How and When to Be Your Own Doctor Part 25

On the fourth and subsequent few days, take your resting pulse upon arising and then eat a modest quant.i.ty of a single food: for example, eat a slice of bread, or a medium sized gla.s.s of milk, or an orange, or two tablespoons sugar in dissolved in water, or a few dried prunes, or a peach, or an egg, or a medium-sized potato, or a cup of black coffee without sweetener, or a few ounces of meat, or a stick of celery, or half a cup of raw cabbage, or an onion, or a date, or a few hazelnuts, etc. Count the pulse one half hour later and again one hour after eating the test item.

If any food raises the resting pulse over 12 beats per minute above your morning resting pulse, that food should be eliminated; you are certainly allergic to it or can't digest that much of it. If your pulse has not returned to its morning resting rate one hour later, you are still having an allergic reaction to the food you ate previously and cannot get a decent result on another food until either your pulse slows again or until the next morning. You may, however, continue to eat other foods that you know do not provoke allergic reactions. Because reactions to a food may not clear for many hours, it is wise to eat only small quant.i.ties of individual foods if you wish to test many of them in a single day. If a food causes no acceleration of pulse (at least 6 beats above your estimated normal maximal) that food can be tentatively labeled non-allergenic.

After a few days of testing one food an hour, you will become weary of the routine and wish to eat more normally. It may also occur that you cannot test more than one or two foods a day from the very first day because allergic reactions do not clear quickly enough. No problem, the testing period can go on at a lower level of intensity for many weeks, trying one new food each morning upon arising. As you eliminate allergens from your diet one by one, your resting pulse should drop somewhat and it should be easier to discern allergic reactions. After you have worked through all the items in your normal dietary, it would be wise to retest the foods a second time, breaking your fast with one different test item each morning.

This second testing round may reveal a few more allergic reactions that were obscured by other allergic reactions the first time through.