When he entered college, his localized minus-one symptoms gave way to systemic minus-two symptoms: headaches and bouts of extreme tiredness. These would generally come on around 3 p.m. Tiredness and head pain interfered with his ability to study, concentrate, or perform his tasks. He had to try to sneak in some studying before the head-pain problems became too distracting.

Inexplicably, his fatigue fluctuated and was much worse on certain days. In general, his tiredness was associated with bouts of nervousness, tension, and feelings of frustration. He also experienced brain-fag, characterized by impaired reading comprehension and unretentive memory. For instance, he would read his assignment the night before a class but would be unable to remember what he had read the next day. When he first came for ecologic management, his afternoon fatigue had spread to the morning as well. Even after sleeping for eight or nine hours, he awakened tired. Like many such patients, his sleep was restless.

In office tests, two glasses of milk brought on a headache and a feeling of extreme fatigue. He had to lie down until he was able to return home. This was accompanied by stomach upset.

After eating eggs, on another occasion, he suffered a headache after forty minutes. Milk and eggs were daily foods in his diet. He was therefore taken off these items, as well as beef and peanuts, which were both suspected on the basis of his history. After two weeks on the diet, he reported feeling much less tired. He was then instructed to return beef to his diet for three days, followed by peanuts. His headache and fatigue did not reappear. The return of dairy products and eggs, however, was accompanied by a return of his physical fatigue and pain. By eliminating these foods from his diet in all their forms, he recovered his health. After a while, he was able to reintroduce these foods into his diet according to the principles of the Rotary Diversified Diet. His grades improved, and he was admitted to medical school. Today he is a successful physician.

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One reason is that the rear passengers are exposed to more air pollution than those in the front. If the rear windows or station-wagon “gate” are open even a crack, exhaust fumes from the car will enter the rear seating area. This is because a car in motion creates a vacuum behind it, and the vacuum sucks exhausts into the passenger compartment. The location of the exhaust pipe to the side of some cars helps the problem but does not solve it. It should be noted that car sickness is not the same as motion sickness. This is shown by the fact that many people become sick while riding in cars who are not affected by trips in other conveyances, such as electrically propelled busses or trains.

Other forms of car-induced problems include “driver hypnosis.” This is the onset of fatigue and overpowering sleepiness which occurs after several hours of driving. Often the physical fatigue of driving and of staring at the road is heightened by the more subtle effect of exhaust fumes. People driving under the influence of fumes may find their ability to make quick decisions diminished and their tolerance for other drivers decreased, which can result in extremely hostile and violent behavior. If the driver is a “food-a-holic,” frequent stops at junk-food dispensaries along the highway will not improve his behavior.

In addition, massive exposures to chemicals commonly encountered along the road can result in immediate, acute symptoms. These include fresh road tar, car exhausts, pesticide sprays, and airport pollution. This usually involves some impairment in muscle coordination, nervousness, tenseness, blurring of vision, and so forth. The afflicted driver rarely understands the cause of his “attack of nerves.” Sometimes chemical reactions progress to the point of apparent “drunkenness,” although the driver has not had anything inebriating to drink.

Alcoholics may be unable to tell the location of their feet unless they first look at them. Drivers in the “drunken” stage of chemical reactivity similarly cannot tell how much force they are applying to either the gas or the brake pedal unless they look. And looking, of course, adds to the danger, since now the driver’s eyes are not on the road. Some patients, such as Ida Koller (Chap. 1), have been pulled off the road in such a condition and forced to take a breath test by the police, only to pass it, to the confusion and consternation of the officers. Some drivers may realize that something is going wrong and turn the wheel over to someone else or pull over to the side of the road. Some victims smash up their cars and those of others, never knowing the true cause of their bizarre behavior. One wonders how many of the thousands of “unexplained” automobile accidents are helped along by acute reactions to pollution.

