Do you have annoying symptoms that come and go? Have you sought doctors opinions and tried medications without significant improvement? Sneaky food sensitivities may be the culprit!
Food sensitivities are immune mediated reactions to an ingested food, which triggers an inflammatory response within the body. Food sensitivities tend not to be medically recognised like food allergies, therefore are often overlooked by medical professionals as being a contributing factor to unpleasant symptoms. Clinical Nutritionists understand that food sensitivities could be the missing link to our client's health complaints and chronic conditions.
Food sensitivities have been linked to the following conditions:
Hayfever
Reflux
Skin rashes
Irritable bowel syndrome
Brain fog
Migraine
Picky eating in children
What are food reactions?
Food reactions are categorised by their antibody mediated immunoglobulin (Ig) response.
Immediate and life-threatening:
IgE reaction: Produces an immediate or life-treating response within seconds to up to 2 hours such as in anaphylaxis or asthma.
Delayed reactions (can take hours or days)
IgA reaction: A delayed, localised immune reaction occurring in the mucous membranes and secretions.
IgG reaction: A delayed or unclear food reaction to a food protein affecting the body's ability to digest, absorb and metabolise it.
Food reactions and health conditions
Some of the most common food sensitivities are to dairy, wheat, eggs, nuts, and rice. Food sensitivities can cause inflammation to the lining of the small intestine, leading to intestinal permeability or "leaky gut", allowing undigested food particles and toxins to enter the bloodstream resulting in more widespread or systemic symptoms.
Chocolate, cheese, cow's milk, eggs and wine reactions have been linked to migraine (Geiselman, 2019).
Non-coeliac gluten sensitivity has been implicated in cases of larynopharyngeal reflux (Vora et al, 2019).
Clients with Autoimmune diseases have a higher degree of IgG food reactions compared to healthy individuals, and should be assessed in all autoimmune patients (Coucke, 2018).
Treatment
IgG and IgA food sensitivities may take days post ingestion for symptoms to arise, which can make diagnosis more challenging. A food elimination diet is a method of diagnosis which identities food triggers based on dietary intervention, whereby there is a removal phase and reintroduction phase of potential food triggers. This method takes time to investigate all potential food triggers, and requires subjective data from clients as to their symptom changes. IgG or IgA food intolerance testing is a quick and easy blood or finger prick test which provides a wealth of information on the severity of a reaction to a variety of different foods, and can be ordered by Nutritionists and functional practitioners.
Symptoms can rapidly improve once an underlying food sensitivity is detected and eliminated for a period of 3-6 months. Tolerance to that particular food may improve after a period of time from consuming it to re-establish a healthy immunological response.
Do you have symptoms that just aren't improving? Reach out today for a comprehensive nutritional assessment, I'd love to assist you with your health.
References
Coucke, F. (2018). Food intolerance in patients with manifest autoimmunity. Observational study. In Autoimmunity reviews, 17, 1078-1080. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autrev.2018.05.011
Geiselman, J. F. (2019). The Clinical Use of IgG Food Sensitivity Testing with Migraine Headache Patients: a Literature Review. In Current Pain and Headache reports, 23 (17). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11916-019-0819-4
Vora, A., Vance, D., Alnouri, G., & Sataloff, R. T. (2019). Food Sensitivity and Laryngopharyngeal Reflux: Preliminary Observations. In Journal of voice, 35(3): 497. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jvoice.2019.09.005