Specific food sensitiveness

Summary and conclusions

To sum up, then, although there are more disappointments than miracles in the search for and the curing of severe manifestations of food sensitiveness, the miracles are so gratifying when they come that, each time, the clinician will resolve to spend more time looking for them. The field is still much neglected; more diets much be fitted and fewer handed out ready made.

A good history will often show that the diet is probably not the cause for the patient’s discomfort. Patients much not be left too long on narrow elimination diets; such diets are for testing and not for treatment.

Some cases of diarrhea and pseudo-ulcer are due to the milk that is taken by way of treatment, and not infrequently certain foods irritate or greatly depress the brain. Somnolence after meals can be due to a particular food, and canker sores in the mouth can be produced by food.

Efforts to use an elimination diet are often instructive in showing the physician that he is dealing with an unreasonable, overly fussy, querulous, or psychopathic person.

Food sensitiveness is not necessarily allergic or due to protein. Perhaps partly for this reason, skin tests are of little help in finding the foods that cause indigestion.