1.     In an allergy to a food, not only the kind of food counts, but also the amount eaten. Symptoms may occur only if the food is eaten often and in large quantities.

2.     Cooking and canning alter the allergenic power of a food. (Fresh food is more allergenic than cooked or canned food.)

3.     Allergy to an additive, not to the food itself, may be the cause of the symptoms.

Interesting Facts About Food Allergy

1.     A food may provoke symptoms when eaten, smelled, or touched.

2.     The same food may cause different degrees of illness in a person in different circumstances because its allergenic powers keep changing. A food allergy may be shed altogether if one avoids that particular food for a few months, while another food may become more allergenic because it was eaten in quantity and frequently. A frequent check on food sensitivities is advisable.

3.     There is no mathematical way to diagnose a food allergy. The only proof of its existence is the appearance of symptoms when that food is eaten.

4.     Hyposensitization (injections) against food allergies is rarely successful.

5.     An atopic child instinctively avoids the foods that he is allergic to because they make him sick.

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For the most part, objective evidence to support these claims, in the form of scientific trials, is still lacking. But this may simply reflect the tremendous difficulties involved in such trials. For doctors specializing in the treatment of food sensitivity, the many positive responses they have seen in their patients are sufficient evidence that food can cause mental symptoms. But the case has been greatly overstated in some popular publications, and genuine psychological problems wrongly attributed to food sensitivity, both by patients and fringe practitioners.

This is just one of the mind-body controversies that besets the question of food sensitivity. Equally acrimonious are the disputes over the purely physical symptoms of food intolerance, which some regard as psychosomatic – conditions where the mind produces genuine physical symptoms in the body. On the one hand, there are those who see most ‘food intolerance’ as misdiagnosed psychosomatic illness, and on the other hand, those who see most ‘psychosomatic illness’ as unrecognized food intolerance.

The effect of the mind on the body, and the problem of disentangling physical and emotional causes in chronic health problems, are also considered in this chapter. The mind has the power to produce health, as well as illness, and ways in which its healing powers can be harnessed are described here.

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Mrs Y. and her husband decided to stop using the sheath. She was 38 years old and her youngest child was at secondary school. She had always loved having babies and decided to have one last fling. However, the first time they made love without the sheath she was suddenly aware of what it really meant. Until then she had remembered only the happiness of having a new baby. Now she also remembered the disturbed nights, and the lack of freedom to enjoy life with her husband and the other children. Recognizing the reality of having a baby at this stage in her life she decided to come for postcoital contraception.

It is important for the doctor to understand such ambivalent feelings for they lead to apparently inconsistent behaviour by women and their partners. It will be difficult to avoid judging patients if the doctor makes decisions based on his or her own rational ideas, and that will make it difficult to meet their needs.

The question of whether it is better to use the postcoital IUCD for patients in this age group rather than the oral (Yuzpe) method, should be considered. The postcoital IUCD appears to give 100% security from pregnancy, thus avoiding the difficult dilemma of whether to terminate or continue with an unwanted pregnancy. There is less likely to be a risk of pelvic inflammatory disease than in the younger unmarried patient, and the device can be kept in as a permanent method if the patient wishes.

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