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Case study: headache, stomachache, and allergic brain reaction CASE STUDY: HEADACHE, STOMACHACHE, AND ALLERGIC BRAIN REACTION
A slightly different kind of problem was presented by Karen Black. She complained, not just of hyperactivity and restlessness, but of headaches, stomachaches, skin rash, and a peculiar "spaced out" feeling in her head much of the time.
Her history provided a good clue: the symptoms became much worse after the family had moved so that she had to travel for a long time to get back and forth from school. In retrospect, this may have been due to an increased exposure to exhaust fumes. She developed stomachaches and an itchy rash under her armpits. A perceptive doctor advised her to stop wearing synthetic garments, and the rash went away, but the stomach problem and other symptoms persisted.
The family moved again, and now Karen developed a headache whenever she rode in the family car. Her teachers complained that she was in a world of her own, and before the end of the fifth grade the family had to remove her from school entirely and seek home instruction for her.
Because there was a strong family history of allergies, Karen was taken to a clinical ecologist. He diagnosed her as allergic to a variety of foods, including apple, chicken, grape, milk, peanuts, and rice, all of which made her feel "spaced out" on the provocative test.
To get a more definitive answer, Karen was referred to me. Upon fasting, she underwent withdrawal symptoms which, as I shall explain more fully below, are typical for those suffering from this syndrome. On the fourth day of the water fast, she felt sick to her stomach and threw up. Soon, however, she felt better—better, in fact, than she had in a long time.
Deliberate test feedings revealed a very serious allergy to cane, chicken, peanuts, corn, grapes and raisins, beef, milk, wheat, lobster, and peas, and lesser reactions to lamb, yeast, apples, and cherries.
Eating these foods would bring on her old symptoms, including periods of anger or tiredness. She complained of being "spacey" and "down," although this alternated with irritable periods.
Smelling chemicals made her angry, tired, dull, and almost catatonic. Two consecutive meals of commercial foods contaminated with the "normal" amounts of chemicals made her tired, irritable, with episodes of staring vacantly into space.
The testing was quite successful, and Karen was like a new person upon leaving the hospital. Unfortunately, she went back into a house which was ecologically harmful for her. It had brand new carpeting with a foam rubber pad, both of which are often the source of adverse reactions among those with the chemical-susceptibility problem. What is more, the family's furniture had been put into storage several months before and appeared to have been fumigated—a common practice among storage companies. All of these factors combined to make Karen's recovery less complete than it could have been.
Hyperactivity and related syndromes are a growing problem in the United States. Rather than dealing with this problem at the level of environmental causation, orthodox medicine prefers to perpetuate the problem through the use of drugs. Of the 750,000 children seen for "minimal brain dysfunction" (another term for hyperactivity) in 1978, 212,000 were put on medication, and about 75 percent of them, or nearly 120,000 on methylphenidate hydrochloride (Ritalin Hydrochloride).
A child psychologist recently complained that labeling a hyperactive child as in need of drugs eliminates the necessity of discovering the underlying problem which is causing his behavior problems. While the psychologist probably had in mind psychological causes, the same can be said, even more emphatically, about the chemical and environmental causes of this disorder.
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Allergies
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What your doctor should know; women tell their stories