Q: I had taken herbalife protein powder for muscle building and weight reduction. I ate this product for two months. After some time I noticed that my body was not tolerating any medicine. Even the homeopathic, ayurvedic or allopathic was not tolerated. Even the protein powder, glutamine, chawanprash, safi or simple medicine cause problems. After taking any medicine, I get blurred vision, body pains and vague feeling within couple of minutes. I start gaining weight my skin becomes dry. These symptoms remain for 24 hours. The next day I feel OK. I consulted some doctors regarding this. Ayurvedic doctors diagnose that I am suffering from medicine/food intolerance. But with regular food there is no problem. Though milk, peanuts, chicken and alcohol causes problems. It seems that my blood is not accepting any medicine. I am suffering from food/medicine intolerance. Please recommend something to cure my disease.

A:Food intolerance is difficult to diagnose either by analysis of symptoms or by any routine tests of blood or with allergen injections into the skin. The best approach is to immediately stop taking all possible causes of symptoms, and this necessitates adopting a strict diet and discontinuing all herbs and medications. After the body has been cleaned for a few days, each food and then medicine can be reintroduced one at a time on a daily basis. If one agent is the cause of the problem, the symptoms will reappear. This may take several weeks to accomplish and many people are unwilling to use such an arduous regimen. A second approach is to use a non-sedating antihistamine drug routinely. A further approach is to simply give up taking any herbal preparation since these products contain multiple components whose toxic effects have not been adequately studied. Moreover, the benefits of some popular herbal mixtures are still inadequately investigated, and reliance on these may be hazardous since their eventual side effects may outweigh any possible benefit. Despite all these concerns that have just been discussed, some investigators claim that the Chinese remedy reishi, which is a mushroom, may be of value in some food allergies. At present, the evidence for this is inadequate to justify making any recommendations for its use.