Tag: chronic health

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Be aware of allergies as the root cause of many problems including fatigue

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Blog written by Sarah Myhill, author of Diagnosis and Treatment of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Ecological Medicine, and The PK Cookbook

Allergy is the inflammation which results from response to substances (called antigens) from outside the body. Some of these present no threat to the body. Examples include pollen, house dust mites, animal dander and foods. Some antigens do pose a threat in high doses, such as metals (lead, mercury, arsenic, nickel), toxic chemicals (pesticides, solvents) or electromagnetic radiation (wi-fi, mobile phones, cordless phones etc).

Allergy has been known about for centuries. For example, 5-10 per cent of people with asthma are also allergic to sulphites. Pliny the Elder wrote of this when he reported the case of an asthmatic patient (rare for his times) who died from a bronchospasm in 79 AD after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The patient had lived a ‘normal life’ but for this ‘one incident’.

Allergy is the great mimic and can produce almost any symptom. Furthermore, one can be allergic to anything under the sun, including the sun! Allergy is also common – at least 30 per cent of the population are allergic to some foods. However, by the time allergy has produced fatigue (the major focus of my work as a doctor) it has usually caused other problems beforehand. Suspect an allergy problem if any, or a combination, of the following are present:

* The onset of fatigue is pre-dated by, and/or there is a long history of:

* asthma, sinusitis, rhinitis, eczema or urticaria

* irritable bowel syndrome with wind, gas, bloating, abdominal pain, alternating constipation and diarrhoea

* migraine or headaches

* joint (arthritis) and muscle pain

* mood swings, depression, anxiety, PMT

* almost any unexplained, recurring, episodic symptom.

  • Childhood problems – This would include being a sickly child with recurrent ‘infections’, such as tonsillitis (actually probably allergy). Indeed, a colleague who is a consultant paediatrician considers it medical negligence to surgically remove tonsils without first doing a dairy-free diet. Rhinitis, sinusitis, catarrh and colic are typical dairy allergy symptoms.
  • Symptoms change with time – Often the allergen is the same, but the symptom changes through life. Allergy to dairy products typically starts with colic and projectile vomiting as a baby, followed by toddler diarrhoea, catarrh and glue ear, recurrent infections (tonsillitis, croup, middle ear infections) and ‘growing pains’. Teenagers develop headaches, depression, irritable bowel syndrome, PMT and asthma. In adult life, muscle, tendon and joint pain (arthritis). Any of the above may be accompanied by fatigue.
  • There is a positive family history – I have yet to find a patient who is dairy allergic who does not have a first-degree relative (parent, sibling, child) who also has symptoms suggestive of allergy to dairy products. Allergy to gluten grains also runs in families.
  • There is a tendency to go for a particular food – One of the interesting aspects of allergy is that sufferers often crave the very food to which they are allergic. This was illustrated by one patient who told me that when he died he wished to take a cow to heaven with him. It was dairy which was his main problem! If wheat appears with every meal, then allergy to such is likely.
  • There are symptoms of fermenting gut – Microbes from the gut are minuscule and easily spill over into the bloodstream. This is called ‘bacterial translocation’. These bacteria do not cause septicaemia (blood poisoning), but they may cause allergy reactions at distal sites. I suspect many clinical pictures can be explained by this, including irritable bladder, interstitial cystitis, intrinsic asthma, chronic urticaria, chronic venous ulcers, polymyalgia rheumatica and arthritis (osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis and so on).

How to identify your personal food allergies

I never do tests for food allergy because they are unreliable. False negatives are common – so, for example, many people who are intolerant of gluten will test negative for coeliac disease. Often, when the test is negative, they are told by their doctor that it is safe to eat that food – not so! There are many tests for food allergy on the market, but again I find positive results can be misleading, not least because the patient believes absolutely in the accuracy of tests and ends up avoiding foods unnecessarily or eating foods which are causing them symptoms.

The only reliable way to diagnose food allergy is by an elimination diet. The key is to cut out those foods that one is consuming daily. The reason that reactions may be prolonged or delayed is that daily consumption masks the link between exposure and symptom. Western diets include daily consumption of grains, dairy products and often yeast. If in addition one is eating other foods, such as potato, soya or tomato, or drinking regular tea, coffee or whatever on a daily basis then this too should be excluded. One should stay on this diet for at least one month before reintroducing foods to the diet – this should be done cautiously since reactions can be severe. Dr John Mansfield developed a practical, easy-to-follow elimination diet that is described in his last book, Six Secrets of Successful Weight Loss.

The Stone-Age or Paleo diet is a ‘best guess’ diet and a useful starting place, hence my recommendation of the PK (Paleo-Ketogenic) diet as explained in our book Paleo-Ketogenic: the Why and the How. If it transpires that there are multiple allergies, then these days I do not put people on a more restricted diet – that is because some people get completely stuck on two or three foods and are unable to bring in new foods because of the above severe reactions. Instead, I put in place the interventions I recommend for a general approach to inflammation together with specific desensitisation techniques to switch off allergy (see our book Ecological Medicine).

