Some people find it hard when they discover that they are allergic or sensitive to one or other food. They often find it hard to deal with – in fact it feels like it’s impossible!
I don’t want to give the impression that my story is common nor is it the only way to address this type of challenge. Our beliefs, lifestyle and upbringing will of course lead to varying results. The choices we make regarding our lifestyle and environment can change the outcome of the genes we are born with. These circumstances are our epigenetics. While our genes are our road map our epigenetics determine where this takes us depending on the choices we make. Altering our personal environment makes it possible for our genes to respond in a more appropriate manner. Some genes support us by being switched on, others by being switched off. Genes will be stimulated to switch on or off depending largely on our epigenetics and affected by when and what we eat, do and think. In other words they are largely affected by our choice of lifestyle and personal environment.
My life’s journey was heavily affected by my epigenetics. I wish I had had access to all this knowledge earlier! To learn that what I ate could have a dramatic effect on my life would have been such a help to know. My downhill health curve probably started when I was tiny but I first noticed it as itchy skin when I was a teen and living in the US. It was when I turned 20 and was living in India that it became more serious. It was common to eat a vegetarian diet there and I got more and more exhausted. A doctor friend suggested a “nutritious” diet for me which included eating 4 tablespoons of raw yeast daily. I had always followed any medical advice and so I bought a hunk of fresh yeast in the little store in town. A few weeks later I began to get really bad stomach cramps, so bad that I often had to lie down for an hour or two. After a few months I moved to Bangalore and as this doctor wasn’t there, I went to a clinic where it was suggested that I take an amoeba cure. One cure followed another and I went along with it without even having a test done!
In the end I was so sick that I had to leave India and go home to Britain. The stomach pains continued for about 20 years and the cramps took me to the ER a number of times. I thought that this was something I would have to learn to live with so and I learnt to rest till the pain had passed.
The next time something dramatic happened was when I was pregnant. I became really sensitive to starchy carbohydrate foods. At the time we thought that this was a typical sign of pregnancy and that may have been part of the truth but the problem continued.
Soon after our daughter was born she developed a rash all over her body. I got millions of suggestions about how my diet was causing her rash! I followed some of them and she actually did get better when I avoided eating strawberries, nuts, chocolate and oranges! But my itchiness just got worse. I went to Karolinksa Institute in Stockholm but was told that I should wear cotton clothing, use cortisone cream, and hope that it would get better!
By now I had come to the conclusion that following other people’s suggestions would not always lead to a positive solution, even if the suggestion came from a doctor. I began studying books about natural healing and homeopathic remedies. I read somewhere that cold pressed olive oil could reduce skin inflammation and it certainly helped. But a solution was a long time in coming.
We had a beautiful baby daughter and we were so thrilled! Like any other parents we had some sleepless nights and were tired a lot of the time and I slept for two hours every afternoon in order to cope with a normal day. Two years later our happy little son was born and we felt so blessed on the one hand while the exhaustion increased on the other!
The itching and stomach pains continued but by now I had come to consider them as a normal part of life. Despite all my infections and tiredness we were longing to start doing the work that we felt we were called to do. We had no doubt that this involved our whole family and we decided to investigate the possibility of working with MRA in Zimbabwe.
In preparation for what I thought would be a life far from dentists and health care I decided to exchange a couple of amalgam fillings with gold crowns. This turned out to be a challenge and caused a lot of shooting pains in my teeth. The dentist redid the root canals until he was satisfied with the result. Those shooting pains stayed with me for at least 6 months even though the nerves were no longer there. About 15 years later we discovered that the gold crowns had been place on the tooth without completely cleaning away the amalgam filling causing an electromagnetic hot spot that had not been heard of at the time (1980).
As we were getting ready to leave Sweden for Zimbabwe we all came down with severe throat infections and resorted to taking antibiotics. By the time we got to the end of the cure we were in Africa. My stomach problems had flared up and this time we decided to have tests done thinking that I had already managed to pick up some parasite or bug! But nothing was found. After a couple of months I discovered an internal specialist in the little town where we lived. The specialist came to the conclusion that the cause of my problems was a food allergy. Food allergies are common today and alternatives to dairy and gluten can be found nearly everywhere, but not at that time. It was also hard to figure out which food was the culprit.
Not knowing my challenges, my mother sent me a book about allergy testing! The book was by Dr Arthur Coca. I was amazed to discover that allergies raise your pulse! Coca laid out a system for testing food allergies that helped me to test myself at home. I discovered 9 foods that raised my pulse. I tested my pulse before and after eating and kept a chart of the foods I ate at every meal along with my pulse before, after 30, 60 and 90 minutes. This was followed by a day when I ate a tablespoon of each of the culprit foods! Those that were part of a meal that raised my pulse. Not the easiest three days! I tested my pulse at the hour, ate one of the test foods I had prepared and retested 30 minutes later. As long as my pulse didn’t go up I could retest and eat a new food next hour. The foods that raised my pulse included all milk products and gluten containing grains. It was several years before I learnt that it takes 4 days for a histamine reaction to leave the body and so rotating the foods I ate over a 4-day period then made it possible for me to eat so much more. And 40 years later I learnt through genetic testing that I was lactose, casein and gluten intolerant!
Fungus thrives everywhere in a warm damp climate and a friend suggested that I should visit an expert gynaecologist who lived a couple of hours away. That was the first and last time I saw a doctor actually use a microscope in his clinic to look at the samples that he took. He showed me the beautiful grapelike white bunch of a fungus growing inside. At the time I had never heard of Candida albicans. It was beautiful but it turned out to be a source of a lot of my problems.
It was amazing to discover that we had 3 specialists working close by. A medical doctor, a gynecologist and an eye specialist all worked in a nearby town and were visited by people from all over Africa. There was also a nursing school and access to many dentists, even one from Sweden!
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