What has been said about drivers also applies to pedestrians. A person on foot, wading through a blanket of smog, may temporarily become thoroughly confused and lose all perception of danger. Stand at a busy intersection sometime during a smog alert and watch the pedestrians. Seemingly normal people often walk like zombies in such situations, impervious to danger. In fact, in smoggy situations a driver cannot assume a normal degree of perception and awareness on the part of any pedestrian. I once saw one of my patients trying to cross a downtown street: he began to cross with the light, got half-way across, stopped, and then crossed back again in a daze. Further investigation showed that he was not simply lost, but was benumbed by the outdoor air pollution.

The automobile has been called the focus of our civilization, and has certainly transformed our lives, making transportation both more convenient and more pleasant, in many cases. But we are also discovering many drawbacks to this mode of transportation, including unsuspected acute and chronic health problems. The added load which the automobile adds to our chemical-susceptibility problem is certainly one of its major deficits.

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Another prime suspect in chronic urticaria is infestation with die yeast known as Candida. This problem is described in more detail in Chapter Ten. Where urticaria occurs, it may be because the person is allergic to substances produced by the Candida. Some doctors use skin-prick tests with Candida extracts to test for this, but this will not necessarily prove anything – perfectly healthy people often give a positive skin-prick test to Candida.

If Candida seems unlikely, and other possible causes have been ruled out by your doctor, then you should consider the possibility of food sensitivity. Food additives are often the source of trouble. Alternatively, skin-prick tests may be able to show which foods or additives are the source of the problem. However, skin-prick tests are not foolproof in urticaria, and for some people an elimination diet will be the only way of getting to the root of their problem.

It is rarely a single food or food additive that is implicated in chronic urticaria. As with acute urticaria, antibiotics and other medicinal drugs can play a part. So too can contactants, such as the nickel found in cheap jewellery, although this is unusual.

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Hard-chargers, as the name implies, are always on the go—busy, busy, busy. Some of them are impetuous; some of them have half a dozen projects going at once; many set high goals with unrealistic time frames for their achievement and all of them take on more than they can cope with. Because of this and because they are not quitters, they are always in a hurry. This lifestyle of perpetual rushing leads to bad habits.

Bad habit number one is frequent skipping of meals, particularly lunch which leads to a drop in energy and performance (hypoglycaemia) by mid-afternoon.

Bad habit number two is not drinking enough fluids through the day. This leads to dehydration and contributes to a drop in performance. Hard-chargers are too busy to drink, and by not drinking, don’t have to make those time-wasting trips to the toilet, which they claim reduces their productivity. They practice thirst denial so often they no longer experience the subtle message of thirst, only the overt, serious ones.

Bad habit number three is shallow breathing. People who rush, automatically tense all the muscles in their body. Tense muscles don’t expand through their full range of movement. This includes the muscles that facilitate breathing, giving rise to short, shallow breaths that don’t take in much oxygen. A lack of oxygen causes muscles to tense and a vicious cycle is born. Lack of oxygen means the brain and nerves function below par giving rise to tiredness, irritability and anxiety. Hard-chargers tend to perch themselves on the end of chairs and hunch forward over desks, typewriters, computers. This posture further tenses the body and cramps the chest and diaphragm muscles, aggravating shallow breathing.

Because of these bad habits, the hard-charger is always performing below his or her full capacity. The great irony is that the maximising of one’s potential, which is so important to so many hard-chargers, is seldom ever realised by them as they are in too much of a hurry to achieve it. Being of the non-quitter type, they continue to push themselves despite the fatigue and many other symptoms that dog them. The very practice of pushing themselves further lowers their energy and performance levels, giving rise to mistake making and the need to repeat work.

I always remind my hard-charging patients of Aesop’s fable about the hare and the tortoise and I always get them to tell me who won the race. Even with this technique, it’s not easy to get through to the hard-chargers as they are all convinced they are coping and don’t see their lifestyle and attitude as a problem. Their definition of coping is ‘being on their feet and mobile’. They don’t recognise that a body which is racked with chronic fatigue, aches, joint pains, allergies, skin rashes, bloated stomach, constipation, headaches or slow wound healing, is a body that is not coping. So long as they can force themselves out of bed in the morning, they think they are coping and all those symptoms they have, well, they are caused by something else and they will just have to drop in on the doctor or naturopath and pick up a pill or a diet to fix it.

