DIET FOR APPENDIX V: WILD RICE AND MAIZE MEALS
Wild rice is only available from a few healthfood shops and delicatessans and is rather expensive. It has long, dark brown grains and a distinctive nutty-earthy taste that goes very well with some foods, notably fish, poultry and stir-fried vegetables. To cook, wash thoroughly, place in a large saucepan, cover with cold salted water, and bring to the boil. Simmer for 45 minutes, then turn off the heat, stir the rice and leave to stand for 15 minutes. Pour off any excess water but do not rinse. The cooked grains freeze perfectly, and can be defrosted quickly by boiling in water or stock, without becoming glutinous. A mixture of orange or lemon juice and melted butter (if you are allowed these) improves the taste of the rice. For breakfast, defrost some wild rice by boiling in fruit juice, adding dried apricots and nuts. Maize meal or cornmeal can be prepared as polenta and used as an accompaniment to stews or casseroles. Combine 115 gm (4 oz) maize meal with a level teaspoon each of salt and mild paprika, and a tiny pinch of cayenne. Mix in 1\4 litre (1\2 pint) of water, adding the water slowly to prevent lumps forming. Steam in a double-boiler – or put a small pan (containing the maize meal) inside a larger one, containing an inch or two of water, to get the same effect as a double boiler. After 30 minutes, turn out into a greased baking dish and bake for 10 to 15 minutes at 170°C, 350°F, gas mark 4. Pour a few spoons of juice from the casserole over the top, and a layer of grated cheese, then put under the grill to brown. This also goes well with fish.
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PREPARING FOR THE ELIMINAYION DIET: REINTRODUCTION PHASE
Reintroduce one item each week, for example:
week 1 – food containing additives
week 2 – tea
week 3 – coffee
week 4 – beer
week 5 – white wine
week 7 – spirits
week 8 – chocolate Take some of the test food or drink every day, starting with a small amount and continuing for a week. If there is a reaction, then stop immediately. Wait until you are better, then go on to the next item. If there is no reaction then give it up again after a week, and test the next item. At the end of the testing period, you can reintroduce all the things that produced no reaction.
If you react to food containing additives, then leave these out again for a while, while you test other items. Then test them again individually – see pp305-6 for details of the different groups of additives. If you react to one member of a group, you may well react to others in that group too.
Try to continue your good eating habits after the diet is finished – don’t go back to eating a lot of salt and sugar, or drinking huge quantities of tea, coffee or alcohol (even if these didn’t cause any specific symptoms). Keep eating fresh foods, particularly green vegetables, and stay away from junk food.
Once you have established which items cause your symptoms, you will probably need to avoid these entirely for some considerable time, although you might be able to consume a small amount occasionally. Try them out from time to time, to see whether your reaction has abated.
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WHAT CAUSES FOOD INTOLERANCE? BUGS IN THE SYSTEM
Our digestive tract is home to a great many bacteria and other microbes, which do not cause any disease, and are actually important for good health. They are known as the gut flora. Some doctors believe that the gut flora may become ‘disturbed’, causing the beneficial bacteria such as Lactobacillus to become less abundant, and other, more damaging microbes, to take their place. This might then lead on to food intolerance.-
The main evidence for this has been gathered by Dr John Hunter of Adden-brooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. Dr Hunter noticed that many of his patients with irritable bowel syndrome or IBS, dated their illness back to a bout of diarrhoea caused by an infection, or to a long course of antibiotics. Both these things are known to disturb the gut flora . Some women patients had first suffered from IBS after having a hysterectomy operation. This seemed puzzling, until Dr Hunter discovered that antibiotics were always given before such operations, to help prevent infections. An experiment followed in which some hysterectomy patients had the antibiotic treatment while others did not -11 per cent of those in the first group developed IBS but none of the second group did. In a further experiment, Dr Hunter looked at the bacteria found in the stools of IBS patients, and detected some differences from the bacteria of healthy people.
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FOODS CONTAINING YEAST
Main sources of yeast
Bread, including pitta bread and pizza, but excluding soda bread, matzos
and chapattis. Buns and cakes made with yeast eg doughnuts Yeast extract (Marmite, Vegemite etc)
Oxo cubes and most other stock cubes
Anything labelled ‘hydrolysed vegetable protein’ Beer, wine and cider Vinegar and pickles Sauerkraut
Vitamin tablets containing B vitamins, unless labelled ‘yeast-free’
Secondary sources of yeast
Dried fruit
Over-ripe fruit
Commercial fruit juices
Anything labelled ‘malt’
Yoghurt, buttermilk and sour cream
Synthetic cream
Soy sauce
Tofu
Any leftover food, unless eaten within 24 hours, or 48 hours if in a refrigerator
Whiskey, vodka, gin, brandy and other spirits
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ALLERGY: THE DISCOVERY OF IGE
The discovery of IgE was a breakthrough for classical allergists. Laboratory tests showed raised levels of total IgE in most patients displaying classical allergic symptoms..If the patient knew what antigen caused their symptoms, then a radioallergosorbent test or RAST (described on p79) could be applied to measure IgE for that specific antigen. The RAST result usually confirmed that there was an excessive amount of IgE antibody that would bind the incriminated antigen. In a very short space of time, IgE became the touchstone of respectability for classical allergists. Some even changed the definition of allergy, yet again, to mean reactions involving IgE only. This definition is still used by a few allergists.
