There is much confusion about allergies and intolerances.

Maybe a better way to describe these conditions – instant allergies or true allergy, and delayed allergies. A true allergy  is generally instant – someone who has a problem with say peanuts – unknowingly eats a trace of peanut in something and immediately their throat swells up, they know almost instantly what has happened. Or the person who has a problem with bee stings, when stung instantly blow up like a balloon. These can be life threatening situations.

Delayed allergies or intolerances evoke a different response. They go often unnoticed with people having no idea they have a problem to certain foods, drinks, chemicals, fumes etc etc. If you have a true allergy you know about it. However, intolerances or delayed allergies is something quite different. If you eat dairy products everyday and suffer asthma you might have no idea there could be a connection, or those aches and pains of arthritis could be made much worse because you have an intolerance to wheat? Because you eat wheat everyday it is almost impossible to know. It can take from 24 to 48 hours before a symptom is noticed. Okay – you might give up wheat for 2 weeks and notice you aches and pains are getting much better – when you return to eating wheat the pains return within a few days. Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple for most most people you could they have a problem say with dairy and wheat products. So unless you gave up dairy products as well you might not necessarily notice too much difference.

Our world is changing rapidly – our food is changing even faster – however we have not evolved so fast. Just one hundred years ago our diets where very different  – a lot less chemicals, artificial fertilizers, pesticides, fungicides, additives, colorings, preservatives, sugar, wheat, corn, genetically altered foods, trans fats, and artificial sweeteners!

These are substances our bodies are not well equipped to deal with, in a rapidly changing environment. So our immune systems become overwhelmed in this sea of  toxins and it becomes far less able to cope.

The fact that there is a very strong connection between arthritis and diet, this fact was reported back in the 1920s in the American Journal of Medical Science publishing the connection between arthritis – nutrition – delayed allergies. Delayed food allergies encourage inflammation from incompletely digested food particles that pass through the intestinal wall directly into the blood stream, stimulating the immune system to over react.

As you know essential fatty acids like 0mega-3 are anti-inflammatory but they also have another important action – they block the release of arachidonic acid from storage, hence stopping the production of inflammatory prostaglandins type 2. So essential fatty acids help in two main ways to prevent and treat the suffering of arthritis.

Free-radical damage affects the permeability of our intestinal lining and the health of our immune system, encouraging its breakdown. A good anti-oxidant regime helps to slow down the free-radical damage within the body and has made a big difference to arthritis suffers.

Elimination diet – anti-oxidants (vitamins A, B5, C, E, and selenium) and essential fatty acids make an enormous difference to arthritis.

For most people in my experience over the  20 years – find the whole diet thing overwhelming. Give up this, give up that, avoid the other – most people’s reaction is “there is nothing left for me to eat”. So I have found most people cope much better with the idea of doing things in stages and as they improve it gives them the impetus to improve their diet and remove more of the foods they know deep down are not helping their arthritis.

Start off by avoiding all those foods you eat that contain chemicals they are not foods – preservatives, colorings, artificial sweeteners, processed and refined food etc read labels carefully – throw them out.You might get withdrawal symptoms but they will pass – usually within 48 hours. You will then begin to feel better and with this in mind remove gluten from your diet – found in wheat, rye, barley and oats. Some people like to do this overnight, while others remove little by little over a period of a month, gradually adding other grains to their diet as substitutes – quinoa, millet, brown rice, buckwheat etc.

Some people have found taking the supplements mentioned about, avoiding chemicals, and gluten and eating a generally healthier diet has been enough for them to be painfree.  However, some people improve  alot but still have problems with pain and stiffness. The next step is to give up cow’s milk. It is very common to have a problem with cow’s milk, featuring in the top five foods mostly like to cause a delayed food allergy. The perfect food for a baby cow might not be the perfect food for you.

Then remove the deadly nightshade family – especially tomatoes, plus potatoes, peppers, and egg plants. For some people their arthritis is aggravated by these foods especially the first two.

This may sound like a huge task – break it all down into managable bite size pieces – and given time you will reap the rewards of your effort.