Mens Health Blog. Medical Blog

Pastry, pancakes and waffles can be made with rye flour although the results are heavier than with wheat, partly because rye flour is only available in wholemeal form. Putting the rye flour through a fine sieve first improves the quality by removing the larger pieces of husk from the flour, and adding some baking powder helps too. Pancakes can also be made with maize or barley flour, and taste pleasant although they are slightly rubbery – beat plenty of air into the mixture just before frying to improve the texture. Buckwheat flour is fairly protein-rich and makes a good pancake batter, but should be mixed with other flours to dilute the strong taste. Gluten-free mixes for pastry and pancakes can be bought by post and generally give excellent results.

Pasta made with gluten-free flour is obtainable by post. Or you can try rice noodles, obtainable in Chinese groceries, or buckwheat spaghetti, from healthfood stores.

Soya flour, gram flour and lentil flour are rich in protein, as well as carbohydrate. They can be used in baking, combined with other flours (see above under Gluten-free flours) and tend to improve the texture of pastry and pancakes.

Rice flour, potato flour, banana flour, chestnut flour, yam flour and other exotic flours are mostly low in protein. They are useful for making puddings and biscuits, or for thickening sauces (see below). Chestnut flour tastes sweet and nutty and is pleasant in shortbread or in a crumble topping for fruit, although it is rather heavy.

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You are probably suffering from caffeine withdrawal – or it might be the effects of cutting out alcohol. This is ‘cold turkey’ – the same sort of withdrawal symptoms that a heroin addict has, though nothing like as bad. You just have to keep going, in the knowledge that it will pass and you will then feel a great deal better than you did before. Not eating sugar might have similar effects until your body gets used to the idea.

It is most unlikely that you will still feel worse after two or three weeks. If you do, think about any other changes that have occurred. Could they be die cause? Or were you steadily getting worse anyway? If you’re sure it’s due to the diet then consider any new foods you are eating, or foods eaten in greater quantity than before. It may be that you are allergic or intolerant to such foods. Consider them suspect and cut them out in the exclusion phase of Stage 2. Alternatively, if you are eating a lot more fruit and vegetables than before, and if you are sensitive to pesticide residues, then this might explain your deterioration. Read Chapter Nine before going on to Stage 2.

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One discovery about enzyme deficiencies is particularly intriguing, because it may explain the link between hyperactivity in children and food colourings. Hyperactive children appear to be deficient in an enzyme known as phenolsulphotransferase-P or PST-P. This enzyme detoxifies various compounds, including a substance called p-cresol that is produced by bacteria in the gut. No-one has any idea how p-cresol might cause hyperactivity, but it is a phenol, and phenols can be toxic.

What is interesting about PST-P is that it can be inhibited by certain food colourings – in other words, the enzyme no longer works if those food colourings are present. If a normal, healthy child eats colouring of this type in moderation, it will not do any apparent harm because that child’s PST-P is fully active to begin with. But for a child with defective PST-P, the same amount of colouring could reduce the level of PST-P activity to damaging levels.

It is interesting that a high proportion of patients with migraine, who are affected by dietary triggers such as cheese and chocolate, also have a defect in PST-P. Wine, like some food colourings, appears to inhibit PST-P, and this may contribute to the effects of red wine in triggering migraines. It is likely that enzyme defects play a part in migraine, because migraine sufferers tend to be defective for certain enzymes, but exactly what goes wrong is far from clear. The chemicals that are under suspicion of triggering migraine – tyramine and phenylethylamine – are not detoxified by PST-P. Tyramine is detoxified by a related enzyme called PST-M, but this is generally not lacking in migraine sufferers. This is a puzzle that can only be sorted out by more research. For more on enzyme defects in migraine.

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Carbohydrates – the ’starchy’ substances in foods – are restricted to 80 gm per day. This effectively means no potatoes, bread, flour, rice, breakfast cereals, pasta or other starchy foods, except for one very small portion each day. The incidental carbohydrate in vegetables, nuts and other foods will account for most of your daily allowance. High-carbohydrate vegetables such as sweetcorn, peas, parsnip, lentils and broad beans should be avoided. Nuts can be eaten in moderation, but not cashew nuts as they are rich in carbohydrate. Continue to eat plenty of garlic and fresh, green leafy vegetables.

If the Candida proves resistant to these measures, then drug treatments may be the only answer. The drug most widely used is nystatin. Although this is available in tablet form it is often prescribed as a powder, to be taken mixed with water – this combats Candida in the mouth and throat, as well as in the intestines. Nystatin is not absorbed from the gut and is a remarkably safe drug when taken by mouth. However, there are rare instances of individuals proving sensitive to it, and vomiting and diarrhoea can occur at very high doses.

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The medical controversy about adverse reactions to food is compounded by a long-running dispute over the meaning of allergy. For a word that is scarcely more than 80 years old, it has had a very chequered career. A Viennese doctor, Baron Clemens von Pirquet, first used it in 1906 to mean ‘altered reactivity’. Von Pirquet was a paediatrician and he felt the need for a new medical term to describe certain reactions in his young patients. These changed reactions included the development of immunity to infection, on the one hand, and marked reactions to certain foods, pollen or insect stings, on the other. He was principally concerned with reactions involving the immune system, the set of cells that protect our bodies from infection. But he apparently intended his newly coined word to mean any altered response to the environment. In this context, environment means all the external things that can affect the body, whether in food or water, in the air we breathe, or in things that come into contact with our skin. Von Pirquet also introduced the word allergen to describe the substances that brought about these changed reactions.