Because we humans are such profound creatures of habit, it’s quite easy to understand the hard-charger’s point of view. They are so used to being stressed they see it as normal. This fact really hit home to me one night while watching a documentary on the Soviet gulags. One of the former inmates had returned to his particular Siberian gulag with a BBC cameraman and was recounting the horrors and privations of living in the abysmally subhuman conditions. I became quite distressed as more of this man’s experiences were being revealed and then became amazed when he finished off by saying, ‘Ah but we got used to it, humans can get used to anything.’ That said it all for me; the penny finally dropped. It’s no wonder hard-chargers argue that they are not stressed even when they are not responding to the Anti-Allergy Program they are so assiduously sticking to.

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• Reduce your work, exercise and socialising load.

• Get plenty of sleep and recreation.

• Do the deep breathing and mental relaxation exercises.

• Pamper yourself with regular warm baths and massages.

• Take time out to listen to music.

• Take time out to laugh. Read humorous books, watch comedies on TV or at the movies.

• Recent research has shown that watching nature documentaries on TV lowers stress hormone, cholesterol and triglyceride levels. Reading animal stories does the same thing. Many of my highly stressed patients have received great benefits from reading the All Creatures Great and Small series of books about the adventures of the Yorkshire vet, James Herriot, and the interesting characters (both animal and human) he encounters on a daily basis. Read before bed for a restful sleep.

• Don’t drive the car above the speed limit. Speeding will rev you up and keep you revved up for the rest of the day as you tend to move quickly at all other activities after speeding. It is when we speed that we discover the idiots on the road who get us uptight. When we slow down it’s amazing how they disappear.

• Don’t perch yourself on the edge of chairs. This tightens all your muscles from the lower back to the top of the neck. Sit back, use the backrest whether at home or work.

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The mechanics of breathing determine oxygen supply. Shallow chest breathing gives rise to oxygen deficiencies, as there are very few blood vessels surrounding the upper lobes of the lungs. Most of the blood vessels surround the lower lobes of the lung. Deep, abdominal breathing is the answer to optimum oxygen levels.

Unfortunately most people breathe shallowly. Tight clothing and a lifetime spent rushing, sitting hunched over desks doing paperwork, studying, working computers and getting stressed out produces the bad habits of shallow breathing. Babies don’t chest breathe. Neither do drunks. They’re both so relaxed they breathe easily and deeply and their tummies rise and fall to the rhythm of this breathing. Shallow chest breathing is a bad habit we develop as we move towards adulthood. It’s a habit that can be easily unlearnt by practising the deep breathing exercises detailed in the chapter on stress and by slowing down.

These exercises are an integral part of the programs in this book and must be practised daily if the programs and increased fluid intake are to be of significant benefit to you.

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1. Stress

2. Lack of water and oxygen in the cells

3. An under-active thyroid gland.

4. Lack of vitamins, minerals, essential fatty acids, protein or carbohydrate in the diet.

5. Candida yeast infection.

6. Allergy.

7. Crummy jobs and crummy relationships that are so unfulfilling they’re significantly enervating.

8. Viral infections, hepatitis, glandular fever, AIDS.

9. Tropical and Third-World gut infections like Bali belly, Delhi belly, giardia (blocks absorption of nutrients) or hookworm (causes anaemia). Don’t holiday in the tropics, the Third World, Melanesia or Polynesia (Hawaii is OK as are the islands of the Barrier Reef).

There is no doubt however that Candida yeast infection and allergy are the most common causes.

Whereas it’s true that viruses are the great energy suckers of the body it is invariably allergy and Candida infections that allow them to multiply to energy-sucking proportions.

