Identifying Food Sensitivities

Are you bloated or do you have symptoms of IBS, like constipation and/or diarrhea?

Do you have headaches, brain fog, or low energy?

What about aches and pains?

If you experience any of these symptoms, especially if the symptoms are associated with eating a meal, you likely have food sensitivities.

What is a food sensitivity?

Unlike IgE-mediated food allergies which are immediate and sometimes life-threatening reactions, food sensitivities are delayed inflammatory responses to a food.  Bloating after meals, headaches, chronic aches and pains, brain fog, and sluggish weight loss are often triggered by a food sensitivity.

Managing food sensitivities begins with identifying the food or chemical trigger. There are several ways to do this:

The elimination diet

This has always been my favorite way to identify food triggers since it's free and most patients feel their best eating this way. To try this yourself, simply plan to eliminate the most common food sensitivities for 2-4 weeks:

• eggs

• beef

• pork

• shellfish

• gluten

• sugar

• dairy

• peanuts

• corn

• citrus

• nightshades

• soy

• food additives such as artificial colors, sweeteners and preservatives

During this time, eat only low allergy-potential and anti-inflammatory foods such as:

• organic poultry

• wild-caught fish

• wild game

• organic brown rice, quinoa, millet (some patients do best with no grains)

• organic fruits (except citrus)

• organic vegetables (except corn)

• legumes (no soy)

• nuts (no peanuts)

• turmeric

Once symptoms resolve, add one food back at a time, 2-3 days apart since some foods take that long to elicit a response.  If any symptoms return after a food is reintroduced, that food must be eliminated completely for now. If no symptoms appear upon reintroduction, that food is back in and you can proceed to the next food.

This works.

Most of the time.

But what if the elimination diet didn’t remove the food or ingredient that's causing your symptoms?

If you aren’t getting relief from an elimination diet or if you're struggling to comply with diet changes, you may want to test to identify your trigger food/s.

Already tried food sensitivity testing and it didn't help?

There is limited clinical value in most blood tests (such as IGG and IGA)  that are meant to identify a food sensitivity because they're limited to a single mechanism or a specific part of the inflammatory response. There's a reaction by the immune cells when a food is introduced, but it may or may not be involved in actual inflammation. So, while the immune system reacts when you eat a particular food, we don’t know if consuming the food is actually causing your symptoms.

My favorite lab-based food sensitivity testing:

White blood cells are at the center of ALL food-induced inflammatory reactions. Neutrophils, monocytes, mast cells, eosinophils, and various lymphocytes release mediators such as cytokines, histamine, leukotrienes and prostaglandins, into the body, creating inflammation and causing various types of discomfort in the sufferer. Mediator Release Testing (MRT) identifies these triggers by quantifying the level of inflammatory response, rather than measuring a single specific potential trigger that may or may not have clinical relevance. It identifies chemicals that most testing companies don’t cover, such as MSG, ibuprofen, food dyes, nitrates and even candida (if positive, indicates overgrowth contributing to systemic inflammation).

Lastly, safe foods, those with the lowest inflammatory response, are identified so patients can easily adapt their diet.

Since starting my practice in 2005, I've tested patients using antibody-mediated testing and found it to be helpful for some, but not others.  After discovering Mediator Release Testing just over a year ago, I'm now seeing positive results in nearly every patient tested.  The most common symptoms it's helped my patients resolve are stuck weight loss, anxiety, headaches and IBS.

Want to learn a bit more about MRT food sensitivity testing? Click here to visit Oxford Biomedical Technologies' website.  Want to try an elimination diet first?

Not sure which is the best approach? Read the bio and pricing of two of our practitioners, Francie Silverman and Caitlin Pfeil, and/or make an appointment to find the answers you need.