DAY 281: Discovering I’m allergic to cigarettes, goddamnit

THIS WEEK, my eyes are puckered little pissholes in the snow, itching like they just got out of jail. I’ve got no idea what’s going on.

I decide to get tested for allergies at the MindBodySpirit Festival in Melbourne.

The practitioner runs a renowned allergy testing company out of Sydney. His stand is not covered in pictures of faeries or banks of useless machines flashing lights, nor does he have glitter on his face, which is a good sign. Still, I’m skeptical.

I sit at the table and he gives me a brass electrode to grip with my left hand, then jabs me in the centre of my right palm – an acupuncture point – with a sensor. This communicates with his computer by a galvanometer. On the screen, the program runs through over 100 foods, vitamins and hormone levels, and he jabs me twice as it clicks onto each category. The galvanometer in front of us swings to full whack for things like vegies, but flatlines for things like wheat and fags.

The practitioner gets irritable when I ask him how it works, but as Anne Smithells helpfully explains on Positive Health:

“As food is placed in the mouth, the body has to immediately rush the correct enzymes to it to break it down for digestion and to add the necessary antigens. This means that the body’s sensing devices have to be able to identify the food. They do this by interpreting the resonance signature, or frequency given off by the food as it reaches the mouth (this can be measured as a wave form, rather like a radio signal). The system has been programmed to recognise the signatures of each of the foods, vitamins, or minerals it is testing, to convert them into a digitised form and then to feed the relevant data into its memory for analysis.”

The bad news: I’m allergic to cow milk – which might be why I found these looming creatures so sinister on Day 100: Testing a Cow-Hugging Ruse – and also Vegemite and nicotine. This might explain why I had to persevere for the entire first year of high school to learn how to smoke without going yellow – and once again when I decided to learn how to smoke without drinking.

The practitioner tells me you can be intolerant to foods for a long time, but as gluten and casein (found in milk) build up in the body, you can eventually tip yourself over the edge. He hands me a tub of enzyme capsules to help break down the nasties in my system, and glibly dashes out a $40 receipt to add to the $110 I’m already paying, without consultation. Oof! Here’s my credit card to stuff down your bra, sir.

Keeper? Will try and stick to what I’ve learned. If you see me ordering a soy latte or smoking a clove cigarette, don’t judge.