Friday, November 30, 2007

Getting Over My Allergies

Since the age of 2 I've had a number of food allergies, including being allergic to beans. All kinds of beans. If I ate some beans (with or without knowing it), my throat would swell up and feel scratchy and very uncomfortable; I would get a weird pressure in my esophagus and stomach, and feel itchy all over - for many hours, usually for the rest of the day. I would feel drained of energy; like with an illness; often accompanied by a faster heart-rate.

No doctors of any kind have ever been able to make an impact on my food allergies. My parents tried everything when I was a child, and as an adult, I had pretty much given up on finding a cure for it.

Until 3 weeks ago.

Something in me just felt like it was the END of my beans allergy. I'd had enough, I was sick of it, and now I was going to fix it once and for all. It was just a very strong feeling I had, like a strong motivation to do something, without knowing what specifically to do.

So I started searching on the Internet: beans allergy, food allergy, allergy cure, allergy healing, nuts allergy, peanut allergy... and I found plenty of articles talking about people with the same problems I have, and also many medical lectures about all the specific details of what your body goes thru when you have an allergy. Medical researchers are really good at labeling things, without actually being capable of fixing them. I skipped thru all of that crap and kept looking.

And then I found it. Some guy's blog describing his experience with EXACTLY about the type of allergies I had, to beans and nuts. It sounded like his were slightly worse than mine though, which was good. He nearly died from eating a peanut; I have been close to calling 911 from eating peanuts, but wasn't necessarily close to dying. (Peanut allergies can be more extreme than most people would imagine).

Then he explained what he did to cure his allergy! He did it himself, with some exercises called "TAT" that he learned about on the web! I couldn't believe it - someone found a solution? One that's completely free, that you can do yourself?!? It sounded WAY too good to be true. He wasn't trying to sell me anything on his web page, which told me I was on to something. At the end of his article he pointed to a web site called TAT Life.

I went to the TAT Life web site. The instructions were right there, a free PDF file to download and print out. It seemed simple. It seemed crazy. You hold your fingers on your head in a certain way, think of certain things, say some other things, and that's it. 10 minutes, tops. It couldn't work, could it? Something in me was excited about this and wanted to try it, even though my brain was saying "no way".

Then I noticed something fascinating in the instructions. The very first thing you should work on (if you haven't done TAT before) is the sentence "TAT is too easy to work or be of any value." I thought that was really cool - a system that understands where I'm coming from, and even integrates that into the program? I was ready to give it a try.


So I sat on the side of my bed with the doors and windows closed, I wasn't about to let anyone see me do this. I went thru the exercises with my printout on my lap. I could recall a time when I was a child that my parents forced me to eat a nut when I didn't want to, I was screaming and crying. I didn't dwell on the event, just tried to see it remotely from a distance, to that little child so long ago. The exercise really felt good, inside of me, while I was doing it. I even felt elated afterwards. But I wasn't about to try eating any beans any time soon. The web site mentioned it's a good idea to drink extra water when doing these exercises, so I did. Living in Arizona you have to force yourself to drink extra water anyway; it's so dry, and hot in the summer time.

About 2 days later I decided to do the exercise again, focusing on Beans. I did everything the same way as before. Same feeling of elation afterwards.

Then about a week later my wife made some chili. She always puts beans in it. She and our kids can eat beans just fine, I'm the only one with a problem. She usually puts aside some of it right before adding the beans, just for me. I told her not to do that, just make it with beans, because I think I don't have an allergy anymore. She looked at me funny, but I could tell somehow that I didn't feel reviled by the sight or thought of beans anymore.


At dinner time, I took a couple bites, man was it delicious. My wife, watching me carefully, said sarcastically, "I'll go get the Benadryl." I ate some other foods on my plate for a few minutes waiting for any reaction - but there wasn't any! I finished my entire bowl of chili - it was unbelivably delicious, I had never tasted anything like it before. No reaction whatsoever.

I was cured!

Well, I've eaten a lot of beans since then. Green beans are wonderful. I found out I don't like refried beans very much, but black-beans are pretty good.

Think about this now: 40 years worth of beans allergy - gone after 2 treatments.
No doctor could cure me - I had to cure myself.

I'd like to mention, though, after all that I was still allergic to Sesame Seeds and Peanuts.
I had to do 2 other treatments specifically focused on Sesame Seeds to cure myself of that allergy (apparently rooted in a different painful experience than beans). And I am still working on the Peanuts one.

I'm serious about all this. This really is my experience, it's almost too good to be true.

If you have any allergies that you are sick of living with, check out TAT - I highly recommend it. http://www.tatlife.net/
After all, at no cost, what do you have to lose?