As time goes by the body becomes tired of having to cope with this allergenic substance and its powers of adaptation begin to wane. At this point, the withdrawal symptoms begin to appear, and eating the allergic food does nothing to stop them. The body has now passed from the phase of adaptation to the phase of exhaustion and the symptoms that used to appear only on contact with, and later withdrawal from, the offending food are now there day in, and day out. The acute cause and effect allergy has become the chronic hidden or masked allergy.
It is at this point that most people seek treatment for their allergy symptoms. Because these symptoms are never attributed to the foods they have eaten all their lives and especially not to those that have in the past given them a pick-up, they are usually suppressed by drug medication or treated by surgery. Not surprisingly, some people baulk at the idea; that symptoms which have appeared out of the blue in adulthood could be caused by foods that have been their favourites since childhood. That symptom free period in their life makes them hard to convince.
Sometimes the scenario is slightly different, and instead of the child going through a symptom free period that lasts all the way to adolescence or to well into adulthood, he or she experiences a series of changing symptoms that are never attributed to allergy. These people don’t have the same powers of adaptation as those who experience a symptom free period in their lives. The scenario of the less well-adapted person goes something like this, though subject to variation from person to person.
The colicky infant becomes the chronically sick toddler with levers, cold, runny nose and ear infections. The chronically sick toddler becomes the hyperactive, slow-learning child who grows to become the moody (sometimes delinquent) teenager with learning and adjustment problems. From adolescence the allergy sufferer moves into the low energy twenties. The physical symptoms of fat, fluid retention and skin problems become apparent and there is often much absenteeism from work. The chronically tired syndrome of the thirties follows and leads into the functional sickness of the forties, often attributed to menopause in women. By the fifties the years of allergic inflammation within the body have so damaged the tissues as to give rise to diseases such as stage 3 arthritis, diabetes, benign and malignant tumours, kidney, heart and artery problems.
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