FOOD INTOLERANCE OR PSYCHOSOMATIC ILLNESS?
It will be clear from Table 1, that many of the symptoms seen in psychosomatic illness are also features of food intolerance. Indeed, ‘opponents’ of food intolerance would maintain that most supposed food intolerance is psychosomatic illness. But doctors specializing in the treatment of food allergy and intolerance would disagree. They see innumerable patients who have been told that their symptoms are psychosomatic or ‘all in the mind’ by one doctor or another. Yet a high proportion of these patients respond to an elimination diet. They get better when foods are eliminated from the diet – and they stay better, which is the important thing.
A diagnosis of psychosomatic illness or hypochondria is very largely a diagnosis of exclusion – it requires all other possibilities to be excluded first. With many patients suffering vague, multiple symptoms, food intolerance must be regarded as one of those possibilities. Unless steps are taken to ‘eliminate it from the enquiry’ – and that must mean a diagnostic diet – then there is no sound basis for saying that a patient’s symptoms are psychosomatic.
Things are not necessarily done in this order, however, and for good reason. Many of those attending the doctor’s surgery with physical symptoms, such as headache or diarrhoea, actually have serious emotional, sexual or family problems that they want to discuss with the doctor, but find it difficult to start on such sensitive topics. Family doctors are trained in the art of discovering what the patient has really come to see them about. If you have symptoms that you think may be caused by food intolerance you should not feel affronted if the doctor’s initial questions seem rather personal and irrelevant to the aches and pains being suffered. Answering the questions calmly and reasonably will do much to convince the doctor that your problems are not psychosomatic.
*201\180\8*
Related Posts:
Tagged as: Allergies
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.