Episode 139: Are Food Sensitivities Forever?
Food sensitivities are often doubted because the reactions are not as severe as food allergies. However, there are serious consequences in eating food that you are sensitive to!
Food sensitivities are no laughing matter and can be harmful to your health. Join me in Episode 139 as I provide important information about food intolerance, certain foods I’m personally intolerant of, and solutions you can start implementing to address them.
Do you have a type of food that you are sensitive to, or do you know someone who has it? Be sure to listen to this episode, take notes, and share.
Episode Highlights:
How food sensitivities are often doubted at
Serious consequences of food intolerances
Food allergies vs. food sensitivities: Know the difference
Different types of responses to food sensitivities
Food intolerance and Leaky Gut Syndrome
Signs, symptoms, and remedies for food sensitivities
How the elimination diet can help
Food intolerances are the real deal! If food can serve as medicine, it can also be poison if your body has a negative reaction to it. Take care of yourself!
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
CONNECT WITH NAOMI:
SHARE THE EPISODE:
“Food sensitivities and intolerances are very much real, and can be harmful to our health, like a food allergy, but not in the same way. Food sensitivities can be linked to Leaky Gut Syndrome.”
Read the Episode Transcript:
Hi there and welcome back to The Live FAB Life Podcast! If this is your first time listening in, I’m your host Naomi Nakamura.
For the past several episodes, we’ve been talking about burnout and adrenal fatigue, and one of the many ways to recover from adrenal fatigue is with food.
Of course, whenever we’re on a healing journey and trying to improve our health, it’s so critical to stop eating processed foods, junk food, and especially sugar.
Blood sugar stabilization is critical to adrenal recovery, which is why one of my coaching programs is the 21-Day Sugar Detox. It’s one of the first steps you can take on your healing journey, whether it be for adrenal fatigue, burnout, or really, anything.
While the 21DSD helps you reign in your sugar addiction, it can also serve as an elimination diet to help you identify food sensitivities, which is what we’re talking about today.
Food allergies are very different from food sensitivities or intolerances.
I think the common thinking is that they’re the same, and when someone says that they have a sensitivity or intolerance to a certain food, they’re not believed because the reaction may not be as severe as an allergy.
I experienced this when I gave up gluten.
To be completely honest, I initially gave it up hoping that it would help me lose, in hindsight, weight that I didn’t need to lose back then. I wasn’t as strict about avoiding it - I did most of the time but not always.
This back and forth helped me realize that my body indeed had a response to when I ate gluten as opposed to when I didn’t.
With dairy, it was the opposite - I definitely knew I was lactose intolerant, but still ate it anyway because duh - cheese and ice cream - and I would knowingly suffer the consequences.
As others came to learn this, I was doubted and quite frankly scoffed at because I didn’t technically have an allergy to these foods that I decided to stop eating. The fact that I did have a food sensitivity reaction to them was minimized and so today I want to validate with you that food sensitivities are in fact the real deal and while they aren’t the same thing as a food allergy, they do elicit a response from your immune system and if not avoided, can have serious consequences.
So let’s start off by defining the two, shall we?
I’m going to quote an excerpt from my studies with the Functional Nutrition Alliance that defines each of these two things:
“A food allergy can be mounted by many different factors in the body. The word allergy is derived from two Greek words meaning “altered reaction.” In a person with allergies, otherwise known as an atopic individual, there is an overproduction of the IgE antibodies in reaction to any one thing. This thing might be something that is otherwise innocuous to another individual — someone considered a nonatopic person. The result is some sort of anaphylaxis.
Food sensitivities or intolerances are the results of an overproduction of the IgG antibodies. The results are more subtle, if not more insidious. In many cases, food sensitivities or intolerances can be linked to a leaky gut.”
So, both food allergies and food sensitivities are the results of a response from the Immune system. No, they’re not the same response, but who said that there was only one type of response from the Immune system?
So yes, food sensitivities and intolerances are very much real, and can be harmful to our health, like a food allergy, but not in the same way.
Now I did mention that food sensitivities can be linked to leaky gut. I have an upcoming episode planned on Leaky Gut Syndrome, but I also talked about it in several past episodes. If you don’t want to wait for my upcoming episode and want to learn more about leaky gut now, be sure to listen to Episode 007.
So how do you know if you have a sensitivity or intolerance?
I mean with a food allergy, a reaction is pretty obvious - rashes, hives, swelling. These happen immediately. We all know the danger of what happens if someone with a peanut allergy eats peanuts - it can be life-threatening!
But if there isn’t an anaphylaxis reaction when someone eats foods they’re sensitive to or intolerant of, how do you know if you are indeed reacting to the food?
Well, like the definition states, the results and reactions are more subtle.
Signs and symptoms of a food sensitivity or food intolerance are: Headaches Gas and bloating Abnormal bowel movements Fatigue Brain fog Skin reactions - breakouts, rashes, eczema, etc Heartburn Abdominal pain Joint pain Weight gain Anxiety and depression
And more - this is not an exhaustive list.
And this is why you hear it so often said that food is medicine. Because if any of these signs and symptoms are being caused by eating a food that you’re sensitive to or intolerant of, you can address it by simply stop eating that food.
