Intolerant, Sensitive or Allergic?

Food intolerance and allergies are rampant and a hot topic of conversation lately. There’s online mail-in food sensitivity tests, doctors specializing and food allergies and lots of treatments and solutions promised by the internet.

But what exactly is going on in your body? How do you know if you are allergic to something or just intolerant? Do you have weird symptoms such as “random” headaches or itchy ears that you can’t seem to explain?

As with most things, it all starts with food, is closely tied to your gut and in this case has a lot to do with your immune system.

Your guy houses 70-80% of all immune system cells! That means that your digestive system is one of the first lines of defense in your immune system and healthy gut flora (keeping the good bacteria in your gut happy) is of paramount importance to keep your immunity top-notch.

Food Intolerance

An intolerance, which can also be called a food sensitivity is when your body has an adverse reaction to a specific food or ingredient. These include both genetic and non-genetic problems digesting certain nutrients in food and include:

• Lactose or Fructose Intolerance

• Sensitivity to certain carbohydrates

• Difficulty digesting fats

• Sensitivity to certain additives, minerals or pesticides

If you are lactose intolerant, that’s an easy thing to identify and subsequently avoid. But what happens if you are sensitive to a random food coloring? Reactions to sensitivities can vary widely from person to person and can be anything from an upset stomach to severe migraines. The problem is that when you expose your body to a food that your sensitive to over and over, you create chronic inflammation in your body that suppresses the immune system and can cause a whole host of problems. If you’re dealing with unexplained physical symptoms (anything from headaches, to seasonal allergies, to asthma and more), then there may be an underlying hidden food reaction that is either causing some of the symptoms or making them worse.

Food intolerance and sensitivities generally do not go away specially if they are genetic. However, sometimes healing your gut can make a sensitivity go away as it can be directly caused because you do not have the appropriate enzymes and gut lining to support digestion of that food.

Food Allergies

Allergies, as opposed to intolerance, create an immune response in your body and involve your entire immune system. A true food allergy is one that is triggered by an allergen and your body responds within 15-30 minutes. Allergies cause physical reactions such as hives, asthma and difficulty breathing and are the only type of food reaction that can result in anaphylactic shock. Think peanut and strawberry allergies.

Non-Allergic Hypersensitivity

The third type of food reaction is hypersensitivity. Like with allergies, there is an immune response in your body, however, they cannot result in anaphylactic shock. These tend to have more chronic symptoms and ongoing inflammation and are associated with disorders such as Grave’s disease, Lupus, Celiac’s and Chron’s disease.

So how can you tell the difference?

The difference between an allergy and everything else is pretty easy to figure out. An allergy is an immediate, physical reaction that can be lethal. A food intolerance is a physical reaction, but it just doesn’t have an immune response and more often than not, has a digestive reaction. A non-allergic hypersensitivity does have an immune response as your body attacks food or itself thinking they are pathogens but cannot result in anaphylactic shock and is associated with chronic illnesses and autoimmune disorders.

But how can you know what you are sensitive to and if it’s causing any symptoms? While you can take a food sensitivity test, we recommend you do it under the supervision of a healthcare professional as the results largely can vary widely day to day and they are not an exact science. Our preferred way of finding out is through an elimination diet. They only true way to figure out if a food is affecting you is by removing it altogether, evaluating how you feel, and then reintroducing it and watching out for symptoms (see our 10-day challenge here).

For hypersensitivities and allergies, it’s best (and often the only choice) to just avoid the food entirely. For intolerance, there are some that are genetic but there are some that are contributed by an unhealthy gut or problems in your digestive system. Even healthy foods can cause a reaction!

Food can contribute to your well-being or contribute to you feeling crummy (even if you think it’s unrelated!). Getting to know your body and what it reacts to is the best way to figure out what approach and lifestyle works for you. And when in doubt, call us!

Mindset: How Important Is It?

Mindset is possibly the most important part of your health you need to address. Without working on it, you won’t get anywhere, at least not anywhere far. The way you view the world and react to it and the way you view yourself, your health and your worth can have the most impactful consequences on your self.

