What’s healthy for one person may be an inflammatory grenade for another person.

Read Part 1 Identify Deficiencies Here

Find all 8 Master The Basics Steps Here

In part 2 below, we are going to discuss identifying food allergies, sensitivities, and intolerances.

Why This Matters

It is estimated that more than 50 million people in the United States have allergies (Center for Disease Control & Prevention). This includes an estimated 6 million children (Food allergy resource & education).

Allergies can be very serious. I’ll show you a table below. But many people don’t realize the seriousness of food sensitivities and intolerances as well. While they may not pose serious risks at first, they may attribute to many underlying conditions and issues and can eventually cause serious health problems.

There’s a whole slew of reasons why these food related issues seem to be increasing, i.e. toxic environments, EMF’s, processed foods, vaccine adverse reactions, poor digestion, severe trauma, immune system overload, genetics etc.

You could be having bad reactions to even ‘healthy’ food, but attribute it to something else.

  • Do you bloat?
  • Feel tired?
  • Experience swelling?
  • Get rashes?
  • Have asthma?
  • Feel achy?
  • Develop colds?
  • Feel anxious or depressed?

Many of these things can be directly related to what you ingest. Food affects mood. Food is often the root cause of issues. But unless you are really in-tune to your body and want to spend a vast amount of energy and time on elimination diets, they can be very hard to identify.

MOST COMMON FOOD ALLERGIES

  • Milk
  • Corn
  • Soy
  • Wheat (gluten)
  • Nuts
  • Grains
  • Eggs
  • Fish

Common allergies are important to be aware of. Chances are if these foods are having a negative effect on many people, they’re important to analyze in your own diet as well.

What’s the difference between allergies and sensitivities

While both food allergies and sensitivities involve the immune system, I generally think of allergies as being more serious, immediate, and dangerous. This would include a severe reaction like anaphylactic shock.

Sensitivities are also known as a delayed allergy and they can affect any organ system in the body, but can take from 45 minutes to several days for symptoms to become apparent. This delay can make it difficult to pin point them, and why sensitivities often go underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed.

Food intolerance can produce digestive symptoms that are similar to food sensitivity but do not involve the immune system. This could lead to things like bloating, diarrhea, and gas, and can be caused by the inability to produce certain digestive enzymes.

Check out the table below for a visual breakdown.

Food sensitivities compared to food allergies

How do You test for food sensitivity issues

There are many tests you can do to get started. One of the best ones I’ve found is the MRT (mediator release test) by the LEAP program (lifestyle eating and performance). A blinded peer reviewed scientific study showed MRT to have the highest level of accuracy of any food sensitivity blood test (94.5% sensitivity and 91.8% specificity).

Food sensitivities make a person feel sick because the immune system reacts to food and causes the release of chemicals called mediators (such as histamine, prostaglandins, cytokines, etc.) from white blood cells. It’s the mediators that cause the inflammation, pain, and other symptoms associated with food sensitivities.

MRT is an end point test, meaning that all the immune based adverse reactions end up causing mediator release. MRT is able to take into account actions of all mechanisms, whether they are antibodies or other, because all of them ultimately cause white blood cells to release mediators. Without anymore technical jargon, this is what leads MRT to be more accurate and useful clinically.

*I was able to do my MRT blood work and consultation through my functional medicine clinic Kemper Wellness. If you’re not in this area, find a functional Med clinic and ask if they use the MRT test.

Then what? Eliminate and Maybe Re-introduce

After you get your results back, within 2-3 weeks, you will get a list of foods that you are reactive too. Red means highly reactive. Yellow means moderately reactive. Green means good to go.

You will eliminate the red and yellow foods from your diet for a few weeks, sometimes longer. The LEAP program actually writes out in detail exactly what to eat and what not to eat, according to your results. It’s the TRUEST meal plan I’ve seen. After a few weeks you may be able to slowly reintroduce some foods one at a time. Some foods may take longer. Some foods you may never be able to reintroduce. Ahhhhhh. Major self sacrifice right? Well guess what, remember what Jesus did for ya!

Overall, some people don’t want to see their results because they are afraid to give things up. But look, you never have to do anything. Do you want to? Do you want to feel your best? Do you want your body to function the optimal way God designed it to? If so, you’ll give up whatever it takes because…

IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU.

Never take my word for it. Test it out for yourself today.

And it may just be an absolute game-changer for you and everyone in your life.

God bless,

Coach Theo

Read Part 1 Here