Originally Posted by Dr. Smith

Hi Cat,

I recently wrote about some triggers being difficult to identify because of a delay in causing symptoms, and others that I can get away with once, but more than that and the hammer falls.



Why do some poisons kill in seconds, but others take hours, days, weeks, months, or years? The short answer is metabolism. Some chemicals metabolize fairly rapidly (within a few hours) but take longer to get down to affecting cells/tissues and/or clearing the system. In some cases, it's not the trigger per se, but its metabolites that are causing the symptoms/doing the damage (not that that makes much difference).

In the case of alcohol...


There may also be a quantity or cumulative factor.

I don't know that there's any way at this time to determine if one of those possibilities is going on with you, or as you mention, you have a coincidental virus, or something that hasn't been figured out/thought of—e.g. another trigger.

It's been suggested when trying to identify triggers to wait a week or two between exposures to allow your system to clear.

Doc