When immunologists tried RASTs on patients diagnosed as food-allergic, they found a basic division. Those like Jane, with immediate, violent reactions, even to a very small amount of the offending food, almost always had high levels of IgE for that food, confirming the status of such reactions as classical allergies. Those like Susan, with ‘delayed’ or ‘masked’ reactions to foods, rarely produced positive RAST results for their culprit foods. More recently, some studies have shown that a small IgE reaction in the gut wall could be a contributing factor in people, but IgE is certainly not the major cause of the problem.
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GAMES FOR NARCISSISTIC COUPLES – GAME 2: I LOVE YOU JUST THE WAY YOU ARE (PART 3)
If these initial reactions can be worked through in a spirit of good faith, eventually the couple will develop a more honest relationship, instead of pretending they still admire one another when they do not, and end up being hypercritical or silently sulking or gloating. As their relationship becomes more true, so does the sex. So, while each partner takes turns saying, “I love you just the way you are,” and then says what comes up next, their sexual experience will take some surprising twists and turns. It may be angry, sad, rough, incredulous, and much less exploitative. They will say the sentence, say their thoughts, and then find themselves engaging in rougher sex than usual. Or they will say the sentence, say their thoughts, and cling to one another almost desperately, like infants. The impulse to use the other as a narcissistic sexual extension will diminish. This exercise can be done again and again, with new thoughts coming up, each time accompanied by new kinds of sexual feelings.
To go a step further, couples might also try a variation in which they take turns saying, “I love myself just the way I am,” and then say the next thought that comes into their mind. This will allow them to trace back to its source the judgment that was being projected onto the lover.
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GAMES FOR HYSTERICAL COUPLES – GAME 1: THE KISSING BANDIT (PART 6)
She opens the treasure box and finds a necklace or bracelet.
“For me? Really?” “That’s right.”
She tries it on and primps before a mirror. “So you think you can buy my love?”
“A bandit doesn’t have to buy anything. He steals it.” He takes her into his arms and steals a kiss. “Please,” she murmurs. “Be gentle.”
He undresses her and himself, then makes love to her in a more authoritarian way than ever before. He can do this by using a different variation of foreplay (perhaps doing something she has requested but he has heretofore felt squeamish about), insisting on a different position, or just being a little more forceful. Afterwards, the couple will find that this game has either invigorated their sex life or has brought up feelings that stand in the way of a better sex life. Even in cases where the game at first seems corny and either the wife or husband abandons it, good results can eventuate. The game will put the husband in touch with both his fear of self-assertion and his need for his wife’s approval. It will put the wife in touch with her fear and loathing of sex and her deep-seated need to be swept away so that she doesn’t have to feel guilty about doing something “dirty.”
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GAMES FOR DEPRESSED COUPLES – DEPRESSION
As an infant, this patient was rejected by his mother, who seemed to have been a depressed personality herself. He was born with big ears and crossed eyes, and his mother used both unfortunate inheritances as excuses to be disappointed in him. Eventually his father and sisters also scorned him, cementing his development of low self-esteem and lifelong depression.
When two people like my patient get together, you generally have two people who have suffered from some kind of traumatic loss or some kind of emotional abuse. Naturally, they then displace their depression onto their primary relationship. Having been made to feel unworthy, they make their spouse feel unworthy; having not been soothed adequately, they have no sympathy for their spouse; having been emotionally abused, they emotionally abuse their spouse; having been deprived of attention, they are themselves depriving.
The games in this chapter are designed to deal with the negation that such people continually act out.
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GAMES FOR BORED COUPLES – GAME 4: DESERTED ISLAND (PART 2)
Before the travel agent leaves the couple, he or she asks the husband and wife each to hand over a previously agreed-on sum of money (for example, $100), then says the following: “I’m leaving now and will return in two days. During that time you may only make love if you do so in a way you have never done before, and each time before you make love you must each say to the other, ‘We’re all alone here,’ and then express the next thought that comes into your head. There’s a telephone in the cabin, so you can call me if you want me to come get you. If you call me before the weekend is over, or if you haven’t made love in three new ways, you forfeit the money.”
The agent repeats these instructions several times, so that the effect borders on the hypnotic, and asks both husband and wife separately to repeat the instructions verbatim. Only when they are able to do so does the agent leave.
The couple find themselves thrown off-balance in many ways. They are lost physically, stuck in a strange environment without any idea of where it is located. They also are in a no win situation psychologically, because if they do not have sex in three new ways, they’ll lose not only their money but also the game—yet if they do have that sex, they will be forced to do something they have been studiously avoiding precisely because it is anxiety provoking. They are literally deserted, with nobody to turn to—except each other.
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JUNK SEX VS LOVING SEX – SEXUALITY
Sexuality is the key to restoring vitality and tenderness to marriage, to self-actualization and to harmony with nature, why doesn’t everybody just have more sex? Of course, it is not that simple. It is not so easy for people who have been blocked since early childhood (or who have developed blocks following a traumatic situation in adulthood) to suddenly become unblocked and be capable of achieving deep and gratifying sexual play leading to love. It requires far more than the intention to do so. Usually it entails help from others—a therapist, a doctor, an understanding friend, a lover, a spouse.
The games in this book are designed for use as an aid to becoming unblocked sexually and emotionally. They can be used in conjunction with therapy or with the assistance of a doctor. They can be used by therapeutically sophisticated couples for a self-directed form of sexual therapy. Or they can simply be used for fun.
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