Food Sensitivities - More Serious Than You Think
by Ruth Galbraith, ND
Do you suffer from heartburn, acid reflux or GERD? Do you clear your throat often or have a constant, annoying little cough? Do you experience chronic post-nasal drip? Gas and bloating? Burp more often than you think you should? Suffer from constipation or frequent diarrhea?
If you said yes to even one of these symptoms, you may have a food sensitivity or intolerance.
There are dozens of pharmaceuticals commonly taken for these ailments. You may be on Prilosec, Zantac, Prevacid, or pop Tums like candy. Perhaps you take a prescription “acid blocker,” or just know you have to stay away from certain foods to avoid these unpleasant side effects. Maybe you take antihistamines daily, or a product like GasX, Imodium, or Metamucil. You may be dealing so effectively with your symptoms that when your doctor asks if you have any digestive complaints, you smile and say no, hoping to move quickly to a less embarrassing topic. Or perhaps you’ve been treating the problem for so long, you’ve truly forgotten that it’s even part of your life. It’s important to realize, however, that just because we have discovered so many ways to mask symptoms doesn’t mean we’ve cured the underlying problem.
Food Intoleranceby Ruth Galbraith, ND
If you are suffering from any of these symptoms, what does it really mean? Most likely, it means that something you’re ingesting is not agreeable to your body. These symptoms are your body’s way of communicating with you. Let’s use dairy as an example. If a patient suffers from gas and bloating every time she eats dairy, but rather than eliminating dairy from her diet, she takes a product to alleviate the bloating and flatulence she experiences, then her symptoms may disappear, but is her body any more able to tolerate dairy? The answer is no. What happens in her body when she eats dairy? Most patients who can’t tolerate dairy are missing an enzyme that digests the lactose, or milk sugars, breaking them down so they can be absorbed and used by the body. Others have a sensitivity to a different constituent of dairy, casein. Let’s look at the lactose intolerant patient. When she ingests dairy, her body is unable to use the lactose for fuel, so it travels into her colon where resident bacteria ferment it as they use it for food. This fermentation causes the bloating, cramping and flatulence the lactose intolerant patient often experiences. And what happens if this patient takes a product to relieve her gas and bloating? The same reaction is taking place in the gut; the only difference is that she’s able to ignore it because she has found a way to mask the symptoms. This may seem like a fair trade off. Perhaps you’re not digesting your dairy, but it’s so tasty, and you’ve found a way to avoid the discomfort it causes, right? But consider this for a moment: just because you’ve found a way to tolerate the gas and bloating doesn’t mean you’ve changed what’s going on in the gut. When a person suffers from a food intolerance, the body’s reaction is not so severe as in a true food allergy, so it can be very tempting to overlook the intolerance and continue eating foods that you enjoy, even though you know they cause you some discomfort (or an annoying cough, or a little bit of reflux). But the bottom line is that all of these symptoms indicate one thing: there is inflammation occurring in the body. Inflammation
If you are experiencing any of these symptoms, or if you continue to eat foods you know cause these symptoms, even if you’re masking symptoms with a drug, there is still a chronic, low grade inflammatory process occurring in your body. And what is being more and more commonly understood in the practice of medicine is that inflammation plays a major role in some of our most prevalent but preventable diseases today, from coronary artery disease to cancer. Autoimmune disease, arthritis, eczema, asthma and back pain all involve inflammation. If you look carefully, most disorders contain an element of inflammation. Inflammation is one of the first ways the body signals a problem. When we ignore this initial signal, or when we mask it, the body will often find a louder signal. For example, a patient with lactose intolerance may have first noticed that he had a runny nose every time he ate dairy. If he ignored that, he may have begun to have chronic sore throats, or a cough, or he may develop frequent sinus infections. Each of these symptoms is the body trying to signal distress over ingestion of diary products, and each time a new signal is ignored or masked with drugs, the body will try to find another way to communicate its distress. It may seem surprising, but a simple dairy intolerance can progress all the way to IBS, arthritis, asthma or stubborn acne. Allergy vs. Intolerance
What is the difference between an intolerance and an allergy? The words are often used interchangeably, but in truth they are different. Technically, an allergy causes a life-threatening reaction in the body. A good example of a true food allergy is an allergy to shellfish or peanuts, in which the patient may suffer an anaphylactic reaction and die within minutes of exposure if not treated with epinephrine. Most of us heard of the case of a teenage girl who died after kissing her boyfriend who had recently eaten a peanut butter sandwich. This was a true food allergy. By comparison, an intolerance is a reaction considered to be non-life-threatening; an intolerance reaction tends to either occur slowly, over a matter of hours or days, or the reaction may be immediate, but is not life threatening, as some who are lactose intolerant experience gut pain, post nasal drip or ear pain shortly after ingesting dairy products. Others with an intolerance to gluten may not experience any symptoms at all for up to 4 days after eating wheat, barley, rye, or spelt containing products, but then they may develop hives, mouth sores, foggy thinking, gut pain or diarrhea. This can make intolerances much harder to diagnose, since we eat a wide array of foods daily, and without a careful diary of what is eaten and a pattern of symptoms, the average person may be at a loss to determine which symptoms are caused by what food. Intolerance and Disease
Many ailments we don’t even associate with food sensitivities can in fact be improved or cured altogether if food sensitivities are identified and eliminated from the diet. Naturopathic medicine has been successful at reversing such disorders as arthritis, acne, PMS, eczema, sinusitis, migraines, IBS, and many other skin, intestinal or musculoskeletal complaints through simple food intolerance testing and elimination. Other disorders have been seen to go into “remission” upon elimination of food allergens. These include hard-to-treat disorders like Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, MS, Lupus, Scleroderma and many other autoimmune diseases. Fortunately, one of the cornerstones of naturopathic medicine is digestive health. Naturopathic doctors know that good digestion is the key to vibrant health. If you’re not digesting your food, you’re not getting the vitamins, minerals and other nutrition necessary to function optimally, regardless of how great your diet may be. The human body is quite resilient and can function for a very long time with poor nutrition, but over time function will decrease, aches and pains will increase as inflammation increases, and a pattern of chronic disease will become evident. It should not be misconstrued that all disease or all inflammation is caused by food intolerance, nor that all of the disorders listed in this article are always caused or exacerbated by food intolerance. We cannot say that because a disorder improves or disappears upon elimination of food intolerance that that disorder was caused by the food intolerance. It may simply be that the body, once relieved of the burden of fighting a food intolerance now has the ability to effectively fight the disease. What we do know is that vast improvements in health have been seen with very simple diet modifications. If you suspect you may be suffering from a food intolerance, consider having appropriate testing done by a qualified healthcare practitioner. And remember, testing for allergies is not the same as testing for intolerances (different proteins in the blood are tested).