Somewhere along the way, the hustle became the way we measure people. The busier you were, the more successful or admirable. If you never slept because of work, or if never had a day to play with the kids or enjoy yourself, then you were rocking it. The truth is this hustle mindset is what’s hurting us the most. When we don’t have time, are overstressed, overworked and probably underpaid, our fitness and nutrition are usually the first to go. Now we all know how that story ends: diabetes, hypertension, GI issues like IBS, Crohn’s disease, constipation, skin reactions like eczema, and mental health repercussions like depression or anxiety.

This basically happens because we are living disconnected from our bodies, we ignore the signs because we have to be the first, be the winner, be the best at everything and totally forget that we can’t do any of those things if we’re sick or exhausted or depressed. We need to connect to our bodies because it’s the only place we have to live and they’re with us forever. And this doesn’t mean the hustle isn’t something you should be proud of and avoid - I mean, we are totally there with you, but it also doesn’t mean that this is the way to measure your worth or success.

Let’s start with the basics.

What is Mindset?

Mindset is the belief that orients us into how we handle different situations, the way we sort out what we should do and how to go about it. According to Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, the person who coined the term, people have either a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. Those with the former believe that certain traits like intelligence or courage are innate, those with the latter believe that certain abilities can be nurtured and learned.

The importance of mindset is that it can determine your success. Basically, if you believe in a fixed mindset and you fail at something, there’s no room for improvement, but if your in the growth mindset team it’s more likely that you will learn from your mistakes, be more resilient, and try again.

How do you change it?

It’s not as easy as just thinking that you can do better or that you can learn something new. It takes practice, commitment, and hard work but it’s the most valuable thing you can work on for yourself. Think of the mind like a muscle that you want to build strength, you need to work on it everyday. Unlike other muscles, the mind does not need rest days when it comes to growing and building a better relationship with yourself. You need to immerse yourself in the growth mindset and resolve that you CAN and WILL change it - as if your life depends on it, because it does!

How do you practice growth mindset?

We believe in two important ways: meditation and therapy. Meditation is one of the most powerful workouts for the mind, it gives you the ability to have a birds-eye view so that you can respond to situations in a calmer way, in other words, you respond instead of react. By practicing mediation and being aware of your breathing you will be instantly taken to the parasympathetic state of calmness and build a connection between you mind and body. Therapy is another powerful tool that can help you reach those deeper places that you might be hesitant to go alone. In other words, counselors help patients bring consciousness to the unconscious. By talking about whatever comes to mind with filter, you inner mind and body do the talking and it’s up to the psychoanalyst to interpret those messages so that you realize what’s going on inside and make changes.

How does mindset relate to health?

The way we view and appreciate our bodies, the food we eat, the fitness we choose, it’s all about mindset. In order to truly develop better habits and change your lifestyle you have to address the mind first and the rest will follow. Each of us has beliefs around all these things that are a combination of our upbringing and culture. Often, when you start on a health journey, you start out of a place of need or a place of self-hate. Deprivation, using workouts as punishment, reacting once you’re sick are very common. Instead, what if you came at your health from a place of love, acceptance and feel like you are worthy and capable of improvement and change? That’s your mindset and it will change everything.

Reintroduction: A Guide

On a personal level, we think reintroduction is the hardest part of any elimination diet. We’ve done a handful of Whole30s and always struggle with it because when 30 days are up, we are mentally done and exhausted - so trust us we get it, we know you want all the pizza/chips/cheese/pasta after the past 10 days.

Part of the reason we made this Challenge 10 days was because of that. Ten days isn’t that long, and at 10 days, you feel so great, you want to keep going so there’s more incentive to do reintroduction right. And guess what? We’re still here! So you have our full support and can stay accountable.

You’ve eliminated all these food groups, now it’s time to see how your body responds to them, one by one. You definitely don’t have to reintroduce all of them, if you are happy going dairy-free and know it causes issues for you, you can certainly skip it but start with making a list of which foods (not food groups) you want to reintroduce to your diet. Be specific.

