Do you have a food sensitivity?
Do you feel fatigue, headaches, joint pain, or digestive issues? Or are you generally not feeling your best from day to day, and suspect it might be related to your diet? If so, there’s a good chance you could be dealing with an undiagnosed food sensitivity. The food(s) you are sensitive to may be ones you would never suspect! In fact, it’s quite possible that a seemingly “harmless” food that you’ve been eating (maybe even daily your whole life!) are to blame for your symptoms! And yes, food sensitivities can be behind your symptoms even if you are eating a clean, Paleo, or vegan diet!
The Difference Between A Food Sensitivity and Food Allergy
The first thing I want to note is that food allergies and food sensitivities are two very different things. A food allergy triggers an extreme and potentially life-threatening reaction, known as an IgE-mediated immune response, whenever you are exposed to a certain type of food, such as peanuts or strawberries. Most allergic reactions happen within minutes and can range from mild (think hives or stomach cramping) to severe, such as anaphylaxis, which can impair your breathing, cause a dramatic drop in blood pressure, and affect your heart rate. Due to the severity of food allergies, you likely already know whether or not you have one. Food sensitivity, on the other hand, is more difficult to diagnose because it triggers an IgG reaction in your system, which is a delayed immune response. It could take up to 72 hours for symptoms of a food sensitivity to present. The problem with this delayed response is that you likely eat a wide range of foods in the time it takes for symptoms to appear, making it difficult to spot a pattern between the specific foods you eat and your symptoms. For example, let’s say you’ve been having migraine headaches and digestive issues. You eat scrambled eggs, fresh sliced tomatoes, and a banana every morning for breakfast, and you think maybe it’s something in your breakfast that’s bothering you. So on Monday you decide not to have the scrambled eggs to see if you get the migraines and digestive issues. Later on in the day, the headache and digestive issues are still there, so on Tuesday you decide to try eliminating the tomatoes and your symptoms once again return.
Well, it could be that the eggs from two days prior are actually causing your migraines and digestive issues, and it’s just taken this long for the sensitivity symptoms to appear.
Additionally, food sensitivities can produce a wide array of symptoms depending on which area of your body the antibodies attack. So you may not even realise that your skin rashes or the joint pain you suffer from regularly are diet-related.
Common signs of a food sensitivity:
Fatigue
Brain fog and difficulty concentrating
Joint pain
Headaches or migraines
Eczema
Rashes and skin irritations
Stomach aches
Acid reflux
Bloating
Constipation or diarrhoea
Unexplained weight gain or loss
Behavioural issues (in children)
Fortunately, with a scientific approach, you can take out the guesswork and identify which foods are causing your symptoms. Identifying Food Sensitivities with IgG Food Sensitivity Blood Test. If you are looking to go a step further, food sensitivity testing is a great way to get a more comprehensive analysis of different foods in order to be as informed as possible. The advantage of doing the blood test in conjunction with following an elimination diet is that it lets you collect as much information as possible about what is going on inside your body. While you are eliminating the irritating foods, you can treat and strengthen your gut lining as much as possible to address leaky gut condition IgG food sensitivities test and the diet guidance are available here with our Nutritionist Sachiko Giorgilli.
