Select Committee on Health Written Evidence


Memorandum by Margaret Moss (AL 64)

  I am writing in response to your consultation about allergy services. I see many patients suffering from allergy, intolerance, or sensitivity to foods and environmental chemicals, who have failed to obtain help from the NHS. I suggest that we require:

    (a)  more teaching on this topic at undergraduate level, for doctors, nurses and dieticians;

    (b)  more postgraduate training on this topic for allergy specialists, paediatricians and GPs;

    (c)  a broader approach than just IgE mediated immediate allergy, to consider biochemical causes of food intolerance and sensitivity to chemicals;

    (d)  provision of good quality nutritional supplements, to address biochemical causes of food and chemical intolerance;

    (e)  sophisticated laboratory services, able to perform reliable tests for nutritional deficiencies, and for biochemical defects that can lead to poor detoxification. Inability to detoxify leads to a lack of tolerance of substances which cause no obvious trouble to the rest of the population; and

    (f)  employment of nutritional therapists in primary care, so that the majority of patients can be treated cheaply and quickly, without needing referral to a hospital.

  There are many mechanisms other than the action of IgE antibodies, that cause food and chemical intolerance. For example, farmers short of the enzyme paraoxonase are susceptible to poisoning by organophosphates. People who cleave beta carotene too efficiently can build up a toxic load of vitamin A. Many of my patients with food and chemical sensitivity are inefficient at converting the amino acid, cysteine, to sulphate. Sulphate is required to deal with amines and phenols, which occur naturally in foods,and for the integrity of the gut wall. Patients may also be deficient in the phenolsulphotransferase enzymes, that transport sulphate. Some people lack the lactase enzyme, which splits milk sugar into simple sugars. Patients may fail to break down milk and wheat proteins adequately, so that fragments of protein, called peptides, including the opioids in milk and wheat, cause symptoms in the mind or body.

  Allergy and intolerance should not be seen simply as acute problems with peanuts or pollen. The contribution of food and chemical sensitivity to chronic illness extends to schizophrenia, autism, ME, fibromyalgia, migaine, arthritis, irritable bowel syndrome and eczema.

  You may wish to refer to the following:

  1.  Brostoff J, Challacombe SJ. 2002. Food Allergy and Intolerance. 2nd edition. Saunders. London.

  2.  Moss M, Waring RH. 2003. The Plasma Cysteine/Sulphate Ratio: A Possible Clinical Biomarker. J Nutr Env Med 13(4): 2l5-229.

May 2004





 
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