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By now we've heard just about everything, so when Margherita De Bac's article came out on page 23 of the November 2 issue of Corriere dell Sera we weren't too surprised. The fact that the article stated in capital letters" Food intolerance tests are a fraud" only reinforces our opinion that there is a strong influence of ambulatory specialists on the medical section of this newspaper.

We're not going to argue about this because first of all, we believe that everyone has the right to express their opinion and secondly, its clear that our colleagues who believe this haven't had time to keep themselves updated on several scientific  evolutions. Some of these results are recent,( and we can partially excuse them) and others are not and as such they should already be part of these doctors' knowledge base.

So where is the real fraud?

When a patient goes to a doctor and explains to him that, when he eats certain foods,  symptoms  such as joint pain, stomachache, reflux, colitis and skin allergies seem to appear , he's usually told that it's impossible. This person hopes that the doctor will abide by the Hippocratean oath  and be able to understand and further investigate this aspect ("Let food must be your medicine..."), but he runs up against phrases like "a cough is a cough, what does food have to do with it?" and is sent to take tests that are often inconclusive and prescribed drugs .

So let's take a moment to inform our readers as well as our colleagues who haven't had time to keep abreast of these topics of some important scientific studies. In the last two years, many significant scientific articles , published on objective international journals, have underlined, among other things, the relationship between:

• Allergies o food intolerances and arthritis and joint pain
• Allergies or food intolerance and cough, asthma and breathing difficulty
• Allergies or food intolerances and reflux
• Allergies or food intolerances and forms of colitis and inflammatory diseases of the colon (Crohn's disease or Ulcerous Colitis).
• Allergies or food intolerances and insulin resistance and weight gain

A doctor who isn't aware of this reality is unprepared to serve the needs of a patient who seeks his help..

In the best case, however, the doctor is informed about this data and prescribes food allergy tests. But he forgets that  scientific knowledge with regard to food allergies has gone through an enormous evolution and that today food allergies are divided into immediate allergies (linked to Immunoglobulin E) and delayed food allergies ( caused by a cellular reaction favored by other types of antibodies). An examination that considers only immediate allergies usually leads to responses that lack any practical meaning.

We would like to remind our readers that solid and undisputable scientific works  from recent years indicate that:

• We are all allergic and intolerant to everything and only an active regulation of the Immune System can provide a cure.

This is why almost everyone is told that they have an intolerance or an allergy: they actually have them from birth. And they simply have lost control over their regulation.

• Today, many allergies and food intolerances are linked to delayed phenomena, modulated by cellular reactions and not antibodies as was believed for decades.
• In the past weeks, alternative routes for the classic allergy have been identified. They cause the same phenomena but will never be revealed in the classic tests. The diagnoses that have been performed up to now are incomplete, to say the least.
• There are non-conventional tests based on scientific criteria and documented by international publications that have been studied to eliminate subjectivity as well as result fluctuations . The DRIA test, for example, has deliberately computerized and standardized its operational methods in order to avoid certain subjective and uncertain aspects of kinesiological techniques. The ALCAT test, on the other hand , uses FDA approved diagnostic solutions and computerizes the result so as to eliminate the optical reading and analyze only a specific white blood cell group. In spite of this, both are defined as non-conventional tests and are always interpreted in the context of the clinical history and require a precise informed consent in order for them to be carried out.

When patients are faced with a negative result for an allergy test that exclusively examines IgE allergies, they feel frustrated and misunderstood. They are right when they feel the effects of food on their pathologies, but (almost) no one helps them to overcome them and when they do recover (as in the case of many inflammatory pathologies that are improved by an accurate interpretation of a DRIA or ALAT test) and try to show their doctors the results of their dietary modifications, they are received with sneering, disbelief and derision.

We're not terribly worried about the fact that these scientific realities are ignored by our journalist colleague De Bac.(for many years, we too have criticized the practice of mail-order tests or the formulation of treatments based on tests lacking any sort of scientific formulation). What does surprise us is that some well-known medical colleagues, like the president of the Italian association against obesity aren't aware of recent data that link allergic inflammation with weight gain stating that people are ready to believe any far-fetched theory that they hear. Let's remember, though, that science no longer defines them as far-fetched theories. One of those people who was accused of "stupidity " mind evevn be offended.

-So where is the real fraud?

At this very moment, there is a vast group of patients that is asking for help, people who perceive the strong influence of food on their health and at the same time there are numerous recent scientific studies that could explain this relationship. Today's doctor is almost always used to dealing exclusively with medicine. He often  disregards common sense relating to changes in eating habits, he will not be able to help patients understand the real causes of many disturbances, allowing for the useless waste of economic and pharmaceutical resources. This attitudes denies needy patients of an alternative approach to their problems and repudiates one of the points of a doctor's professional oath that calls for therapeutic alliance with the patient, based on trust and reciprocal information.

 We continue to believe in the possibility of combining innovation and medicine and are consoled by scientific data that is far from lacking. We prefer to practice medicine using instruments that can be perfected and are evolving such as the non-conventional tests rather than to deny the connection between food and disease. In reality, people are becoming ever more aware of this relationship and perhaps Hippocrates' advice (Let food be your medicine..), is as relevant today as it was in his day.

Doctors recite the Hippocrates' oath at the beginning of their careers, but it seems that many of them soon forget his teachings.

Doctor Attilio Speciani
Clinical Allergist and Immunologist

Italian version