Food Sensitivity

Food Sensitivity, The Real Truth

Food sensitivity or food intolerance is caused by an inability to digest food and occurs in the digestive tract and not the bloodstream, like a food allergy. Symptoms are “delayed onset”, where symptoms do not appear for hours or even days. Food sensitivities are not fixed and can come and go during one’s life. Strangely, people often crave foods to which they are sensitive. Some researchers suggest that our bodies can become addicted to chemical messengers, such as histamine or cortisol, which are secreted by immune cells in response to allergens in the body. The body may experience a soothing response from the presence of the chemical messengers, increasing the desire to eat more of that food.

Note that food sensitivities and allergies can change every year. Just because you’re diagnosed with food sensitivity or allergy one year does not mean it will hold for the rest of your life. This is why we encourage people to get tested at least once a year.

What Are The SYMPTOMS Of Food Sensitivity?

Food Allergy vs Food Sensitivity

Food Allergies and Intolerances

Food Allergy:

A food allergy is an exaggerated immune response triggered by eggs, peanuts, milk, or some other specific food. With a true food allergy, the IgE portion of the immune system is triggered. This is the IMMEDIATE reaction. A patient might eat strawberries and get an immediate rash on their face. The reaction is so fast that testing is not needed because it’s easy to determine the “culprit”.

Food Sensitivity / Intolerance:

Food intolerance or non-allergic food hypersensitivity is a term used widely for varied physiological responses associated with a particular food, or compound found in a range of foods.

Potential Causes of Food Sensitivity

Too much of one food

You can become sensitive to any food you eat too often. Many people eat a relatively small number of foods several times a day. For example, wheat, a common food sensitivity, is found in breakfast cereals, the bread used to make a sandwich at lunchtime, and the spaghetti eaten at dinnertime.

Leaky gut syndrome

The digestive tract plays a vital role in preventing illness and disease by providing an impenetrable barrier. When the lining of the gut is inflamed from a food sensitivity, small openings develop between the tightly woven cells making up the gut walls. This is called “leaky gut syndrome”. With leaky gut syndrome, partially digested dietary protein can cross the intestinal barrier into the bloodstream. These large protein molecules can cause an allergic response, producing symptoms directly in the intestines or throughout the body. Additionally, hundreds of yeast and bacteria are released from the gut into the bloodstream where they set up infection anywhere, including muscles, joints, bones, teeth roots, coronary arteries, or even the brain. The early introduction of solid foods to infants before six months of age contributes to leaky gut syndrome and subsequent food allergies and sensitivities.

Deficiency of Probiotics

One of the causes of leaky gut is an absence of probiotics or ‘friendly’ bacteria in the intestines. The friendly bacteria help maintain the health of the intestines by producing fuel for intestinal cells and killing bad bacteria. Parasitic infections, treatment with antibiotics and other toxic pharmaceuticals, stress, poor diet (sugar and flour), smoking, alcohol, excessive hygiene, candida overgrowth, and bottle-feeding your baby can disrupt the proper balance of friendly bacteria to bad bacteria.

Overworked immune system

Constant stress, exposure to air and water pollution, and pesticides and chemicals in our food puts a strain on our immune system, making it less able to respond appropriately to the antigens in food.

Genetics

Food allergies and intolerances seem to be hereditary. Research indicates that if both parents have allergies, their children have a sixty-seven percent chance of developing food allergies. When only one parent is allergic, the child has a 33% chance of developing food allergies. Specifically, a person may inherit a deficiency of an enzyme like lactase, the enzyme that digests dairy. With nightshade sensitivities, there are ten genetic variants for susceptibility, not all individuals are affected equally or at all. A similar case can be made for other food sensitivities. Genetic variations predict the severity of your sensitivity.

How Food Sensitivities Can Destroy Your Health…

INFLAMMATION is one of the biggest drivers of weight gain and disease in America. Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and high cholesterol are ALL inflammatory-based conditions. Food sensitivities cause systemic inflammation throughout the body, beginning in the gut. For example, in people with gluten sensitivity, the immune system attacks the intestinal cells to which gluten attaches, inflaming the gut. And, when the lining of the gut is inflamed, the body is prone to even more food sensitivities and reactions, and the problem spirals out of control. The other important thing to remember is your small intestine is where you absorb your nutrients. So if you’re sensitive to gluten, this destroys your small intestine leading to nutrient deficiencies. It’s the nutrient deficiencies that can lead to a whole host of symptoms and conditions.

The other problem is that most people eat foods they have become sensitive to several times a day. Every time that food enters the body, the immune system whips itself into a frenzy. However because symptoms are delayed up to 72 hours after eating, a food sensitivity can be hard to spot. Without diagnosis or awareness, the damage is repeated over and over, meal after meal. Eventually, inflammation seeps throughout the body, establishing an environment ripe for weight gain and chronic disease.