Do you experience symptoms like sinus pressure, rashed and GI discomfort and are unsure which foods might be triggering them?
Identifying food sensitivities can be challenging. Fortunately, food sensitivity testing offers a clear path to understanding which foods could be causing your discomfort. Take the guesswork out of managing your health with precise insights from food sensitivity testing.
What Are Food Sensitivities?
Food sensitivities are a reaction by the immune system to foods that it views as “invaders.” This causes the body to make antibodies to a particular food or multiple foods.
Food sensitivities are different from food allergies that invoke a much more serious and often life-threatening response in the body. Food sensitivities are an indication of intestinal permeability (more on this below) and are not life-threatening.
Symptoms of Food Sensitivities
It can be quite challenging to pinpoint which foods are causing the immune reaction as the signs and symptoms can take place within an hour of eating up to 3-4 days later. This makes it difficult to determine whether it was the gluten you ate at lunch on Tuesday, the egg you ate for breakfast on Wednesday or the almonds in the salad you ate on Thursday’s dinner that are causing the sinus pressure, rashes and bloating you experience on Friday. Food sensitivity testing can help take the guesswork out of determining which foods are causing your body distress.
Digestive signs and symptoms most commonly associated with food sensitivities:
Bloating
Diarrhea or constipation
Gas
Heartburn
Nausea
Less common signs and symptoms — that are just as uncomfortable — include:
Acne
Dry hair, skin or nails
Fatigue
Brain fog
Hive
Insomnia
Joint aches
Rashes
Sinus pressure
Sneezing
What is Intestinal Permeability?
Think of your digestive tract as a hollow tube from your mouth through your anus. The small intestine – where the majority of digested nutrients are transferred to your blood to be used for fuel for your body – is just one cell layer thick.
When your body is functioning optimally, the transfer of nutrients is highly regulated so that only properly broken-down food is allowed to cross that one-cell barrier. When the integrity of these cells is compromised, it’s called intestinal permeability or “leaky gut.” This means that toxins, bacteria and undigested food
particles are allowed across that one-cell thick barrier and interact directly with your immune system. This is not ideal and can cause antibodies to form against certain foods. The result: whenever you eat that food (s) your body reacts with undesirable and uncomfortable symptoms like:
Bloating & gas
Heartburn
Diarrhea or constipation
Fatigue
Brain fog
Rashes
Joint pain
Furthermore, toxins and bacteria can cause their own set of problems in the body – compounding disease and symptoms that impact your quality of life.
Can Nutritional Support Help?
Yes! Determining which foods are causing an immune response is the first step to healing the leaky gut. Then temporarily eliminating them from your diet allows healing to begin. But healing is more than simply eliminating offending foods.
Digestion is a complex process. It involves nine organs in your body. It starts in your mouth and ends in the anus. In addition to your small intestine, it includes your esophagus, stomach, large intestines, gall bladder, liver, and pancreas. Propper digestion – and elimination – take dietary and lifestyle support for each of these organs to ensure they are working together synergistically.
Following a review of your health history, food log and symptoms timeline, we’ll work together to develop a customized protocol that addresses these five areas:
1. Temporary elimination of all the foods causing a significant immune reaction
2. Evaluation of digestive enzymes and potential temporary supplementation
3. Reinoculating the gut flora with probiotic foods and/or supplementation
4. Repairing the gut lining (that one-cell thick protective barrier) with specific foods, herbs and perhaps supplementation
5. Lifestyle assessment to ensure stress, sleep and balanced movement throughout the day are all optimized.
If you’ve been experiencing a number of these symptoms and don’t know why, food sensitivity testing can help.
To get started, book a free 30-minute nutritional consultation with me and we’ll put together a game plan to resolve those uncomfortable symptoms and restore your gut to good health.
