With reference to your article of 10th August ‘Mystery rise in children suffering food allergies’ I am a registered independent nurse who specialises in food intolerance and allergy. I was heartened to see that NICE is now advocating that GPs consider food allergy more when they see a patient whose symptoms may be allergy related. I note that the NICE Guidelines recommend ‘if non IgE mediated food allergy is suspected, trial elimination of the suspected allergen [normally for between 2 – 6 weeks], and reintroduce after the trial.’
With the patients whom I see, their suspicions of which are their problem foods are correct in only 17% of cases. Therefore if doctors advise an elimination diet excluding the patient’s or parent’s suspect foods, the result for the patient [ie getting rid of their symptoms] will not be good. The doctor may prove that the patient or parent’s assumption that a certain food was causing symptoms were incorrect, but it will prove very difficult to find out what food[s] are causing symptoms. Meanwhile the patient will continue to suffer.
I use a Dietx machine [the new version of the Vega machine mentioned by Dr Adam Fox in the article], to find out to which foods my patients react. Dr Fox stated that this testing method is not scientifically valid. It is true that there have been several studies done, which did not show the Vega machine in a good light. But it is also true that scratch and patch testing done in hospital can also be unreliable by giving both false positives and negatives, and yet this method is regularly used.
I think, bearing in mind the results that I achieve with my patients, that the medical profession should not dismiss the Vega machine out of hand, and more research should be done into how the Vega and Dietx machines could be used to benefit both adults and children with certain groups of symptoms. There are tests which are, and I quote Dr Fox ‘offered by alternative practitioners, that never deliver what they promise’, but I have evidence that the testing that I offer does deliver. The patient [in nearly all cases] sees a dramatic reduction in symptoms. Please see below for detail.
Abdominal symptoms. Tummy aches, diarrhoea, constipation, nausea, bloating, wind. 52% of these patients had already seen their GP. 19% had seen a consultant. 10% had consulted someone else [eg homeopath, herbalist] On average these patients achieved an 88.9% improvement in symptoms when following my suggested diet. Only 4.4% of patients saw no symptomatic improvement. Eczema, itching and rashes.
75% of these patients had seen their GP. 10% had seen a dermatologist. 15% had consulted someone else [eg homeopath, herbalist, Chinese herbalist] On average these patients achieved a 93.4% improvement in symptoms when following my suggested diet. Only 2.9% of patients showed no symptomatic improvement.
Headaches and migraine. 55% of these patients had seen their GP. 18% had seen a consultant. 27% had consulted someone else [eg homeopath, herbalist, acupuncturist, osteopath, chiropractor] On average these patients achieved an 88.9% improvement in symptoms following my suggested diet. All patients showed improvement in their symptoms.
I have 16 years experience working in this field, and it may be that fact that has enabled my results to be impressive. Another reason may be that I test more than twice as many foods as other people using the Vega or Dietx machines do, foods that I with experience have found that some patients do react to. As the use of the Vega machine does not have to be regulated, there are many practitioners using the machine after having only had a few hours training. These are the alternative practitioners of whom Dr Fox is so scathing, and understandably so. The evidence that I have cannot and should not be ignored. Patient suffering can be reduced. Doctor’s time spent with these groups of patients could be reduced. Use of prescribed medications [and the cost of these] could be reduced. With the kind of results documented above, it is madness to dismiss the Vega and Dietx machines as having no use in the detection of which foods lead to non IgE mediated allergy .
Mary Roe [Registered Nurse]