Nutritional Problems: Allergies, Food Cravings and Food Addictions
Many people suffer from food allergies and sensitivities, food cravings and food addictions.
A food allergy is when the body has an abnormal immune response to a food.
A food sensitivity is when the body does not show an abnormal immune response to a food, but the food causes similar problems.
Problems due to food allergies and sensitivities can include rashes, eczema, and other skin problems; asthma; bowel problems, including bloating and gas and diarrhea; and other problems.
Allergies and sensitivies are treated mainly by avoiding the offending foods. If you are allergic to milk, you must avoid milk or suffer the consequences. Anti-yeast treatment, described below,is very effective in treating and in some cases eliminating food sensitivities.
Many children could be saved from years of asthma treatments, inhalers, and hospital visits if they avoided the foods to which they are allergic!
What are food cravings and addictions? Our new book, An Extraordinary Power to Heal, has a complete chapter on food addiction! This is a brief explanation.
Food cravings are extremely strong desires for certain foods, so strong that one focuses on the craving above everything else. Addiction results when one has lost control and given oneself over to these strong desires regardless of the consequences. One takes the substance beyond need and beyond one’s control.
Dr. Semon see food addiction constantly in my medical practice. And he helps people regain control.
The most common food addictions are for sugary foods and for chocolate and for snack foods that are high in fat and salt, like potato chips. Patients never describe addiction to foods like lettuce, grapefruit or blueberries, or even meat. What does this tell us? Food addiction is not about the need for sustenance. There are many calorie sources which the average food addict would never touch to satisfy the addiction. So there is something unique to the addictive foods, that goes well beyond the body’s need for survival.
People who crave food and become addicted to it range from people who simply cannot finish the day without an extra high sugar dessert, to people who think about chocolate all the time, to the true bingers who can consume large quantities of foods, such as ice cream, to satisfy some urge that medical science does not understand.
Why do I call people who crave food “food addicts”? The definition of addiction includes physiological dependency on a substance even when there are significant negative consequences to using or taking in that substance. Despite knowing the consequences, the addict must ingest the substance. The main consequence of food addiction is weight gain and feelings of loss of self control. Food addiction is legal but its cost is not trivial. Millions of Americans are on weight loss diets at any given time. The weight loss industry is a multimillion dollar industry. But diets and pills do not solve the underlying problem of irresistable cravings. That is because food addiction has a physiological basis. It cannot be stopped by sheer will power.
Dr. Semon treats the physiological basis for food addiction. He has many people whose addictions to chocolate and sugar, for example, no longer control their lives.
