!Allergy!

[DanaC]

The North and North Western allergy clinic in manchester damn near killed me with their early experiments into the innoculation treatment for "Multiple or total allergy syndrome" At my worst I was down below 5 stone aged 13 and very tall with the wieght continuing to drop because of my inability to hold down food.....Even years later after I had survived and gotten better by trying not to live by the allergist book I still erroneously linked the consumption of certain food types to outbreaks of my condition ( extreme eczema with a host of related conditions ) ...After two very bad years a new doctor started at my GP's surgery who had a special interest in dermatological conditions ...

She didnt subscribe to the idea that my condition was anything to do with allergies. My constant illness she thought more likely to be the result of a combination of stress and infection.

The trouble had been that I was rarely free of outbreaks long enough to get clear signals. If I ate a chocolate bar and two hours later I was fighting not to tear myself up I would challk that up to chocolate...It's what my doctors had always encouraged me to do. There was always enough evidence to back it up in the territory if I looked for it....

Then my new doctor tried a totally different approach and it began to work...I still figured food may play a role so I tried to eat healthily. It was only after I had been clear for a little while i risked trying some of the key culprits and found they did nada.

With her help I managed to more or less disassociate the stress condition from my state of mind leaving me a little less at the mercy of my mood....

Now I rarely suffer from any of the "allergic" conditions which used to rule my life for large chunks of time. Though I do still find a slight flareup often accompanies real stress.

Many people suffer from allergies. Unfortunately more people are treated for allergies than need be and some people who do suffer from allergies are being overmedicated.

....of course this may not hold true for the hayfever type allergies.