Meryl Avery suffered from depression, with occasional seizures of panic, for six years. Before that she had had a long history of physical and mental-like problems, although she was still in her twenties.
As a baby she had thrown up easily, and she had wet her bed until she was fourteen. As a child, she would sometimes hold her breath until she turned blue in the face and passed out. She had many mysterious “infections.” By the time she entered college, however, she seemed to be doing fairly well.
The long drive home from college during her freshman year triggered her ill health once again, however. She became acutely ill during the trip, and when she reached home, she could not walk but had to crawl up the stairs to her bedroom, crying all the way. She had a severe headache, was sick all night, and had residual symptoms on the following day.
The other passengers in the car also got headaches, but only Meryl became so desperately sick. In retrospect, her friends figured that there was a leak in the exhaust system of the car and that some of the fumes and carbon monoxide had gotten into the passenger compartment. None of the passengers could recall smelling any exhaust odors, however, or noticing anything unusual about the trip. The car was checked out and was not found to be defective.
While the other people recovered, Meryl’s health started a precipitous decline. She was plagued by weakness, fatigue, and dizziness at school. She started getting headaches again, a problem she had had frequently as a teenager. She took stimulatory drugs—”White Crosses,” or “uppers”—and alcohol to relieve feelings of weakness and mental exhaustion.
Because of these problems she was unable to attend most of her classes and lost credit for the term. The trip home was again traumatic, and she arrived in tears. To be closer to home, Meryl transferred to another college, but her problems became worse. She cried almost continually, threw temper tantrums, and was soon depressed most of the time. Her eating habits deteriorated: she practically lived on “instant breakfasts.”
Her reading comprehension declined. Her memory was poor; she was unable to handle taxing situations and “froze up” on examinations. During the next summer she visited relatives in the rural South and, simultaneously, contacted a nutritionist who was familiar with clinical ecology. The combination of relatively pure air and a partial diagnosis of her food problem worked wonders. “I discovered what it was like to feel good,” she later said in reference to this time. For the next six months she remained on a Rotary Diversified Diet and avoided some incriminated foods. But on Christmas day, at a family party, she began cheating on this diet and continued to slip downhill all week. The binge ended in a marathon cookie-eating session, in a room with a gas fireplace.
The next morning Meryl was, as she says, “totally freaked out.” Although she kept taking alkali salts, which can often ameliorate allergic symptoms, and ate what she thought were her compatible foods, she could not regain her previous feelings of health. She screamed and hit the walls, the furniture took on odd shapes, and she became severely depressed. Her sister had to come and calm her down.
Finally, she sought help at the Ecology Unit. After an initial period of headaches and itchy eyes, she felt well again. She reacted to several of the waters tested, but one was found with which she was compatible.
The worst reactions were as follows: Eating corn was followed by blotchy face and itchiness; cod brought hot feelings, tingling in the neck and shoulders, panic which came on quickly, and headache. Red snapper brought severe depression, crying, panic, and a “spacey” feeling. Eggs were followed by aches and pains all over and panic after two hours. After eating rabbit she fell asleep and then awoke in panic, crying and depressed. Avocado brought sleepiness, after which she awoke depressed and angry. Cauliflower was accompanied by an immediate depression. Between such tests, or when given compatible foods, she was pleasant and cheerful.
We next took some of Meryl’s safe foods and fed them to her in their chemically contaminated form, just as they came from the supermarket, presumably contaminated with residues of pesticides and preservatives. Within ninety minutes of her first meal, she developed a severe depression which lasted for several hours.
Food reactions are not always traceable to commonly eaten foods. Often a person will react, or rather cross-react, to less frequently eaten foods, if those foods “remind” the body of other, allergy-causing substances. In Meryl’s case, however, there was a clear link between her reactions and her eating habits.
She had previously reported a craving for sweets and a severe reaction to cookies. These usually contained corn syrup, and thus it is not surprising that she had a strong reaction to corn and corn sugar in her hospital diagnostic test. People with such allergies, as explained in Chapter 10, also frequently are allergic to alcoholic beverages, which often contain corn in some form. Meryl had reported severe reactions to alcoholic beverages of all sorts and was on the verge of becoming an alcoholic. She had a serious reaction in the hospital to yeast, which is an ingredient in all alcoholic beverages. After the nutritionist had diagnosed some of Meryl’s food allergies, she had switched to fish as a supposedly safe food, but she had eaten it in an addictive way, having it for breakfast every day. Thus it is not surprising that she should have had very severe reactions to cod and red snapper.
Many of Meryl’s problems seemed in retrospect to have been related to her chemical-susceptibility problem (which was demonstrated by her reaction to contaminated food). Her initial experience returning from college was probably related to car exhaust fumes. These could have been relatively “normal” amounts of exhausts which often seep into cars traveling at highway speeds. The other people in the car were apparently less susceptible to this influence, and suffered either transient headaches or no symptoms at all. By adhering to a new diet, and minimizing her exposure to chemical pollution, Meryl was able to finish college and begin a successful career.
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