We recommend you start with the big ones, the ones that most people are sensitive to, but this is your challenge so you can decide. For most adults in the US, that means dairy, gluten and grains.

How does it work?

To properly identify which foods you’re sensitive to, you have to try each one by one. So, for example, if you want cheese back in your life, you would try that on day 11. You have to stick to the Challenge-approved meals and ONLY add cheese, so no pizza. So, you would have your normal challenge-approved breakfast, lunch and dinner and add some cheese to one or all meals (i.e. add some to your eggs or toss it in your salad).

Then, for the next two days, you go back to being 100% back on the challenge. Here’s where you really need to pay attention, how’s your stomach? Are you bloated? Is your poop normal? How’s your mood? Any acne? We highly suggest you take notes, even on your phone, to keep tabs on anything out of the ordinary.

Feel good? Great, welcome cheese back into your life with open arms! Not so great? Now you know that you are probably sensitive to cheese. This doesn’t mean your can NEVER eat cheese again but every time you do it, it’s causing stress on your body and digestive system and over time, can develop into serious problems so try to limit it and make it really worth it.

This is how reintroduction works. You would then move on to yoghurt, milk, whey, then on to gluten and beans and legumes. We know, this sounds super tedious but it’s one-and-done. You try, you evaluate and then you know and knowledge is power when it comes to your body. Once you know how you react to foods, you can truly know when things are worth it, how to feel your best and that freedom is worth more than any chocolate cake in the world (because you can have that too!).

What if you can’t figure out any effects?

Another really cool test you can do is called the Coca’s pulse test, and while it’s not 100% accurate, it can give you an idea of what foods may trigger some reaction if you aren’t feeling anything obvious in your body. Usually, you should have Nutritional Therapy Consultant (that’s us!) do it for you for best results but you can try it at home. Here’s what you do:

1. Sit down and relax

2. Take your pulse for 60 seconds, write it down

3. Put a pice of the food you want to test in your mouth and leave it there for 15-20 seconds

4. With the food still in your mouth, re test your pulse for 60 seconds

If your pulse went up 6 beats or more, you probably have an allergic reaction to that food. Pretty cool right?

A note on allergies vs. sensitivities vs. intolerance

Allergies are an immune response in your body. Symptoms include rash, hives, swelling, trouble breathing and can be life-threatening. If you have leaky gut or intestinal permeability, some food may end up on your bloodstream and cause an immune reaction because it’s not meant to be there but that doesn’t necessarily mean your allergic to that particular food - it just means your body is reacting to food particles in places it shouldn’t be.

Sensitivities and intolerances are way more common and are a digestive reaction to food. These cause a digestive response in your body and are not life-threatening. Symptoms include bloating, gas, diarrhea, eczema, etc. and range from mild to severe. When you are intolerant to a food, it means you are not properly breaking it down and digesting it so it causes stress and distress in your digestive tract. You may have lactose intolerance for example, which means you don’t have the right enzymes to process it OR you may be sensitive to a food because your digestive tract isn’t working properly and you can’t break it down.

Remember that knowledge is power, but also remember that your gut microbiome (that’s the bacteria in your gut) changes every 24 hours, so every little piece of healthy that you’ve been putting in your body these past days have radically changed your gut into a powerful machine. And just like the microbiome changes, our sensitivities can change over time as well. If you find out that you are sensitive to beans, for example, it doesn’t mean that you will be sensitive to them your whole life. Sometimes, with a little gut healing (that’s where we come in as health coaches), you can safely incorporate those foods back into your diet.

Another note on reactions, reactions to food can range from physical to emotional to mental, here’s a short list of things to look out for:

• bloating

• gas

• diarrhea

• constipation

• aches and pains (all over)

• fatigue

• foggy brain

• memory issues

• depression

• anxiety

• acne

• eczema

• trouble sleeping

• feeling groggy

Literally anything can be caused by a reaction to food, that’s why its important to take notes on it about how you feel right now, and how you feel once you start reintroducing, think of it like a before and after picture!