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| containing milk solids, especially in combination with wheat bread or pasta, I'm sneezing within an hour. As one allergist explained, eating those foods puts sufficient stress on my immune system so that exposure to animal dander, dust mites or pollen results in a full-blown allergy attack. By the simple strategy of avoiding certain foods, I avoid hay fever symptoms. |
| There is much debate and confusion over the term ''food allergy.'' To orthodox physicians, an allergic reaction is immediate and dramatic, like anaphylactic shock, which can be fatal, or a sudden eruption of hives. The term "food sensitivity" was coined to describe more subtle reactions that are still debilitating. |
| Although there are blood tests and patch tests designed to detect food allergies and sensitivities, you can conduct your own effective test at home with pencil in hand. Keep a notebook of everything you eat, when you eat it, how your body responds and how you feel. Sometimes this simple exercise will bring to light an obvious connection between cause and symptom. |
| A more serious test is the four-day rotation diet. Because it takes four days for the body to remove all traces of the foods you consume, this system schedules four days of menus according to related food groups. On day one, for example, you might eat wheat, then no wheat at all on days two, three and four. |
| Other approaches to allergy and food sensitivity testing are applied kinesiology, a form of muscle testing, and pulse diagnosis, a simple procedure discovered 50 years ago by Arthur M. Coca, M.D., author of The Pulse Test. Coca discovered that when you eat a food that agrees with you, your pulse rate remains stable. If you eat one that doesn't, it increases. |
| In order to take the pulse test accurately, you must stop smoking for the duration of the test and be free of conditions that might disrupt your pulse, such as fighting off a cold or being sunburned. |
| Count your pulse for 60 seconds just after waking in the morning and just before going to bed at night. In addition, take it just before each meal and again 30 minutes, 60 min- |
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