Elimination Diet Vs Allergy Testing – If you suddenly develop an allergy to certain types of food, or feel a little less like yourself after meals, you may have a food sensitivity. A food sensitivity is a low-level reaction to certain types of foods that cause an inflammatory response in your body.
Over time, these foods can damage your gut and misregulate your immune system, opening the door to a host of health problems. Food sensitivities are one of the first factors I address with my patients, so in this article I’ll cover 7 ways to reduce food sensitivities in your body.
Elimination Diet Vs Allergy Testing
You may be familiar with the idea of a food allergy. This is when someone has a clear and distinct negative reaction to a particular food. We all know someone who is allergic to, say, peanuts or dairy.
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However, a food sensitivity is an inflammatory reaction that can happen on a systemic level over time without you even knowing it. If left untreated, the allergy can eventually become full-blown, due to leaky gut and possibly autoimmunity. One of the most important things we can do is improve our digestive system to reduce food sensitivities.
A food sensitivity is a mild inflammatory reaction to a food. Usually, the longer you consume a food that you are sensitive to, the more you start to experience symptoms. Common symptoms of food sensitivities include:
If you experience any of these symptoms on a regular basis, you probably want to take steps to eliminate reactive foods and strengthen your body’s resilience to sensitivities.
There are currently three main explanations for negative reactions in the body to specific types of food. These reactions are classified as IgE, non-IgE, or IgG mediated. “Ig” in these abbreviations stands for “Immunoglobulin”. Immunoglobulins are important regulatory proteins that regulate inflammatory responses in the immune system by strategically targeting the immune system to specific targets, such as viruses and foreign bacteria.
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In a classic allergic reaction, where ingestion of a particular food, such as peanuts, can lead to a life-threatening reaction, you are looking at an IgE-mediated process. Non-IgE-mediated reactions are usually isolated to the gut and cause damage to the GI tract, gas/bloating and possibly diarrhea. Non-IgE-mediated responses are thought to be strongly influenced by gut bacterial composition (1).
Finally, there are IgG-mediated reactions that are believed to be the main culprits in the development of food sensitivities. Continuous exposure to foods that can cause an IgG-mediated reaction is thought to cause systemic problems in the body over time, often leading to a full-blown allergy if left untreated.
The steps in this article are intended to help prevent this progression and strengthen your body’s defenses against these unwanted reactions to foods and reduce food sensitivities.
The first step in reducing food sensitivities is to eliminate common inflammatory foods from your diet. How reactive you are to certain foods is determined by the health of your gut. By eliminating common reactive foods for a period of time, you reduce the burden on the gut and allow time for healing.
Food Allergy Vs. Food Sensitivity
You definitely want to make sure you eliminate at least the above foods from your diet. If you want to take it a step further, I recommend following an elimination diet program.
An elimination diet follows the initial principle outlined above by removing common reactive foods from the diet for a period of time. However, the next step is to reintroduce these foods one at a time to identify exactly which ones you react to.
If you have a food sensitivity, your body will create a stress response when you consume it. This will activate the sympathetic nervous system and increase the heart rate. By reintroducing foods into your diet and taking a pulse test, you can identify your unique food sensitivities for free!
If you want to build your resilience to food sensitivities, you need to protect your stomach acid. One of the big reasons you might have a reaction to a food is because you have a damaged and leaky gut. When you have leaky gut, undigested food particles enter your system. Once there, the immune system treats it as a foreign invader.
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These larger molecules are stored in your immune system’s memory and whenever you eat that food in the future, you have an inflammatory response and often someone can develop new food allergies (2).
Unfortunately, the relationship between stomach acid and food sensitivities is actually a downward spiral. This is because inflammatory foods inhibit the production of stomach acid over time and low stomach acid inhibits the ability to fully break down these foods. The result is continuous damage, inhibiting digestive processes and releasing undigested food particles into the bloodstream.
In addition to the steps mentioned earlier, you may benefit from using additional stomach acid support. This will help you fully digest your food while relieving stress on your digestive tract, helping it rebuild.
In the meantime, you’ll want to protect your stomach’s intrinsic acid formation by following the steps outlined below.
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If you haven’t noticed by now, gut healing has to do with removing as many stressors as possible. Eliminating reactive foods and taking steps to support proper digestion is key here. In addition to supporting stomach acid production, supplementing with a high-quality digestive enzyme complex can be especially helpful in breaking down various foods.
As a result, one of the common symptoms of low enzyme production is increased food sensitivities. In addition, your immune system, detoxification, and many other body systems rely on enzymes to perform normal functions. Getting a wide range of enzymes into your body every day will help restore these processes.
SuperDZyme is my personally developed enzyme complex that I use for this purpose. For gut support, I would recommend taking 2-4 capsules with each solid food meal. Enzymes are also great for ongoing digestive support for daily wellness and are something I use daily for the benefits detailed below.
Damage to the gut from inflammatory foods eventually leads to leaky gut. As I mentioned earlier, this allows large food molecules to enter the bloodstream, diverting the immune system from the actual pathogenic threats.
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This means that much of the inflammation caused by food sensitivities is due to irrational immune responses. With that in mind, one of the best ways to increase your resilience to food sensitivities is to take steps to strengthen and coordinate your immune system.
The main nutrients I found for this are: Quercetin, Curcumin, Zinc Glycinate, L-Glutamine, Ginger and Pea Protein.
You can purchase these components individually; however, I have formulated a gut healing protein blend that contains all of these nutrients specifically designed to restore gut health and enhance the body’s detoxification systems, while also serving as a powerful source of nutrition.
As an additional strategy, colostrum is a powerful immune support for the gut. Colostrum is a compound found in high concentrations in the breast milk of most mammals. It contains important immunoglobulins that help balance gut flora, reduce GI inflammation, and heal the gut lining. For a concentrated source of gut-healing immunoglobulins, I recommend Gut Defense. This product will improve the intestinal immune system and reduce food sensitivities.
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If you have imbalanced gut flora or harmful pathogens in your gut, it will be difficult to reduce food sensitivities. When pathogens are in your gut, you will have constant inflammation and distraction from your immune system.
The strategy I recommend for this is to use mild antimicrobial compounds daily to balance and maintain the microbiome in your GI tract. Others include: garlic, onion, fermented foods, Italian herbs (oregano, thyme, rosemary), lemon and lime juice, and apple cider vinegar. Essential oils like oregano can also be very powerful for this.
Alternatively, you can supplement regularly with an antimicrobial supplement such as GI Clear. This formula is a gentle and simple way to help balance your gut flora every day and reduce food sensitivities.
There has been some interesting research showing that your gut microbiome can strengthen or protect you from food sensitivities (3, 4). This makes sense because gut microbes interact with every bite of food you eat.
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Antibiotic use, exposure to harmful chemicals, processed foods, spending too much time in a sterile environment, and being formula-fed as an infant can also alter the microbiome in ways that increase the likelihood of suffering. food allergies
The presence of specific bacterial strains in the gut, such as: Lactobacilli, Saccharomyces boulardii, Bacillus coagulans and L. acidophilus have been shown to play a role in reducing food sensitivity and restoring a healthy gut microbial environment (5, 6). . Who
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