IMMUNE POWER DIET: YOUR IMMUNE FINGERPRINT

Food sensitivities can be as varied as the range of foods we eat, but each person's specific food sensitivities are unique. One person may be sensitive to wheat, sugar, pickled foods, and dairy products; another to barley, beets, shellfish, and legumes. We can now actually see, by means of sophisticated laboratory techniques, how these foods can destroy our immune cells. It is ironic that it has taken the most up-to-date cell physiology research to show us the biological truth in the old adage, "one man's meat is another man's poison."

Sensitivities are so specific that even siblings raised together, eating the same foods, can develop individual food sensitivities. There are, however, different degrees of sensitivities. Some foods cause only slight damage to a few white blood cells, while others cause massive destruction, killing hundreds of thousands of these cells. Our sensitivities are so personal, in fact, that they make up a sort of biochemical fingerprint—particular, distinctive, and unique. However, unlike fingerprints, these patterns can change over time.

Dr. Theron Randolph, the Chicago physician who is recognized as the founder of our modern science of food allergies, found that we may acquire or lose sensitivities depending on how often we are exposed to a given food. Once, he explains, nature regulated what we ate because most food was seasonal. In the past, we ate what was available, and as the array of fruits and vegetables changed with the seasons, there was an automatic, steady rotation of our diet, so that it was not possible to overdose on a small set of foods.

But modern distribution and mass industrial food production have made most foods available to us year-round. This means that we now have plenty of time to get used to, and overdose on, various foods. No wonder more and more food allergies are being diagnosed, with more people suffering from the effects.

Does this apply to everybody? You bet. You can be sure that you have several major food sensitivities you don't even recognize. Among more than three thousand patients, I have never found one whose blood tests did not show a reaction to at least one previously unknown food item. Dr. Randolph estimates that for every one allergy that we do recognize in our diet, at least two remain hidden.

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