Increasingly I am finding that one does not have to be perfect to reduce allergy and allergy symptoms. Simply reducing the total load is helpful – attention to the general approach is as important as specific desensitisation. However, the key steps are:

  • The PK diet
  • Extinguishing the inflammatory fire with my Groundhog Chronic regime (see any of our books) including antioxidants, especially vitamin C
  • Identifying possible causes, not forgetting micro-organims in the upper gut that should not be there, and eliminating or avoiding them
  • Detoxing to reduce the factors that cause inflammation
  • Reprogramming the immune system with probiotics, micro-immunotherapy, enzyme potentiated desensitisation (EPD) and neutralisation – all explained in detail in Ecological Medicine.
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Dr Raymond Perrin’s Voyage of Discovery

Blog post written by Dr Raymond Perrin, author of The Perrin Technique 2nd Edition and The Concise Perrin Technique.

 

The background to The Perrin Technique

In 1989 a cyclist came into my clinic complaining of back pain. He also told me that he had been suffering with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) for 7 years and had been out of cycling for all of that time. I explained to him that, as an osteopath, I could help his back problems but couldn’t do much for his ME/chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), which in those days was also known by the terribly derogatory name of ‘yuppie flu’. We were trained to believe that ME was very much a psychological disorder and that, with tender loving care and more exercise and time out of the office, the young upwardly mobile professionals so often affected would return to their healthy former selves. How wrong we were!

With treatment to the cyclist’s postural problems, his back pain diminished but amazingly so too did his ME symptoms and within a few months he was totally symptom free and able to return to his beloved bicycle.

 

The Perrin Technique: The theory

After helping this patient, I embarked on over three decades of clinical research into ME/CFS, including a doctoral thesis into the cause and treatment of this disorder that continues to baffle most clinicians, scientists and patients. In the early days of my research, I came up with a theory that formed the basis of my PhD thesis and my first book, The Perrin Technique, published by Hammersmith Press in 2007; this theory was that ME/CFS was due to a physical disturbance of the lymphatic drainage of the brain and spinal cord. This, I hypothesised, led to a build-up of toxins within the central nervous system, leading  to a disturbed autonomic nervous system (the nerves that control automatic functions of the body such as blood flow, the heart and gut function).

At the time, my theory that this autonomic dysfunction caused a reversal of lymphatic flow from the brain and spine, leading to toxic overload of the brain, went completely against medical and scientific thinking, as according to all the main authorities there was no lymphatic drainage of the central nervous system to go wrong in the first place. It was recognised that we had the lymphatic system to take away larger molecules that could not drain directly into the blood, but this was deemed unnecessary in the brain as the there was a natural protection, known as the ‘blood-brain barrier’, that stops large particles entering the brain, and so blood vessels in the brain were thought to be sufficient to flush any small particles away. We know very differently now!

 

The Perrin Technique: The facts

Join me in my voyage of discovery in The Perrin Technique 2nd Edition in which I describe how scientific breakthroughs over the past 14 years have  finally caught up with my original theory; we now have irrefutable proof of the existence of the lymphatic drainage of the brain (AKA the ‘glymphatic system’) and masses of evidence showing how  this drainage can be disturbed by a combination of physical, emotional, immunological and/or environmental stressors, leading to ME/CFS and fibromyalgia (FMS), and how a reversal of neuro-lymphatic  drainage can lead to physical diagnostic signs. In my 2nd Edition I include many references to the supporting scientific papers and to my own published research.

The Perrin Technique 2nd Edition also explains why every patient with ME/CFS or FMS is different and detail over 100 symptoms with an explanation of why patients suffer from each of these, such as :

Hyperosmia (changed sensitivity to smell): This is a common symptom of ME/CFS and FMS. The olfactory pathway is one of the main neuro-lymphatic drainage points in the cranium. The increased neurotoxicity and/or inflammation in this region will result in irritation of olfactory nerves leading to a heightened sensitivity to smell in some patients, with others finding a lessening of their senses and in some a total loss of smell and taste (see anosmia).

In addition, I discuss many other conditions that can occur together with ME/CFS and FMS and consider other therapies that may be of benefit together with The Perrin Technique as part of the jigsaw-puzzle of recovery.

 

Two Perrin Technique books

With the publication of The Concise Perrin Technique this month (August 2021) there will be two up-to-date books describing how to reverse problems with neuro-lymphatic drainage using manual techniques. The core of both books is a comprehensive game plan for helping patients return to health plus a step-by-step guide for manual practitioners to carry out the required treatment. Both books also answer many practical frequently-asked questions such as: What are the dos and don’ts for patients with ME/CFS and FMS?

However, I am acutely aware that ME/CFS and FMS can badly affect the cognitive ability of sufferers and that many of my patients find reading and comprehension difficult or impossible tasks, especially when it comes to long texts. Consequently, I have written The Concise Perrin Technique as a short, more focused guide to the Perrin Technique aimed specifically at patients who simply want to know the key facts about ME/CFS and FMS, how to diagnose these conditions and how to treat the underlying problem, without using scientific and medical language and long explanations.

Both The Perrin Technique 2nd Edition and the new The Concise Perrin Technique show how successfully to beat ME/CFS, FMS and other similar, emerging conditions, including Long-COVID. Correcting neuro-lymphatic drainage may also help many other neurological disorders – further research is underway.

If you wish to comprehend the underlying science and gain an in depth understanding of issues related to ME/CFS and FMS, then The Perrin Technique 2nd Edition is waiting to be read; if you want just the basics of the Perrin Technique and how to put these into practice, then The Concise Perrin Technique is for you.