Now let’s get into last week’s highlights. We got into the top functional medicine tests that I use in my practice, when and why I chose to use them. The short answer to that question is I chose testing when I think it will give us new information that helps my client reach their goals more efficiently. I never recommend testing “just because”. In fact there are many scenarios, where we decide together that the money spent on the cost of testing would be better spent on organic foods, supplements or another healing modality! That all being said, when testing is high quality and chosen well, it can make all the difference.
Food Sensitivities and Testing
Instead of getting into all of the tests today I decided to talk about a few pearls on food sensitivities and testing. First let’s clear the air and do a little myth busting…
Food Sensitivity vs. Food Allergy
Food sensitivity is not the same as food allergy. When most people think of food allergies, they usually get an image of someone eating a peanut and ending up in the emergency room with a swollen tongue, hives, or the inability to breathe. That’s what is called an immediate allergy (also known as an IgE hypersensitivity reaction) which turns on an aggressive histamine reaction. These are very serious but also quite rare.
Delayed Allergies and Their Impact
But there is a different type of food reaction that is much less dramatic and deadly. It is called a delayed allergy (or IgG delayed hypersensitivity). This reaction is much more common and creates much more suffering for millions of people. It is mostly ignored by conventional medicine. Nonetheless, IgG reactions play a HUGE role in many chronic illnesses and weight problems.
Symptoms of Delayed Allergic Reactions
Delayed allergic reactions can cause symptoms anywhere from a few hours to a few days after ingestion. They also cause a wide range of problems like weight gain and retention, acid reflux, fluid retention, fatigue, brain fog, irritable bowel syndrome, heart palpitations, mood problems, sleeping problems, headaches, sinus and nasal congestion, joint pains, acne, arthritis, eczema, and more. These are all sources of inflammation. Specific symptoms vary widely. The body becomes inflamed because the immune system recognizes protein in an otherwise healthy food as a foreign invader.
The Rise of Food Sensitivities
Both IgE allergies and IgG sensitivities are on the rise in our culture for many reasons. It is common to develop sensitivities to foods we eat all the time, and this over-consumption puts our body in warning mode. Most often, I find the delayed reactions occur because many of our twenty-first century habits lead to a breakdown of the normal barrier that protects our immune system from the outside world of foods, bugs, and toxins. That barrier is our gut. Of course it is, right?! I feel like you are all getting used to me talking about the gut by now.
The Gut Barrier and Immune Response
Over 60% of our immune system lies just underneath that gut-barrier. When the lining of your gut breaks down, food particles get underneath the barrier and trigger our immune system to recognize these foods as a foreign invader. (For this reason, many people develop IgG sensitivities to the very foods they eat most often.) This immune response sets off a chain reaction leading to inflammation throughout your body.
Causes of a Weakened Gut Barrier
Your gut barrier can be weakened by a nutrient-poor diet high in sugar and white flour and low in fiber, by nutritional deficiencies of zinc and omega-3 fats, by overuse of antibiotics, medications, and/or hormones, by exposure to environmental toxins, and by high levels of mental and emotional stress. This can cause outside environment “leaks” into your body that potentially lead to the development of allergies and systemic immune problems. This is called a leaky gut.
Common Food Irritants
While everyone is different, there are some foods that irritate the immune system more commonly than others. These are gluten (a protein in grains including wheat, barley, rye, spelt, triticale, and kamut), dairy (e.g. milk, cheese, butter, yogurt), corn, eggs, soy, nuts, citrus fruits, nightshade vegetables (e.g. tomatoes, bell peppers, potatoes, eggplant), and yeast (e.g. baker’s yeast, brewer’s yeast, wine, vinegar, fermented products). This does not mean that I am telling you to stop eating all these foods. I am sharing this to educate you on some steps you may choose to take for your unique health.
Testing for Food Sensitivities
While there are blood tests to help you identify IgG sensitivities, the gold-standard test (and the only way you will know for sure what foods are a problem for you) is to eliminate them fully (100%) from your diet for a short time (~4 weeks). To be effective, eliminations must be cold-turkey. Then reintroduce the food in quantity (two regular servings per day for three days in a row) and see what happens. If your immune system doesn’t like the food, you are going to notice! Pay careful attention to your entire body and feelings and thoughts. What changes? What can you learn about your unique sensitivities?
Common Symptoms of Food Sensitivity Reactions
Common symptoms of a food sensitivity reaction include headache, lethargy, stomach upset, achy joints, muscle pain, trouble sleeping, depression/anxiety, and skin breakout. But each of our bodies is unique!
The Value of Functional Medicine
In my practice, I find value in both food elimination trials, and in the right scenario, food sensitivity testing can also be very helpful. The important piece to consider is that usually, food sensitivities can be resolved by first identifying the food that is the problem, and in my opinion, even more importantly, then resolving the root cause as to what brought you to the point of having a food sensitivity. This second part usually includes gut-healing, but is unique to each person that I work with. And that my friends, is the magic of functional medicine health coaching!
Excerpted from The UltraSimple Diet by Mark Hyman M.D., Simon & Schuster, 2007 and The UltraMind Solution by Dr. Mark Hyman M.D., Simon & Schuster, 2009. Dr. Hyman is a pioneer, leader, and wildly successful functional medicine physician.
