Since announcing that I will be doing more ask Inna episodes, I got a flood of emails with questions that you wanted answered on the coming shows. Again thank you for those, I love getting them so please keep them coming. I received several questions about food reactions.
One was from a woman named Sharon and she was asking
“Can you address food sensitivities? How and why do you get them, how best to handle them from a supplement perspective and what therapies should be used to correct the food sensitivity situation?”
Since this is such a big and important topic, I thought I would address the whole topic of food allergies, sensitivities and reactions in a solo Episode – Demystifying Food Sensitivities (and What You Can do About Them) where I answer these questions but also probably many many more you may have and want to know about food sensitivities including how you can find out if you have them and even more importantly what you can do to correct them and finally feel better.
As always, if you like to listen, you can listen on the website, itunes, stitcher and spotify and if you prefer to read, here is a detailed summary 🙂
Food Allergy vs. Food Sensitivity vs. Food Intolerance
Before we can get into how to resolve them, we first have to understand the difference between different types of reactions. These three terms often cause confusion because people are unclear of the differences.
A food allergy means that there is a specific protein in a food that is acting as an antigen that is generating an immunologic reaction. Food without a specific protein (like sugar for example) cannot cause a true food allergy.
However, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a reaction to it. Sometimes the body is unable to process certain foods properly. This could be caused by an immune dysfunction, build-up of toxins, or a deficiency in certain enzymes.
These reactions can cause symptoms but may not always cause these symptoms every time you eat the food. These are food sensitivities, not allergies because they can come and go depending on the environment. A second misuse of the term ‘food allergy’ is when people actually mean ‘food intolerance.’ A common example of this is lactose intolerance. In this case, the body is not having an immunological reaction to an antigen but rather it has an inability to produce the enzymes to properly digest the food.
So the biggest thing you want to remember here is that a food allergy is typically something someone is born with while food sensitivities and food intolerances can develop over time.
Symptoms of Food Reactions
Some of the most common reactions to food sensitivities include dermatological symptoms (rashes and dermatitis), gastrointestinal problems, loss of appetite, mal-absorption syndrome created by inflammatory bowel reactions to the offending protein, irritable bowel syndrome, colitis, ulcerations, autoimmune phenomenon (like arthritis, lupus, MS, autoimmune thyroiditis), neurological degeneration, migraines, anxiety, seizures, asthma and other respiratory disorders, as well as fatigue and obesity. A food reaction could involve one or several of these symptoms.
Testing for Food Sensitivities
It can be very frustrating trying to solve a health mystery caused by a food sensitivity because conventional testing which is either a skin prick or an immediate IgE antibody test doesn’t always reveal the true cause of an issue. Part of this is because we don’t put food under the skin and for the IgE blood test, it only looks at the immediate allergies and not the delayed sensitivities that are way way more common.
Furthermore, we have many pathways in which a food can react such as the IgG or the IgA pathway. leaning this, people often think then, ok let me get an IgG or IgA test.
It’s a great thought but the problem is that if you do a test that only tests for IgG, you will only get the foods reacting on the IgG pathway and if you only do a test that tests for IgA, you will then only get the foods that react on the IgA pathway.
The other big issue is that foods are complex and have many different proteins in them and as we eat and digest them, they break down to smaller complexes until eventually they should just be individual peptides. So if a food sensitivity test is only looking at the food as a whole, it can often miss all the different breakdown products of that food.
My go to test now is one from Vibrant Wellness. What is really neat about their test is that they look at both the IgG and IgA pathway and they take some of the biggest allergenic foods like gluten, dairy, corn, soy, eggs and nuts and test each food for the whole food plus all the breakdown products. So for each food, they are testing for over 25 different markers which gives a much much more accurate picture about the reaction to that food versus just testing the whole food on one pathway.
This has really revolutionized the way I look at food sensitivities. Cyrex is another lab that does a nice job with these though they don’t test for as many foods and tend to be about twice the price so that is why Vibrant is my go to.
Right now the test is only available to my patients however we are looking at ways that we can offer this test to my listeners and others that may want it though our website and I will keep you guys posted. You can also email us if you are interested in this test and we can see how we can help you get it done.
Causes of Food Sensitivities
- Lack of Variety – There are a lot of the same proteins in our food because of convenience and processed foods and we tend to develop delayed allergies to foods that we are overexposed to. For example, there is wheat, corn, soy and dairy in almost every packaged food. In addition, many of us do not have much variety in our diets. Seasonal availability used to help us with this but now all foods are pretty much available at all times of the year.
- Gut Biome Imbalance – Eating the same foods consistently can certainly be a big trigger but it’s not the only potential cause. The environment in our gut is another huge trigger. When we have dysbiosis (an overgrowth of bad bacteria, yeast & parasites in our gut) our microbiome becomes skewed. This microbiome imbalance will create inflammation which will then open up the spaces between the cells of our gut lining giving large proteins passage they should not have.
- Poor Digestion – Stress, nutrient deficiency, and toxicity can make it difficult for our body to break down and digest food. They can lower stomach acid, digestive enzyme output and bile which are all essential for proper breakdown of foods. If food are not broken down, bigger particles will stay in the intestines and when leaky gut is present they can seep through and an immune response is created.
All of this can result in large proteins getting into the bloodstream. The body responds by attacking these which then produces an antibody. That antibody continues to respond to the food being eaten and a sensitivity is developed.
Solving Food Sensitivity Issues
Since food reactions are created by the digestive environment, we have to look there first. Usually, I will investigate by doing a stool test. We work on eradicating the bad bugs like bactetria, yeast and parasites to bring the gut microbiome back into balance.
Next, I focus on digestion because even if we avoid the foods causing the sensitivity, if we don’t break down our foods properly, new food sensitivities will develop. I do this by supporting stomach acid, digestive enzymes and bile as needed.
I also focus on supporting the ‘good bugs’ in the gut by introducing probiotics. I typically recommend ones that are at least 25 billion organisms or more, otherwise it’s just too weak. I also recommend selecting something that has a combination of strains.
After the above we focus on the actual healing. Healing leaky gut can be a long process that can take several months to a year. However the good news is that most people start to feel better even before the healing has started so you don’t have to wait a year to see the results. However, you want to keep up with it because it does take a bit of time to make sure everything is properly healed.
While doing all of this, we also want to adjust the diet. We don’t want to renew the problem after we fix it. For diet, we want to make sure to watch over-consumption of specific foods, replace processed food with whole foods and make sure there is enough diverse fiber being consumed to diversify the microbiome.
Conclusion
Food sensitivities are very common and can often be overlooked. Now you know what to look for, how to test for them and what steps to take to overcome them. Remember, simply eliminating the food you suspect is the cause of the problem is not enough.