There are some important distinctions between food sensitivities, allergies and intolerances.įood Allergies - These are what we think about when we think about “true food allergies”. What’s the difference between a food sensitivity, a food allergy and a food intolerance? Inflammatory Bowel Disease - like Crohn’s or Ulcerative Colitis The following symptoms, conditions and illnesses may be related to hidden food sensitivities and benefit from food eliminations. Bottom line: work with an experienced practitioner to individualize your nutrition, help you create a comprehensive wellness program and monitor symptoms that may be ‘red flags’. Sometimes you sit on a whole chair of tacks! Food sensitivities may be one reason for your diarrhea, but it might not be the only cause. For example, if you sit on a tack we want to take the tack out to help you feel less pain. Sometimes there’s one root cause and sometimes there are several reasons why you are experiencing discomfort. In functional medicine we’re always looking to identify why you are experiencing certain symptoms. The difference in chemical messengers and where they act in the body is what determines which symptoms you have. The body has many different types of immune cells that release different inflammatory chemicals that act on different parts of the body. The conditions and illnesses described below may seem unrelated to food sensitivities, but there’s such a wide variation in symptoms associated with food sensitivities because our body’s immune system is complex. What are the symptoms of a food sensitivity? If you’re unknowingly eating foods that you’re sensitive to, you may be exposed to chronic inflammation, which may be contributing to the symptoms outlined below. This is what can lead to a food sensitivity - our immune system reads harmless food as a threat. This is a normal and healthy immune response - it’s main goal is to protect your body from infection.īut from time to time, our immune system can be turned on when there is no threat. For example, if you are exposed to a harmful bacteria, your lymphatic system turns on your immune system which then triggers a cascade of inflammation. Our lymphatic system is our immune system, and it’s main job is to alert the body if there’s a threat of infection. The gut is lined with lymph tissue, called ‘gut associated lymphoid tissue’ (or GALT for short). Under ideal conditions, we eat food and our body breaks down that food through digestion - we absorb its nutrients (carbs, proteins, fats, vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients) and we eliminate (aka poop out) the rest. This can result in food allergies or food sensitivities. While our immune system is meant to protect us against foreign invaders, it sometimes gets confused and can see specific foods as a threat. The goal of our immune system is to keep us healthy by protecting our bodies from harm. But, if you’re struggling with the below symptoms you may benefit from identifying and eliminating your sensitivities.Ī food sensitivity is an immune based reaction to food. Unfortunately there is no one size fits all approach - we all have unique bodies and react to different foods in different ways. But it also goes the other way - when we take away those inflammatory culprits and feed ourselves whole (anti-inflammatory) foods, we have a tremendous power to heal ourselves from the inside out. I constantly hear how much better people feel after their elimination - in fact, most people comment on how they didn’t realize how poorly they were feeling until they cleaned up their diet and started feeling better!įood sensitivities can cause inflammation, which can deplete and exhaust us and make us sick. I have since helped countless individuals identify and eliminate their own sensitivities. Once I eliminated my highly reactive foods, every symptom I was experiencing disappeared in a few short months! I never considered that my diet was causing my health problemsĪfter graduating college I started working for a functional nutritionist who helped me test myself for food sensitivities. I had so many aches and pains and was always hungry, nauseous and tired and my joints were in so much pain I couldn’t sleep at night.
When I first embarked on my nutrition journey I felt like I was 20 going on 90. Identifying food sensitivities can be a game changer when it comes to health and wellness.Įliminating reactive foods was my first ‘aha!’ moment in the nutrition world.