Food Sensetivities - Do They Exist?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve probably been exposed a time or two in some conversations of people sharing their food restrictions, preferences or food lifestyle changes. Things like gluten free, what's the difference between being vegan or a vegetarian, being lactose-free, a carnivore style diet, pescetarian, mediterranean diet, I could go on. 

And before you roll your eyes to the relative that will be coming into town this holiday season who claims “she can only have gluten-free options,” it’s time I share with you more about this hot topic!

Food sensitivities are a big deal right now, or have been for a while. And a lot of people were thinking that the whole gluten and dairy-free thing was just a fad and that it would go away. But, I knew it wouldn't because I started to do my own research as I kept hearing more and more of my colleagues in my field talk about. To be quite honest, it's not necessarily the gluten (or said food choice) itself. It's what is put into the gluten, flour or dairy product when it's being processed to make, (said food) is the root of the problem.

So when you hear gluten, you need to think of wheat, barley and rye. Those three things are considered gluten. There are other flours out there like tapioca, almond, arrowroot, etc. However, they are not considered in the same category as wheat, barley or rye. So those are the types of flours you would eat if you are gluten-free. Something that I am going to dabble in soon is buying flour from a store that was made in Italy. And then I'm going to make bread and other items I would normally use my US store bought flour for. In Italy and other parts of the world, they process the flour differently which results in the different affects your body has to foods you think you’re sensitive to. They still use ancient forms of flour, basically, with little or no intervention. So a lot of people who have gluten sensitivities in America could potentially eat the differently processed flour from other countries and have little to no problems.

Now, this is not to be confused with somebody that's celiac. When you are Celiac, you legit have a gluten allergy. But if you have a gluten sensitivity or intolerance, you can potentially try this more healthier form of wheat flour and see if you respond or not, or react or not. 

So let's jump into it now and give you all the goods on why I'm obsessed with food sensitivity testing and how I think it can be a major game changer in improving your health and wellness!

Food sensitivity testing is good just to have a baseline of potentially knowing what foods you are sensitive to. So, if you have a lot of tummy/gut issues, have been diagnosed with IBS, SIBO,leaky gut or any of those things, if you have not done a food sensitivity test, you’re really missing out on making some serious progress towards feeling better. So for instance, anything that you are more sensitive to that you're eating is going to cause inflammation. Inflammation is going to further damage your gut lining and create more pain. You can see how this could become a vicious cycle.

Figuring out what your sensitivities are, is the first step in finally taking charge of your health and starting to narrow down that cleaner lifestyle. 

A great example I like to give is lets say your body is sensitive to broccoli. We all know that broccoli is a healthy food. But that doesn't mean that YOUR body wants that or needs it. Some people do better with vegan diets and they don't respond well to meat. Some people need meat and they don't respond to legumes (this is me). Everybody's created different, no one person can respond to the same diet because we’re all made differently. So I think that's really important to keep this in mind. NOT ALL FOODS ARE CREATED EQUAL FOR OUR BODIES. 

Another thing I want you to take into consideration is that we are exposed to more toxins today than we ever have been in the world or in generations past up until this point. We have more environmental toxins, which then can decrease or play a role in decreasing our gut microbiome. The less diverse our microbiome is, the more problems we are going to have. We want a diverse microbiome, so we can fight off different pathogens and illnesses. Absorbing nutrients helps us stay healthy and fight the bad guys. But the less diverse our microbiome is, the less we're going to be able to absorb nutrients. Absorbing those nutrients for good and being able to use them as fuel or energy in our body is the goal. This all kind of goes hand in hand with each other.

So let's say you took a food sensitivity test and found out you have a gluten sensitivity. It's not necessarily that you can't eat gluten for the rest of your life and you have to pretend like your Celiac. That's not the case at all. Basically what we do is take out the foods that ranked the highest as far as being sensitive, out of your diet for a couple months. Then we slowly add in one food back at a time over three day periods and see how your GI tract responds. Do you sneeze? Have sinus issues upon eating? Do you start getting phlegm-y or coughing? Do you have bloating, heartburn, nausea, any of that stuff? Or does it change your stools, eating these things?

We have to look at it over that three day period, because that's on average, how long it takes that piece of food to enter your mouth, to get out the other end. So adding back food slowly like that, once we have taken those sensitivities out after two months. And then saying, "Okay, I can eat this." 

This test is perfect for kids too. I see so many kids have food sensitivities these days. You might only get the allergy testing done. But then it's all negative and you're like, "Well, what the heck? I can tell my kid doesn't respond well to these foods." This happens because it's checking a different immunoglobulin, the allergy immunoglobulin (IgE) versus that sensitive immunoglobulin (IgG). It's checking for a sensitivity versus an allergy. They're going to show up differently. If you did an allergy test, your sensitivity to that food is not probably going to show up on a specific allergy test. And that's where people get really confused. With these tests, it can test up to 184 foods. So you're getting a lot of different food groups in there and a variety of foods that it checks for sensitivities to.

I hope this article cleared up some myths and ideas about food sensitivities and maybe even has you sitting here wondering if maybe that caramel macchiato you have every morning may be the cause of a recent face breakout or bloating that we can find the answers to! 

Email me at @drkellinelson@gmail.com or find me on social to book your food sensitivity package.