Are you tired of hearing about food allergies and food sensitivity?
I know I am!
I know I probably shouldn’t be tired of it, cuz it’s kind of important for my profession :-). But truth be known, I’m kind of sick of hearing about this. Yes, I get it they are both real conditions, and yes, I get it’s important to understand the difference between the two.
But if I’m being honest, I think they get little bit blown out of proportion. That being said, I am going to talk about food allergies and leaky gut. In doing so, I will show you the differences between food allergies and food sensitivities. Despite how I feel 🙂
I hope you can relate to that. So often we need to do things, despite how we feel.
You need to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Yes, I get it you don’t want to do split squats, but guess what, your feelings don’t matter :-). Yes, I get it you don’t want to do squats, but guess what, your feelings don’t matter :-).
Yes, I’m being sarcastic here, but truthfully sometimes you have to do what you don’t feel like doing. And this case, I don’t feel like talking about these issues, but I think it is important enough and there is enough misinformation out there that I want you to be in the know.
Food Allergies vs. Food Sensitivities
The first thing you need to understand is the difference between food allergies and food sensitivities. The big difference is that food allergies produce a response from your immune system. Food allergies can even be life-threatening. On the other hand, food sensitivity is much less serious and much more common. And it’s typically confined to the digestive tract (big idea) not the immune system (key difference).
Now, food allergies have the same symptoms as food sensitivities, and to make it even more confusing they often have the same root cause. But the big difference is food allergies affect your immune system and make your immune system respond. Whereas food sensitivity issues mainly deal with your digestive tract.
What’s The Big Deal Between Immune System and Digestive Tract?
In short, a lot!
When you have a food allergy, your body treats that food as a threat. You body sees this food as something that is attacking your body.
Your body deals with this attacker by activating its immune system. Your immune system thinks it must respond to save your body from this dangerous and poison invader.
More often than not, the reason for the attack is because part of something you ate leaked out of your gut (via the intestine) and into your bloodstream. Insider tip: that’s not supposed to happen, when that does, you get what one calls a food allergy.
The question you’re probably thinking right now is how in the world does that happen?
How does food molecules or particles get into your bloodstream? This is what is known as, “Leaky Gut.” Yes, I know, super technical term.
In a perfect world, your intestinal walls are tight and they basically only allow amino acids, simple sugars, and vitamins to pass through it into your bloodstream.
I want you to think of your intestinal wall as a toll booth operator. The toll booth operator only allows certain kinds of vehicles on the roadway and prohibits dangerous unregulated vehicles from trespassing.
In the same way, your intestinal walls allow good things in and keep bad things out. However, when those walls start to corrode they become permeable. This means that larger molecules such as undigested food, toxins, and even different kinds of bacteria can pass through the intestinal wall and get into your bloodstream. Obviously, this is bad news.
When this happens, your body must respond to the threat. Your body responds to these foreign substances by triggering an immune reaction. Which can cause autoimmune diseases, digestive problems, and create additional food allergies. Not fun right?
Your body will then actually begin to produce antibodies to protect itself from certain foods or food groups and that my friend is how you get a food allergy.
So what causes leaky gut?
There are numerous causes, but I’m just going to stick to a couple.
- Stress
- Diets that are high in sugar, processed foods, refined flours.
- Consuming to much medication like ibuprofen and aspirin.
- Alcohol and caffeine.
As you can see, there is a range of different ways that one can obtain a leaky gut. If you think that you have leaky gut, here are some of the symptoms: depression, arthritis, a feeling of bloating in your abdomen, fatigue, pains in your joint or muscle, and fibromyalgia.
Awesome, what’s the solution?
The big key is identifying and removing the thing or things that are contributing to this condition. And at the same time nurturing your body with other foods that it needs to repair itself.
I suggest you do the following.
- Get rid of alcohol and caffeine from your daily list of habits.
- Quit taking anti-inflammatory drugs.
- Consume probiotics to help increase the number of good microbes in your intestines.
- Eat 7 to 9 servings of fruits and vegetables daily.
- Greatly reduce or quit completely the consumption of sugar, processed foods, and refined flours.
- Drink lots of water :-).
I get it, none of those solutions are super sexy and fun.
Regardless go be awesome!
KELLEN LAKE – My guts aren’t leaky…are yours : (
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