Are Food Sensitivities Sabotaging Your Health?

Are You Struggling with Food Sensitivities?

If you’re struggling with food sensitivities, you might identify with the following:

• You’re constantly experiencing digestive upset but don’t know why.
• You get headaches or joint pain that seem to pop up out of nowhere.
• You suffer from ongoing fatigue for no reason at all.
• You have a chronic health condition with an unknown cause.

You might be surprised to hear you may have a food sensitivity.

TYPES OF FOOD REACTIVITIES

Before we start getting into the nitty gritty, I’d like to highlight that there are actually 3 different types of food re-activities and these include:

1. Food Allergies
2. Food Intolerances
3. Food Sensitivities

Let’s go over each of these in more detail so you can get them straightened out in your mind. It’s super important you understand the difference between these, so let’s get to it…

1.) Food allergies

Food allergies are a life threatening situation that involves an immediate immune reaction after eating an offending food. These reactions can be fatal or just plain annoying –depending on the severity of your reaction.

You’ve probably heard of people having allergies to peanuts, eggs, or sesame seeds. They’re no fun! But they’re common examples of food allergies you may have seen before.

Symptoms of a food allergy can occur with in minutes of eating an offending food and can include symptoms like:

• tingling or itching in the mouth
• hives, itching, or eczema
• swelling of the lips, face, tongue, and throat
• wheezing
• nausea and vomiting

True food allergies involve IgE antibodies that can cause the release of inflammatory mediators in connective tissue, such as the lungs, skin, and lining of the GI tract.

This release of inflammatory mediators is what leads to the symptoms I just noted above.

2.) Food Intolerances

Food intolerances do not involve the immune system and may be enzymatic in nature.

Lactose intolerance is an example of a food intolerance you’ve probably heard of before.

When a person lacks the lactase enzyme present in their small intestine to break down the sugar lactose, the symptoms that result are gas and diarrhea. This is because their body lacked the enzyme that was needed to break down lactose into a smaller, more tolerable food particle.

Common symptoms of food intolerance include diarrhea, bloating, and gas as described above.

Unlike food allergies, food intolerances are not life threatening.

3.) Food sensitivities

Like food allergies, food sensitivities cause a reaction in your immune system BUT the reaction is delayed—also known as “delayed hypersensitivity” and it is NOT life threatening.

Food Sensitivity reactions come on gradually and may take 48 to 72 hours to experience any symptoms. These reactions can also be dose dependent, complicating matters even further.

Food sensitivities occur with ANY food or chemical. This means even healthy foods you eat such as spinach, salmon, or turmeric could be causing an unhealthy immune reaction in your body!

In addition, it’s common to see sensitivities to chemicals in foods such as:

• food dyes
• solanine (found in night shades)
• lecithin
• nitrates / nitrites
• sulfites / sulfates
• MSG
• salicylates
• tyramine
• and more..

The good news is that food sensitivities are NOT permanent. Once we heal your body’s immune system, the number of food sensitivities you experience will exponentially diminish.

The reason food sensitivities are so important is because they cause an inflammatory process in your body, cascading into various chronic health problems, including gut issues like diarrhea, constipation, stomach pain, bloating, gas, and reflux.

WHY SHOULD I CARE IF I HAVE FOOD SENSITIVITITIES?

Food sensitivities are more common than you think.

Up to 40% of people experience food sensitivities and it’s more common in women.

Food sensitivities follow inflammatory pathways that can lead to chronic health conditions like digestive issues (such as IBS and IBD, reflux or GERD), autoimmune conditions, fatigue, migraine headaches, chronic depression, uncontrolled asthma, and more.

Food and food chemical sensitivities remain one of the most under-addressed areas in conventional medicine; this means that your doctor may not be addressing the root-cause of your chronic health condition!

As a result, you’ll typically end up spending thousands of dollars on numerous trips to the doctor’s office, diagnostic testing, and an ever growing list of medications with no relief in sight because the root-cause of your health issue (food sensitivities) were simply ignored.

WHICH FOOD SENSITIVITY TEST IS BEST?

In my professional opinion, the most accurate method for food sensitivity testing out there is MRT, which stands for Mediator Release Test.

MRT is a blood test that measures the complete magnitude of your body’s inflammatory response to various foods. While most food sensitivity tests out there measure just “IgG” immune reactions, MRT measures ALL immune reactions including cytokines, prostaglandins, histamines, and much more.

Because we get a complete look at all inflammatory pathways your immune system is producing in response to foods, we get a more accurate and comprehensive food sensitivity test that yields results with 94.5% sensitivity.

Also, instead of just focusing on what foods are producing reactions, I actually help you design a diet around what foods aren’t producing reactions.

But you’re never stuck to just a small list of foods! As we work together, we build upon this food list as you go so you can gain clarity on what foods definitely ARE and AREN’T working for you.

See a more detailed explanation in this video:

Now that you know more about Food Sensitivities, let’s investigate if they could be the root-cause of your gut health problems.

IRRITABLE BOWEL SYNDROME (IBS)

IBS affects up to 45 million people in the United States with about 2 in 3 of those being women.

You probably know if you suffer from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) — with symptoms like abdominal pain, bloating, gas, constipation, distention, diarrhea, and cramping these symptoms are hard to ignore.

Did you know up to 80% of your immune system is located in the lining of your gut? Because of this, your gut is bombarded with countless substances that could stimulate an immune reaction right smack dab in the middle of your gut.

When the immune system in your gut reacts to foods and chemicals, various immune mediators are released including: cytokines, histamine, prostaglandins, and leukotrienes. The result? Digestive upset.

Many of my clients see a vast improvement in their digestive symptoms simply by removing reactive foods for a period of time to give their gut a chance to regenerate and repair itself.

After we remove these reactive foods for a period of 3-6 months, we retrial these same foods that were once causing issues. Up to 80% of once-reactive foods are able to be tolerated again. This is true healing!

OTHER CONDITIONS ASSOCIATED WITH FOOD SENSITIVITY

While I mostly work with clients who have a diagnosis of IBS or GERD, there other health diagnoses that benefit from MRT testing, including:

• Celiac Disease
• Unexplained Asthma
• PCOS
• Eczema & skin eruptions
• Interstitial Cystitis
• Sinusitis
• ADHD
• Chronic Depression
• Autoimmune Conditions

The good news: I can help you chart a path to wellness.

It doesn’t have to be a blind guessing game, eliminating foods at whim, hoping you’ll figure out which foods are causing your symptoms.

Remember: you can be sensitive to any food, including things we deem healthy and anti-inflammatory like turmeric or even ubiquitous foods like tomatoes or garlic!

Imagine if you ate those foods every single day, not knowing they were actually the root-cause of your health issues!

If you want to find out the root-cause of your inflammatory condition, then you can get started by scheduling a complimentary consult with me and get started on your path to healing.

---