross-react to walnuts. Allergy to birch pollen can cause cross-reaction to hazelnuts, to apples, and to peaches, cherries, pears and carrots.

*25\117\8*