Unmasking hidden allergies: Why you could be allergic to foods you eat every day

Wednesday, January 20, 2016 by: Julie Wilson staff writer
Tags: food allergies, common triggers, Dr. T.G. Randolph

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(NaturalNews) In his book An Alternative Approach to Allergies, renowned allergist Dr. Theron G. Randolph shares the story of the man responsible for discovering hidden allergies, an uncomfortable annoyance many of us suffer from today.

"Herb Rinkel was a technological genius, an innovator and an inventor with a passion for making cause-and-effect observations of patients and, especially, for measuring them. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that he should come up with unusual and unique clinical observations. In my opinion, he was the outstanding clinical investigator of his day, as far as the field of allergy is concerned," writes Randolph.

"Rinkel was married and had a small child when he entered Northwestern University Medical School in the 1920s. Since they had little money, he and his family subsisted mainly on eggs as their principal source of protein while he was attending medical school. His father, a Kansas farmer, sent the family a gross (144) of eggs a week. From what was later learned about food allergy, it is not surprising that under these circumstances he became highly sensitive to eggs.

"About this time, he developed a severe nasal allergy. Although he consulted several different physicians, the cause of his profuse rhinorrhea (running nose) was not determined, and treatment was ineffective.

"Finding that the medical profession could do nothing for his nasal problem and being familiar with the early investigations of food allergy, he wondered if he might have such an allergy. However, when he tested himself with eggs by drinking down six raw eggs prepared in a blender, he failed to develop any evidence of a reaction," Randolph writes.

"Several years later, however, he happened to avoid eggs along with several other foods, while testing the assumption that a combination of foods might be involved. After eliminating eggs in all forms from his diet for about five days, he ate a piece of angel food cake at a birthday party. Within a few minutes he lapsed into a state of profound physical collapse. Other physicians present were at a complete loss to explain it. Pulse, blood pressure, respiratory rate, neurological and other findings were within normal limits; unconsciousness was his only symptom.

"In thinking about his experience, Rinkel wondered if it might indicate something of importance about the basic nature of food allergy. Perhaps if one had been eating a given food every day, or frequently and regularly, and then omitted it for a period of several days, re-exposure might induce an acute, violent type of reaction. To put this concept to the test, he began eating eggs again as formerly. He then omitted eggs again for five days, repeated the egg ingestion, and experienced another bout of unconsciousness.

"Rinkel next began experimenting with several unsatisfactorily treated, chronically ill patients from the clinic where he worked. By 1936, he had confirmed and extended his observations of masked food allergy. Although these findings were reported in several local allergy journals, his major article on masked food allergy was not accepted for publication by the editor of the prestigious Journal of Allergy.

"What foods did Rinkel and others find caused such hidden allergies? The most common culprits, quite logically, were the most commonly eaten foods. In North America at this time, these foods included coffee, corn, wheat, milk, eggs, yeast, beef, and pork. In fact, any food, eaten repeatedly, could cause allergic reactions. If a person did not eat one of these foods, the chances were he would not become allergic to it. On the other hand, if a food was taken more than once every three or four days (and most of those on the above list are), then they might possibly cause trouble," writes Randolph.

"Americans have become largely unaware of what goes into their stomachs. The increased consumption of prepared food, including restaurant food, often leads us to eat blindly. Many people still do not read labels, and labels are often incomplete or inaccurate. Some labels, for example, list 'sugar' as an ingredient, but rarely say whether this means cane, beet, or corn sugar.

"The result of this situation is that many people think they are not consuming a particular food, when they are, in fact, having it every day. A good example is corn: you may not eat corn as a vegetable very often, yet eat it at practically every meal in the form of corn sugar (dextrose or glucose), corn syrup, cornstarch, corn oil, or as a hidden ingredient in other foods, such as beer or whisky. Both Rinkel and I showed that allergy to corn was, in fact, a dominant form of food allergy in North America."

For more on Randolph's incredible work with allergens, check out his book today!

Sources:

Amazon.com