ALLERGY AND INTOLERANCE
Some patients were clearly being made ill by the food they ate. But their symptoms were very different – and so was the treatment they received from the medical profession. Food allergy – which caused Jane’s dramatic illness -is a recognized complaint, whose underlying mechanism is fairly well understood. Food intolerance, on the other hand, is not regarded as a sound diagnosis by the majority of doctors. Most would agree that there is such a thing as food intolerance (although they might use a different name for it), but they would argue that it affects relatively few people. Like Susan’s doctor, they would regard the majority of patients with vague, multiple symptoms, including headache or migraine, fatigue and diarrhoea, as suffering from emotional and mental problems that expressed themselves in ill-health.
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