Food allergies and intolerances/sensitivies

Do you suspect that certain foods don’t agree with you?
Do you think you might have a food allergy or intolerance?

There’s a lot of confusion around this subject.  Both food allergy and intolerance are where your body’s immune system reacts inappropriately to a food, or more specifically a protein in food.  Even food contains proteins to varying degrees.  Instead of tolerating the food as something harmless, it mounts an immune “attack”, generating antibodies to the food in the process. 

But there’s a big difference between and allergy and an food sensitivity.  

Food allergies are easy to identify.  Within 2 hours of eating the food you’ve got a noticeable reaction.  Most often a rash or your throat or lips swelling up.  Allergies can be severe and life-threatening.  They are easily identified by hospital tests.  Typical tests are where the skin  on your back is pricked numerous times and a single test food is applied to each puncture to see if it reacts.    IgE blood tests can also identify allergies.  Allergies  are to do with a type of antibody called IgE. 

What makes food intolerances or sensitivities different and harder to identify is that symptoms can be triggered from several minutes to 48 hours after exposure to the food.  Food sensitivities are where IgG or IgA antibodies are triggered.     

It is quite common for people to react badly to certain foods not because they have in intolerance but simply because their digestive system is not working efficiently. However, having an under-functioning digestive system can cause food intolerances (see below).  

There is another class of intolerance that’s to do with purely faulty digestion.  For example lactose intolerance.  Lactose is a natural sugar found in milk.  If your small intestine is damaged or lacking friendly bacteria called lactobacillus then it can’t produce enough digestive enzymes to break down lactose.  If you have IBS then you probably have bacteria/yeast overgrowth in your small intestine which then causes lactose intolerance.  Lactose intolerance is usually developed over time and is usually totally fixable by supporting your digestion and gut healing.   People of East Asian, West African, Arab, Jewish, Greek, and Italian descent are most likely to be genetically (lifelong) lactose-intolerant.  

Common causes of faulty digestion include:

• Not chewing your food – your stomach has no teeth and so will not be able to cope with large chunks of hard-to-digest food (eg meat, fish, eggs, cheese, beans)
• Inadequate production of stomach acid – this can lead to bloating and reflux, especially when a protein containing food is eaten because protein cannot be digested properly without the acid. Pain, bloating, acid reflux, constipation or diarrhoea can all result from this.  Nutritional intervention and one-on-one self-regulation coaching is a game-changer here.  
• Poor gallbladder function/pancreatic insufficiency – this is where not enough digestive juices (enzymes, bile salts) are pumped into the intestine to continue the digestive process. This can also cause symptoms. Typical symptoms might include pale or floating stools or discomfort after eating fatty foods. If you don’t make enough stomach acid, then the flow of pancreatic juices from the gallbladder will not be triggered.  You’ll have problems further down your digestive system.  
• Dysbiosis – if you suffer from inadequate levels of good bacteria in the gut and overgrowth of pathogenic (“bad”) bacteria or yeasts (eg. candida albicans) then food intolerances can result. This is because pathogenic species produce irritating by-products that damage your gut wall. This causes leakage.  It allows undigested matter to pass from your small intestine into the blood stream. There the immune system mounts an attack on the “foreign” matter. Only fully-digested food should be permitted to pass from the gut into your blood. If your symptoms are worse after eating refined foods, sugar or alcohol or if these are regularly in your diet, you could be dealing with dysbiosis.