I’d like to share with you a letter I received from a patient recently.  He had been suffering with chronic digestive and immune issues for a number of years.  

During his initial naturopathic visit, I suspected that a food allergy was creating a lot of inflammation in his body.  We did a food allergy blood test and discovered that he had some pretty severe reactions to foods he ate regularly.  

Fast forward one year, Dan is free from his digestive issues, his frequent colds and his Cholesterol levels have improved!  Congratulations Dan and thanks for sharing your story!

So you’ve discovered you have allergies! And if you are similar to my experience, you among other things, have high allergies to wheat and dairy. Now comes time to assess what you are eating and seek to do without these foods.

You will discover how prevalent this is in your diet especially if, like me, you were consuming both at every meal. This can be alarming, surprising and challenging. It is alarming because you don’t have to look far to know that eating the same food over and over again is not good for your health. It is surprising because you didn’t know how much of this food forms the basis of your diet, especially if you have been eating a lot of processed food. And it is challenging because you need to figure out what to eat in its place.

Reviewing my food selections became a real challenge. I travel a lot for work, the biggest challenge was breakfast. Almost everything on the menu has wheat. I would try to find substitutes and often just end up ordering a wheat product.

So much of our food is wheat-based that the statement comes up, I can’t eat anything. It came to my mind and I have seen comments of others that there is nothing to eat if you can’t eat wheat. So back to square one, what is there to eat?

The answer lies more in perspective than anything else. It involves becoming more in tune with what real food actually is. It is understanding your biological place on earth, and what you as a human being should be eating and how to reverence the food you are eating. In fact, as you make this journey of learning you will discover and empower yourself and simply by embarking on this journey you will find improvement in your health.

What you will find is that there is an abundance of good things to eat, they are literally everywhere. There is so much variety of good and healthy things to eat and once you start eating good food you start to discover the pleasures that are contained in it. We are taught by those who are not interested in our health that we need to hide the taste of real food with processed food and condiments that are essentially salt, sugar and fat. This leads us to lose touch with what real food actually tastes like, to our detriment. For me
the rediscovery of vegetables in my diet was a hidden treasure. What do I mean by a hidden treasure? It means that you are able to see something for the first time that was right in front of you or that was completely obvious that you weren’t able to see before.

No amount of theory will teach you this, it is only discovered once you go down the pathof change for the better. I have experienced this many times in the last year and such is available to anyone.

This journey starts by finding out who out there can help you find the path of healthy living, the two key items for me were finding a good health practitioner and the right books.

Last year I had a number of health issues the main one being a constant state of illness(flus, colds: where does one begin and the other end?) and second was food getting stuck in my esophagus area.

At one illness episode, I had to have my manager fly in to make important presentations because I had laryngitis and couldn’t talk. My esophagal
problems are a mere shadow of what they were. I was getting to the point where I waspreparing to move to a climate where my illnesses were less severe which was in warm and dry climates (i.e. leaving Canada). One year later (now) I have not had even the hint of illness where in the past few years I would have gone through three months of illness.

My medical doctor, who has been advising me to go on cholesterol lowering drugs for several years (which I had always resisted), said back this spring that I had improved in my last blood test so much that he longer recommends them. I am not free and clear of all my symptoms (although getting sick is no longer one of them) and there remains areas to improve. However, the difference between last year when I began this journey to today is like comparing a brick wall to a speed bump. With a brick wall you consider yourself trapped while the speed bump is more a nuisance, but is not stopping you in your goals.

Thanks for reading my story and good luck in your journey. I can tell you it’s worth it.

Dan, Richmond