Food intolerances and allergies is a bit like the old ‘chicken and egg’ scenario trying to work out why you have reactions to certain foods, environmental variables and toxins. Is it because you have a leaky gut or has the food caused the leaky gut? Do you have parasites causing the issues or is it your nervous system out of balance? And do any of those things make you unwell or are they all connected? or is it your mindset and how you look at food and how you talk to your body? or is it that the foods you keep eating are causing your body harm?

Well you can go around the bend trying to work it out on your own. I highly recommend seeing a Bio-medical Doctor or Allergy Specialist to help you find of what your triggers are.  And working with myself to find your bottom beliefs and work on a Bio-individual eating plan low in irritant foods and high in natural healing foods.

As although the carrot or pecan on its own is not the reason your unwell it may be causing you more harm if you continue to eat it. Once your immune system is weak your leaky gut will start to form holes and allow food particle that are to big to get into the blood stream. Causing the body to attack that healthy carrot as if it was a bad bacteria and cause the body to be inflammed. If this continues for a long time without being healed, the body will continue attacking its own good cells not just the bad which is called an Auto-immune condition. Once this starts unless you are sealing and healing the gut, the holes will get bigger and the food you react to will grow and grow until your down to a few “safe foods” and then because your eating them daily the immune style gets weaker and attacks its self more causing more symptoms and more health issues. So really its not about what the food is, but how to heal your gut so you can enjoy all healthy foods again. Working with a good Doctor versed in food intolerance’s to heal your body whilst avoiding the high trigger foods is the key. Although through experience I recommend not removing all of your trigger foods, but to use the rotation method, as if you remove all those foods and only eat a few your body will become immune to those too. I not suggesting you eat foods causing you problems daily but if tomatoes are a really high allergen for you, just have then once a month or so to keep your body used to them and to keep the variety and colour and vitamins in your diet. Often on elimination diets you get very malnutrition and lack the nutrients your body need to heal it self and the brain is starved. But I do believe that if you have ‘leaky gut’ and those with any of the symptoms below have a ‘leaky gut’ of some degree, then limiting dairy to raw or organic and occasionally, only and if you can tolerate it without more symptoms. And strictly NO grains, dairy, sugars of any kind even “natural”, caffeine including chocolate and alcohol till your gut is healed as these foods will keep you from healing and set you back each time you indulge. To help you understand I have compiled a list of food reactions:

• heart palpitations
• increased heart rate
• low blood pressure
• high blood pressure
• wheezing
• allergic asthma
• acne
• weight gain and loss
• excessive sweating
• rashes
• hives and welts
• ADHD and behavioural issues
• sensitivities to mossy bites
• eczema
• psoriasis
• joint ache and swelling
• fibromyalgia (muscle pain)
• water retention-edema
• week nails
• hair loss and low growth
• eye brow and lash loss
• ear infections
• mucous in nose ears and throat
• blurred vision
• spots and flickers in front of your eyes
• swelling of eye lids
• red sore scratchy dye eyes
• sensitive to light
• sneezing after food but do not have a cold
• head aches
• migraines
• neck pain
• smelly discharge and sweat
• bumps on the back of your arms
• runny nose
• frequent colds (more than 1x a year)
• frequent infections (more than 1x a year)
• blocked nose
• brain fog
• body chills
• body aches
• stomach cramps
• colic in babies (knees up to chest and screaming)
• bloating
• constipation- stools green, clay coloured, dry balls, floating or sinking away.
• diarrhoea
• undigested food
• moody
• depressed
• anxious
• mouth ulcers
• cold-sores
• vertigo
• red around the nose and mouth and sore
• red cheeks in children
• vomiting and nausea
• light headedness
• fainting after food

I recommend the following way to test your child or yourself for allergies and food intolerance’s under supervision of an expert you will get a good list of foods to eat and the ones to have on rotation. And those ones like dairy, grains and sugars to avoid.

A raw food high fruit cleanse based on “80 10 10”- this is  fast way to restore balance in the microbiome and cleanse the body from candida. being high in fruit during the day then a raw said meal at night you allow easy digestion and health carbohydrates to fuel glucose to the brain. This has helped me over come many food intolerance and being variety back in to my diet.once you have done the cleanse you can re introduce foods with a positive mindset and belief work.

Water Fasting under a supervised practitioner– Read Dr Herbet Sheltons books first please or contact me.

Low Dose Immunotherapy- This method of testing will help you to quickly identify and potentially treat your allergies and intolerances so a nutritionally well-balanced diet becomes a more realistic option for you. Over a 3-4 day period in the clinic at ‘Your Health’ Brighton Melbourne you will be tested for 25 plus foods to see how your body reacts. Then reach your bodies level where those symptoms start to switch off. Once the testing is complete you will have your own personalised cocktail with a histamine in it to inject daily. so you can eat those 25 plus foods safely without your immune system switching on to attack them. This gives your body the chance to eat healing nutritious foods to heal your gut. I strongly recommended this treatment for those of you eating just a few foods and reacting to your home and environmental toxins, but it’s expensive at $500 a day and it works along side working with a Doctor to heal your gut and a supplementary plan to work on the bodies deficiencies. For children they use a saline dropper on the tongue so no needles needed. It’s a pain fee easy way of testing your children with true accuracy. http://allergyintolerancetreatment.com

A word about other testing mehtods: Blood test-  Although this gives you up to 80 foods quickly and with little pain and cost, the issue is the blood test will only show what the body is reacting to at the time of the blood test i.e. the foods you eat the most. This does not show a true indication of the body, as the carrot could not be the issue but as its been eaten with the cheese, and the cheese the culprit then your body all attack this food too. Also as I have mentioned if your gut is damaged you will be reacting to most foods. They also promotes avoiding that high food completely and as I have also mentioned that makes the body react to the small amounts of food you are eating. You are better to remove only the big food groups that cause issues like soy, grains, sugars and chemicals and rotate your health’s foods to lessen the load.

Kinesiology Muscle Testing and Vaga Testing – Both of these methods are controversial and you will find people that swear by them and others who knock them down. In my opinion I believe they can work well, but you have to have a great relationship with your therapist as they can sway the results. You also have to be calm and focussed so this can be hard for children and often the results can be varied. I had good results with Vaga testing to help me when I started The Elimination diet but on experience I would have just gone straight to The Gaps Diet. I believe Kinesiology holds many great benefits for releasing energy and helping balance the body but is to varied for food intolerance testing.

My conclusion is to not demonise a particular healthy food but to avoid the worst food groups, soy, grains, sugars and dairy for some and rotate the healthy foods like vegetables, proteins, fruit, nuts and seeds and good fats so your body doesn’t not get used to them and can cope with them in small doses. Whilst and this has to be the most important thing you do . . . work on healing the gut lining and repairing the holes. Taking digestive enzymes can help as will a good probiotic and eating prebiotic foods, raw real foods, fruits and good fats help restore the gut lining too.

An example of this is bananas used to make me angry so I stop eating them completely. Once my gut had healed I added them in again, but now I find blueberries have that effect on me . . why because all I ate was blueberries. Now I have blueberries occasionally and banana occasional with little effect. I try to rotate my foods and always continuer to strengthen my gut and heal my body.

The alternative is you will keep getting more and more intolerant to foods and environments and your body will think its safer to shut down. And as someone who has been there it is not nice and you do not want the T-shirt!

On this blog I hope to show you there are always alternatives to your favourite foods and swapping one for another means you can still enjoy your favourite snack without all the pain and discomfort.