It’s also how food can equally be poison, as much as it is medicine. If you keep eating something that’s causing a negative reaction, it’s going to cause bigger problems.
So if you have a food sensitivity or intolerance, does it last forever?
I get asked this question a lot, and I’ve also spoken with a lot of people, who do have chronic conditions, who are aware that there are certain foods that they can’t tolerate and assume that these are foods that they have to avoid forever.
And this is not the case my friend.
First of all, how do you know if you have a food sensitivity or intolerance?
Well, there are lab tests where with a simple blood draw, can give you a list of what kind of reaction your immune system has with different foods. I’ve had this done and have been able to get pretty specific with foods that I react to.
But this is a specialty lab test which means that most insurance companies do not cover it, and like most specialty lab work, it’s pricey.
Another way of identifying food sensitivities and intolerances is with an elimination diet. I’ve talked about elimination diets way back in Episode 009.
But if you’re not familiar with an elimination diet, it's where you remove certain foods from your diet for a set time, I like to use 3-4 weeks, and then slowly and methodically reintroduce foods ONE BY ONE to see what kind of reaction you get.
Depending on your individual situation, you may want to get very specific in identifying what foods you’re reacting to, which in that case, the reintroduction period of your elimination diet can be very long and exhaustive.
Or, you might want to consider a simple elimination diet, testing to see if you react to gluten, dairy, grains, corn, soy, etc - the main foods that many are reactive to. These are the foods we remove on the 21-Day Sugar Detox (depending on which level of the program you select to do), which is why I said at the beginning of this episode that the 21DSD can be a first step in not only using food as a treatment on your self-healing journey but can also be a diagnostic tool in helping you identify food reactions.
Most people don’t bother to do the reintroduction phase of the 21-Day Sugar Detox or even other protocols like Whole 30, which in my opinion, really misses out on a powerful aspect of the program.
Another point I want to make is that because the reintroduction period is very methodical, you might want to work with a health coach like me to help guide you through it.
While it is the less costly version to identify food reactions, it is more time and labor-intensive, but you can gather a lot of information from the experience.
So getting back to my question - are food sensitivities forever?
We know food allergies can be, but food sensitivities? They don’t have to be forever.
A food sensitivity can be an indication of poor gut health. That something is not quite right in your digestive system. Perhaps, something like Leaky Gut Syndrome.
So if you spend some time focused on gut healing, and this is one of the core topics of this show, then perhaps you can overcome food sensitivities through the gut healing process.
I have.
An example I’ve often shared is my own experience with nightshades. For a long time, I could not tolerate eating eggplants, peppers, and especially tomatoes. These are all nightshades, and nightshades are a common food that many people can’t tolerate.
I had to avoid them for a long time because they upset my stomach, gave me headaches, and increased my heart rate (side note: one way to tell if you’re reacting to a food is to measure your pulse before you eat, while you’re eating and then after you eat. And if your pulse goes up while you’re eating, it might be a food reaction. I don’t recommend this as a viable measure because it's way too complicated and challenging - it's just not practical. But I digress….)
Through multiple elimination diets, which were then confirmed by lab tests, I was indeed reactive to nightshades.
But I worked really hard and focused on gut healing through food and lifestyle changes, and now I’m able to enjoy nightshades without any trouble.
I don’t eat too much of it, at least not in one setting - better to be safe than sorry right? But I’m so happy that I can now enjoy a meal with marinara sauce, tomatoes in my salad, peppers in a stir-fry.
Gut healing isn’t easy, and it doesn’t look the same for everyone. It requires work, and a willingness to try new things, and a commitment to change.
But no one ever regrets doing it because gut health is the foundation for all health. I mean all of those symptoms of food sensitivities I listed? They’re common, but NOT normal symptoms. And healing your gut can alleviate those symptoms, along with a lot of other conditions and illnesses.
This is why it IS the foundation for all health and when put forth the effort and focus to heal your gut, you WILL feel better.
So yes, food sensitivities do not have to be forever.
If you’d like to get started on your own self-healing journey, an elimination diet, don’t forget, I am offering Food Journal Audits.
Head on over to my website at www.livefablife.com/foodjournalaudits - one word to get started.
And if you’d like to check out my 21-Day Sugar Detox, or individual coaching services, head on over to www.livefablife.com/services.
Food sensitivities and intolerances are a big contributor to adrenal fatigue and taking care to address them is just one part of the adrenal recovery process.
That’s it for this week! As always, thanks for being here, and if you have a question related to this episode, or any of the other topics we can talk about here on the show, head over to my website to ask a question, or pop on over to my Instagram at @livefablifewithnaomi
See you next week - bye!
Naomi Nakamura is a Functional Nutrition Health Coach. She helps passionate, ambitious high-achievers who are being dragged down by fatigue, burnout, sugar cravings, poor sleep, unexplained weight issues, and hormonal challenges optimize health, find balance, and upgrade their energy so they can do big things in this world.
Through her weekly show, The Live FAB Live Podcast, programs, coaching, and services, she teaches women how to optimize their diet, support their gut health, reduce their toxic load, and improve their productivity, bringing work + wellness together.
Naomi resides in the San Francisco Bay Area and can often be found exploring the area with her puppy girl, Coco Pop!
Connect with Naomi on: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
| Pinterest
