Every Month She Carried M&Ms in Her Pocket. Then One Month, She Forgot.
Dr. John Erickson, DC | Laser & Chiropractic Center of the Rockies | Loveland, CO
Case 012 | Series Post #12
She Was a Professional. She Carried M&Ms.
She was an elementary school teacher. Every month, around the time of her cycle, she carried a bag of M&Ms in her dress pocket during playground duty.
She wasn’t embarrassed about it. She needed them. If she didn’t have chocolate when the craving hit, she became irritable, short-tempered, hard to be around. The chocolate wasn’t a preference. It was a management strategy.
She had never thought of herself as having an allergy. She thought of herself as someone who really needed chocolate sometimes.
A Monthly Pattern She Had Learned to Plan Around
The craving arrived like clockwork every month. Intense, not casual. If she ignored it, the irritability that followed was disruptive enough that she had stopped trying to resist.
She came in as an established patient working through the foundational NAET protocol. The chocolate issue came up during her intake assessment.
We added chocolate, caffeine, and coffee to her treatment sequence after completing the Basics. Follow this link to see how Caffeine sensitivity was the hidden driver of headaches and fatigue in Case 005.
She Didn’t Even Notice It Was Gone
The following month, the craving never came. She didn’t realize that until days after her period had ended.
She hadn’t been white-knuckling through it. She hadn’t been managing it. She had simply carried out her daily responsibilities without thinking about chocolate. The M&Ms stayed home.
The absence of something you’ve managed for years is easy to miss – until you notice you haven’t reached for the management strategy.
A Sensitivity Masquerading as a Craving
In NAET, we understand that intense cravings for a specific substance can sometimes signal that the body has an unresolved sensitivity to it. This is counterintuitive – we typically think of cravings as desire, not distress. But the nervous system sometimes generates a pull toward a substance it is reacting to, in an attempt to resolve the reaction.
Assessment suggested reactivity to chocolate and caffeine. Her monthly craving pattern – timed to hormonal fluctuation – was consistent with the kind of cyclical immune and nervous system sensitization that NAET addresses.
When we treated for chocolate, caffeine, and coffee, the underlying signal changed. The craving that had driven the behavior did not return.
Patient-Reported: The Craving Was Gone and She Hadn’t Noticed
The month following treatment, she reported no chocolate craving. The behavior change – not carrying M&Ms, not managing irritability – happened automatically.
She reported that she had simply carried out her daily responsibilities without giving it a second thought. The absence of the craving was so complete that she didn’t even register it until days after the relevant time window had passed.
No replacement behavior. No compensation. Just gone.
Cravings Are Sometimes the Nervous System Asking for Something It Can’t Properly Process
The nervous and immune systems regulate each other reciprocally – and that regulation operates through hormonal and neurochemical pathways that shift with the menstrual cycle. Research published in the Journal of Investigational Allergology and Clinical Immunology has documented that the immune system’s Th1/Th2 balance shifts in response to neuroendocrine changes.[1] Hormonal fluctuation is not separate from immune function. They communicate directly.
The bidirectional communication between the nervous system and immune cells – confirmed in Journal of Clinical Investigation research – means that signals the nervous system sends can shape how the body responds to common substances.[2] What presents as a craving may sometimes be a reactive signal in disguise.
Here is the question: how many behavioral patterns that people manage with willpower or workarounds have a sensitivity component that no one has ever examined?
Sometimes the Thing You’re Managing Isn’t as Fixed as You Think
She had managed this for years. Bought the M&Ms, kept them in her pocket, handled the irritability when she couldn’t get to chocolate fast enough. It had become part of how she operated.
Then it wasn’t part of how she operated anymore.
If you have a monthly, seasonal, or cyclical pattern of craving or irritability that you’ve been managing around – it may be worth asking whether the pattern has a sensitivity component underneath it.
For a patient whose food sensitivity was held for 18 years and was reversed – see Case 013.
— Dr. John Erickson, DC | Laser & Chiropractic Center of the Rockies | Loveland, Colorado
To learn more about NAET at Laser & Chiropractic Center of the Rockies, visit laserchirorockies.com or call 970-412-3212.
Individual results vary. This story is de-identified and shared with permission. It represents a reported patient experience and is not a guarantee of outcome. NAET is a complementary wellness approach and is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease or medical condition.
[1] Montoro, J. et al. “Stress and Allergy.” J Investig Allergol Clin Immunol. 2009;19 Suppl 1:40-47. PMID: 19476053.
[2] Veiga-Fernandes, H. & Artis, D. “Neuro-Immune Crosstalk and Allergic Inflammation.” J Clin Invest. 2019;129(4):1475-1482. PMC: PMC6436850. DOI: 10.1172/JCI124609