Customer Reviews

Hidden Food Allergies: The Essential Guide to Uncovering Hidden Food Allergies-and Achieving Permanent Relief

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I think this book is a GREAT starting point. I personally DO NOT agree with the previous reviewer on the elimination diet being the gold standard. We have 2 children with multiple food allergies and the elimination diet HAS NOT worked for us due to the number of foods we are dealing with. I think this book is good because it talks about several types of reactions and several types of testing. MOST doctors only recognize IGE blood testing BUT you need more than that and this book explains it fairly well.

This book is a decent starting point for one who wants to know the basics about delayed food allergies. It's a very quick read with good lists of common allergens and some scientific background on the condition. What I don't like is that the author continuously pushes some controversial blood tests instead of the elimination diet, which is the gold standard (and an inexpensive one at that) for uncovering food allergies. Also, the book isn't very professional looking. It appears to be something that the authors self-published. If you really want to know about food allergies, "Food Allergies and Food Intolerance" is a better option. It covers the subject much more extensively and describes how to do an elimination diet.

I went on an elimination diet after reading this and have so far found that I am allergic to milk, corn, and soy. By avoiding those allergens, I have easily lost 20 lbs (and 2 inches off my waist), I have much more energy, my mood is significantly better, my knees don't continually ache anymore, my food cravings and constant hunger are gone, and my bladder irritation has resolved. In short, I feel better than I have ever felt. Although not everyone will see results like this, I think anyone with nagging chronic health problems should give the elimination diet a try, as it can't hurt, and the only real cost is having to cook just about every meal for a few weeks, which I consider a trivial cost compared to the gains I have seen.

I have been sick for four years with eczema and other skin problems, ear infections, chronic fatigue and a host of small problems that most doctors would find insignificant, but were making my life miserable. I learned that my atopic dermatitis (an allergic eczema) put me at risk for food allergies. Since my doctors were not helping and had told me there were no tests that could diagnose a food allergy, I started doing my own research. I read this book and decided that a few hundred bucks was a small price to pay for my health and sanity. So I got the ELISA IgG food allergy blood test. The results came back with very marked sensitivities to all kinds of dairy and egg whites and egg yolks (eggs and dairy are exactly the two allergens that this book says are the most common allergens in people with eczema). I previously thought that wheat gluten was my problem and would have continued consuming dairy and eggs and avoiding wheat and would have continued to be sick if I had not had the testing. I have tried an elimination diet and have tried keeping track of all my foods etc for years with NO success. That is partly because the IgG-mediated allergies have a delayed onset from 2 hours to 2 days, so it is VERY hard to diagnose with an elimination diet. And maybe I'm not a great detective -- an elimination diet might work really well for some people with a lot of patience. But I'm glad I bought the book, I'm glad I did the test, and in the end I will get my health back because I educated myself and took action, instead of waiting for my doctors to come up with a magic pill.

This book provides good information about how prevalent hidden food allergies are and how to identify them in order to improve your overall health.

This book explains that:

- The major cause of IgG allergies is a leaky gut
- Your immune system can unlearn IgG food allergies
- Once you've had the food allergy tests done, avoid those foods for 3 - 6 months
- To help heal the gut, the following can be helpful: Vitamin A, the B vitamins, zinc, selenium, glutamine and enzymes
- Butyric/caprylic acid can help heal the gut wall
- Once you've avoided problematic foods for 3 months, add them back slowly and use a 4 day rotation diet
- Trial new foods for 3 days
- Trial one new food a week and no more

For information on how to heal a leaky gut I would highly recommend the book No More Heartburn: Stop the Pain in 30 Days--Naturally! : The Safe, Effective Way to Prevent and Heal Chronic Gastrointestinal Disorders by Dr Sherry Rogers.

Most or even all of the information in this book, and information on many other health topics besides, is also contained in Patrick Holford's other book The New Optimum Nutrition Bible and so that book may be a better value choice than this one, depending on your needs.

Jodi Bassett, The Hummingbirds' Foundation for M.E.

I have allergies and sensitivities. This book "Hidden Food Allergies" talks about the fact that sometimes it's not that you are allergic to a lot of things, but there could be an underlying allergy that is causing the most problem and the others are sorta like "straw that broke the camel back" ... just one too many. This book is a good read. I bought it as a kindle book and have even referenced some of it to a few friends who have similar problems. This book will give you some good insight into where you might have allergies but didn't even know it. I recommend this.

First of all the book is printed in gigantic font - which is odd since it's not intended for people with vision problems.
More importantly I don't think the book is very user friendly. I think there are better books out there that address food allergies.