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It’s because we’re all biochemically unique and express our allergies, Candida infections and lowered resistance (vitamin and mineral deficiency) in different ways. In the case of glue ear sufferers the tissue targeted by the allergy or infection is the mucous membrane of the nose and throat. In those who have learning disorders but no behavioural or hearing problems the areas of the brain that facilitate learning are affected. In those cases where behaviour is bad but learning and hearing are not affected only those areas of the brain that govern the way we emote, act and react are affected. Sometimes the nose, throat, behavioural and learning centres of the brain are affected simultaneously.

The exact biochemical processes have not as yet been detailed. What is known is that in the case of allergies, Candida and viral and bacterial infections the target tissue is inflamed. Inflamed tissues anywhere in the body always function abnormally and often unpredictably. In the case of glue ear the mucous membranes of the nose become inflamed and function abnormally by producing more of their protective mucus covering than is needed.

Instead of the mucus draining forward (as it normally does) to give the predictable symptoms of a runny or stuffy nose that makes colds and allergies easy to diagnose, it drains backwards down the eustacian tube giving rise to a clutch of seemingly unrelated symptoms. The affected tissues in the brain also function abnormally.

In the case of learning and behavioural disorders the picture is further complicated by the fact that vitamin and mineral deficiencies often exist, affecting the production of special brain chemicals called neurotransmitters. These are vital for thought integration, physical co-ordination, verbal articulation and elevated mood.

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• Wash your daily multi-vitamin and mineral supplements down with a small amount of juice or water with one level teaspoon of vitamin C powder in it. Add also, twice only per week, one drop only of Lugol’s iodine solution, using an eye dropper. The iodine is available from your chemist. As it is an old remedy, the younger pharmacists don’t usually know how to mix it up. Go to a mature age chemist. Iodine, along with vitamin C powder and the multi-vitamins and minerals will help normalise the action of the thyroid gland. This is important as thyroid gland underactivity can cause the formation of a thick jelly-like substance (mucin) in the joints. This causes the joints to swell and when they swell they become stiff and painful.

• If, after six months of sticking strictly to the program, resting and following all the other instructions in this section, your joints are not reducing in size, pain and stiffness you most likely have an under-active thyroid gland. The best way to test for this is to take your under-arm temperature first thing in the morning on waking. Put the thermometer under your arm and lie perfectly still for ten minutes. Do not sit up or move around prior to the test as this will raise your basal temperature. Shake the thermometer down the night before. On waking reach out for it without sitting up. Ladies, take your temperature on the morning of the second and third days of your period only. Body temperature varies up and down through the cycle. If you have reached menopause, start testing any time of the month and continue it over a two-day period. If your temperature is below 36.6°C you almost certainly have an under-active thyroid gland. Ask your doctor to prescribe 0.1 mg daily of Oroxine and if in six to seven weeks the joints are still not improving take another 0.1 mg per day. This will usually do the trick though sometimes it takes 0.3-0.4 mg per day. As the oroxine begins to improve the function of the gland you will be able to reduce the dosage. The standard blood tests for thyroid under-activity are no good for diagnosing arthritis or those glands that are mildly under-active.

• Keep your doctor or naturopath informed.

• Take at least one teaspoon of cod liver or halibut oil per day.

• Consult a good osteopath or chiropractor to make sure there is no fibrous tissue component to your problem and if there is follow his advice.

• Make sure your fluid intake is adequate. The synovial fluid that lubricates joints is made from water. Joints can dry up and become stiff and sore when water intake is sub-optimum.

• Do the deep breathing exercises every day. Deep breathing feeds oxygen to the joints and muscles around the joints. The joints repair themselves faster and the muscles around the joints relax, reducing joint pain and stiffness.

• Pineapples and paw contain enzymes that have a natural anti-inflammatory affect on arthritic joints. Eat plenty of these if you are not allergic to them and you have completed the first four weeks of the Anti-Candida Program.

• The green-lipped mussel is a potent anti-inflammatory and painkiller that is a specific for arthritis. It’s available as an extract in Sea Tone tablets available from your health store.

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