Medicine still has no ready solution for the problem of food intolerance and, in general, doctors have shown little interest in finding one. In the absence of medical help and with no test for the condition, most patients are left to search alone, often in vain, for answers, and for whatever scant relief they can find.
A few doctors, such as allergist Prof. Jonathan Brostoff and gastroenterologist Prof. John Hunter, have taken more of an interest in this condition, and published very helpful books (The Complete Guide to Food Allergy and Intolerance and Solve your Food Intolerance respectively), but these doctors are very much the exception.
For those who don’t want to have to purchase and read their way through a book, Prof. Hunter, and agri-food scientist Karen Huntley, have recently condensed the wisdom gained from many years of clinical practice and research at the Gastroenterology Research Unit, Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge, into an online article (The Management of Multiple Food Intolerances).
The authors assert that food intolerance is caused by undigested food residues being wrongly metabolised by gut bacteria, and explain how this situation can best be managed by using means such as an elimination and/or rotation diet, a liquid elemental diet, fibre reduction, small, frequent meals, careful chewing or blending of foods and taking pancreatic enzymes and probiotics while avoiding prebiotics and antibiotics. Also discussed are the benefits of breath retraining, psychotherapy, EFT and meditation, and the merits of using laxatives and bowel washouts.
In spite of the remarkable breadth of the authors’ approach to food intolerance, this does not yet extend to the use of helminths, about which they were apparently unaware until their attention was drawn recently to my own very successful experience of using helminthic therapy for this condition (Wriggling out of food intolerance and fatigue).
Unfortunately, when doctors are made aware of this option, many tend to be extremely resistant to the idea of replacing even small, controlled doses of organisms which their training has conditioned them to perceive only in an extremely negative light. However, given Prof Hunter’s demonstration, over many years, of the critical importance of gut fauna in the development and management of food intolerance, the idea of using a few additional organisms that have a glowing therapeutic track record should not present too great a leap of imagination.
It is possible that the success of helminthic therapy in treating my own severe food intolerance may be due not just to the effect of the worms on my immune system but also to their effect on the composition and integrity of my gut microbiota, and it seems to me that the use of helminths may be a much more straightforward, powerful and elegant solution to the problem than the collection of measures which Prof. Hunter and his colleague advocate.
