Food Sensitivities and Intolerances

Food Sensitivities are on the rise but are not necessarily normal. Removing entire classes of foods, such as gluten, dairy, FODMAPS, legumes, and nightshades, dramatically reduces the diversity in our microbiome with negative health consequences.

Most people eat the same 20 foods at most; such a narrow diet diminishes the variety of good bacteria/bugs in our system. When you throw leaky gut into the mix, the body starts having immune reactions to normal foods.

The solution is diversity, abundance, and fiber, but it must be done slowly!

• At first you might get bloating or some other gut reaction just because your system is not used to it. You have selectively fed certain bacteria to the exclusion of others.

• Don’t be discouraged by that, just wait for things to calm down. Continue to go slow and introduce new foods in small amounts.

Food Intolerances. With food intolerances, if you are constantly triggering your immune system by eating those foods that your body is currently intolerant of, it will become hyper sensitive. The body gets confused because of the mixed messages and perceives normal foods as biological threats, releasing antibodies to counteract the threats.

• Food intolerances are often dose dependent and within hours present uncomfortable symptoms in your digestive system. Food allergies, on the other hand, are immediate and present symptoms often outside your digestion system.

Food intolerances are early indicators that your immune system is impaired. You can think of food intolerances as the canary in the coal mine; the answer is not to just avoid those foods. Your body is telling you that your immune system is dysfunctional.

• The key is to work with a practitioner to figure out what is causing the reaction and once the trigger is removed, slowly start to heal the digestive system. Eat your safe foods for a while before reintroducing one of your triggering foods very slowly and in very small amounts until your body no longer reacts.

**Content provided for educational and informational purposes only. It is derived from the Gut-Immune Solution health webinar series. It is not to be considered medical advice.**