Food Sensitivities Trigger Mysterious Symptoms
What do joint pain, skin rashes, headaches, and brain fog all have in common?
They can all be caused by food sensitivities.
Identifying problem foods—and eliminating them from your diet—can improve chronic symptoms ranging from migraine headaches and joint pain to skin rashes, brain fog, and even fatigue and fibromyalgia.
The only problem?
Most people—and their doctors—don’t consider food sensitivities as the root cause of chronic health complaints.
And even when they do, the most common test to identify problem foods is notoriously inaccurate.
I’ll share with you my go-to test for food sensitivities so you can finally receive an accurate diagnosis and correct them.
A small portion of the population experiences food reactions due to allergies (think shellfish and peanuts) and autoimmune diseases (like celiac or Crohn’s). Others have a problem digesting certain foods (like lactose intolerance).
But the VAST majority of individuals have something most people have never even heard of—food sensitivities.
A food sensitivity means that certain foods trigger inflammation in your body, leading to various potential symptoms…ranging from acid reflux to anxiety and joint pain to weight gain.
One of the most common methods for testing food reactions is to test for IgG antibodies. These tests are widely available and are often used by functional medicine practitioners.
Unfortunately, I’ve found from personal experience that these tests aren’t very accurate.
Instead, I prefer a blood test developed over 30 years ago called the antigen leukocyte antibody test (ALCAT). I have found this test to be FAR MORE ACCURATE than IgG testing.
Not only do the results of this blood test list your food sensitivities, but it also ranks them according to severity.
Removing the offending foods from your diet can resolve your symptoms. However, to get the BEST results, I recommend improving your overall lifestyle at the same time.
This can include…
- fixing sleep issues,
- reducing stress,
- optimizing gut microflora (probiotics, prebiotics),
- avoiding blue light toxicity from artificial lights,
- adequate sun exposure for vitamin D and setting the circadian rhythm,
- daily grounding to the earth,
- reducing non-native electromagnetic field exposure from tech devices, and
- switching to an organic, whole-food diet to minimize exposure to toxins and processed food.
If you don’t correct these other lifestyle issues, you may develop reactions to different foods.
P.S. Skip the sneezy, snotty misery of SEASONAL allergies this year with this surprising fix.
Source:
Garcia-Martinez, I., et al., (2018). A leukocyte activation test identifies food items which induce release of DNA by innate immune peripheral blood leucocytes. Nutrition & Metabolism, 15. doi. org /10.1186 /s12986-018-0260-4
