What your food sensitivities could mean

Sensitivities or other symptoms

Do you have food allergies or sensitivities that you’re aware of?

Do you suffer from a lack of self-tolerance (auto-immunity)?

Or do you have any of these symptoms?

• Dark circle or bags under your eyes

• Sinus congestion or post-nasal drip

• Bloating, puffiness, fluid retention

• IBS

• Frequent headaches, migraines or joint pain

• Brain fog and fatigue

• Eczema or skin rashes

• Asthma, wheezing

• Poor immunity ie you often get whatever is going around

If so, you could have a food sensitivity.

There are three kinds of antibody reactions to food that are commonly tested

1. Immunoglobulin E (IgE) – an allergic reaction that you can’t miss. It’s life threatening. Usually people don’t need to test for this

2. Immunoglobulin M (IgM) – found mainly in the blood and lymph fluid and produced immediately after an exposure

3. Immunoglobulin G (IgG) – found in all body fluids and representing a delayed response

Maybe you don’t think you have any problems with foods despite having some of the above symptoms? I hear this quite a bit.

But have you tried cutting out a food for at least two weeks before reintroducing it to gauge your reaction over the next 3 days? If not, you may not be aware that you have a sensitivity.

I had a client who thought she had no food issues. We did food sensitivity testing and found she was reacting to 24 foods, some quite badly. Cutting them out while she healed her body removed many of her debilitating symptoms and made her feel significantly better.

Another client gave up gluten during my sugar detox. When she added it back in, she reacted so strongly she couldn’t breathe properly.

So what’s the problem here?

The problem here is a loss of oral tolerance. 

Oral tolerance

Oral tolerance is the immune system’s way of tolerating acceptable foods while also dealing appropriately with bacteria or other harmful substances.

When you lose it, your immune system becomes too sensitive, no longer responding to foods in a normal way. 

This happens when you have low gut immunity due to poor diet and lifestyle, long-term stress, drugs and antibiotics, poor upper digestive function and environmental toxins like mould or chemicals. 

We get a bit technical here. Low gut immunity means low levels of secretory immunoglobulin antibodies or SIgA. Other immune cells called dendritic cells are forced to step in, which become over-vigilant. Hey presto, you now have food sensitivities.

There is a way out

Change your diet lifestyle, and heal your gut.

What do I mean by heal your gut?

I mean heal your gut leakiness or intestinal permeability. This is one of the key ways people develop food sensitivities.

Intestinal permeability is where the lining of your small and large intestines is damaged through compromised upper digestive function, poor diet, drugs and antibiotics, chronic stress and toxins as well as parasitic, viral and bacterial infections (called pathogens). Yep, the same root causes!

This allows foreign bodies, undigested foods and toxins to enter your bloodstream, which your adaptive immune system tags as hostile and inflames in response. The foods that are tagged are called sensitivities and may become allergies and/or develop into autoimmunity.

Over time, your immune system becomes exhausted, leading to low gut immunity or SIgA levels as mentioned above.

Low SIgA levels also make someone more vulnerable to pathogens like bacteria, yeast and parasites, so you can see the vicious cycle that’s being created here as these pathogens weaken gut immunity as well as create more leakiness and food sensitivities. 

Some people are also born with, or more often are triggered, to develop a sensitivity to an entire component of food like histamines, sulphur, oxalates, salicylates and more. These are another topic, but they can involve an immune reaction involving your gut to some extent, as well as compromised detoxification, in which your gut also plays a key role.

How can you improve your gut immunity and heal your gut? 

First and foremost, cut out the most common inflammatory foods like gliadin (gluten), dairy, soy, corn, vegetable oils and ALL forms of sugar aka refined carbs. Reduce stress, and the toxicity of your food and environment.

Then kill off any pathogens if necessary, build up a diversity of good bacteria (the greater the diversity, the better your health) and rebuild gut immunity.

For specific information on your gut immunity levels, pathogens, food sensitivities and other digestive health markers, stool and blood testing can give you a detailed picture.