At that stage, very little was known about how some of these reactions might arise. The following decades brought greater understanding, and the meaning of allergies was narrowed down – the development of immunity to disease was dropped from the definition, because it was obviously something quite different from adverse reactions to food, pollen or bee stings.

In 1925, the definition of allergy was narrowed down still further. Experiments had shown that many adverse reactions to pollen or food could be transferred from one person to another by injecting a small amount of blood serum into the skin. The area around the injection site became very sensitive to the allergen. This, and other evidence, indicated that the immune system really was at work in these cases, as von Pirquet seems to have suspected. Most of those working in the field decided to limit the definition.

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Players: Husband and wife.

Activists: Both.

Setting: Home or hotel.

Aim: To arouse unconscious, unspoken judgments.

Game Plan: This is a simple game, but its results can be profound. It is for the narcissistic couple who started off in a twin-ship or idealizing transference but have drifted apart. Sometimes, in such cases, either there is little sex or it is rushed and orgasm comes too quickly or not at all. Sometimes one or the other feels disillusioned—even contemptuous toward the mate. Sometimes a quiet (and sometimes a loud) rage is expressed. Sometimes envy or possessiveness gets in the way of effective relating: The wife envies the husband’s job and mobility, and the husband is possessive of the wife.

During a weekend evening or other relaxed occasion, the husband and wife undress and entwine themselves face to face. A good position for this game is for the husband to lie across a bed with his back and head propped on pillows, and the wife to straddle him. After he enters her and they are one, they should gaze into one another’s eyes. Eye contact is important.

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The husband then carries (or leads) the wife into another place (another room, a basement, a friend’s apartment) where he has set up some kind of “cove” or “hideout.” Perhaps there’s a mattress on the floor, or the bed has a different bedspread on it (such as black satin), and there’s a treasure trunk or box near the bed (containing a new bauble for his captured princess), and a bottle of champagne and two glasses. Some exciting “bandit music” pulsates from the stereo—Ravel’s Bolero comes to mind—and an exciting aroma comes from incense. He lays her down on the bed, pours some champagne, and offers a toast.

“To my new princess!”

“Champagne? I don’t believe you.”

“Drink it.”

“I don’t want it. Why don’t you take off that silly mask?” “I said drink it”

“What are you going to do with me?”

“Something I should have done long ago.”

“Are you going to ravish me?”

“Like you’ve never been ravished in your life.”

“You masked brute. Unhand me!”

“You’re free to go any time you want.”

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Nearly every couple is depressed some of the time; hence the following games might be useful to all couples. Those couples who suffer from a long-term depression will benefit most, although they will also encounter the greatest amount of difficulty in getting out of their defensive postures.

What is the defensive posture of somebody who is depressed? It can be simply stated as “Why bother?” When you are depressed, you do not feel like doing anything—and that includes having sex. Getting out of bed in the morning can be a chore. Eating is more of a chore. Work is a terrible chore. Existence seems pointless and life empty of meaning.

It may be that some depression is due to an organic deficiency (as some researchers claim). However, it can easily be observed that much depression is the result of environmental conditions. If we lose a loved one, get fired from a job, or find ourselves evicted from our apartment, we become depressed. In infancy, the loss of a parent, a sibling, or even a treasured pet or doll can also cause depression. So can an array of other circumstances. If such childhood depressions are not successfully soothed by parents, the depression may remain as a character formation, so that as adults the slightest adversity can release the repressed infantile depression in the individual.

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“Does this excite you?” the husband asks the wife.

“Not at all,” the wife says. Then, her next thought: “Well, actually, I kind of like it.”

And the wife asks the husband, “How does that feel?”

“Who cares?” he may say. Then: “I care!”

And the wife may say, “I’m bored”—and then, “I don’t understand why I’m getting so excited.”

And the husband may say, “It doesn’t matter”—and then, “I feel afraid of losing control.”

And the wife may say, “Who cares?”—and then, “I think I’ve been feeling upset with you for years and holding on to that.”

And the husband may say, “Boring!”—and then, “I’m so angry at you for distancing me all the time. I think you need a good fucking!”

This game may or may not lead to actual sexual intercourse the first time it’s played. Instead, the first few times might result only in “seducing” buried feelings and bringing them to the surface—feelings such as lust, fear, anger, or jealousy. A rule of therapy is that if an individual is afraid to feel negative emotions, he or she won’t be able to feel positive ones, either. So if we suppress any feelings, we end up suppressing them all. Once suppression and repression are lifted, there may be a temporary euphoria of liberation—followed by anxiety and then a resurfacing of the “negative” emotions we have been holding on to, denying, or projecting onto others.

This third game may be repeated as often as needed, until it leads to sexual intercourse, passion, and more-honest communication. It may also be used in combination with other games.

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It is in our first relationship with our mother that we experience the prototype of love and tenderness. Love is an offshoot of gratitude. The original gratitude the infant feels toward the gratifying mother and her gratifying breast is both sexual and emotional. A mother’s voluntary giving of love to her infant, who is too helpless to control whether she does so or not, is the first act of love. If the mother gives to the infant in this way, the infant will express gratitude and passion toward the mother, and the mother will experience a mutuality of tenderness and love, and a bond will be formed. Both will feel loved and appreciated, emotionally as well as physically. If a mother, due to her own emotional blocks, is unable to set this first example, the infant will develop blocks to intimacy.

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