“Lions, and tigers, and bears…oh my!” What do lions and tigers and bears (oh my!) have to do with food?
I like to think about food “difficulties” along the terms of lions, tigers, and bears. In the wonderful world of food problems, we have food allergies, food intolerances, and food sensitivities. We throw the words around interchangeably all of the time, but the terms are actually quite different!
In the animal kingdom, the lion often thought of as the king of the jungle. You don’t mess around with the king, and you certainly don’t mess around with food allergies. Food allergies can be lethal within minutes of eating a food that your body thinks is problematic. Allergies are depicted by the prototypical scenario of eating a peanut and experiencing lip and tongue swelling, throat swelling and constriction, difficulty breathing, or anaphylaxis. This is due to the immediate reactions mediated in your body by IgE antibodies. The simplest way to explain what the IgE antibodies do is to tell you that these antibodies send signals to our mast cells and basophils to explode their contents. Mast cells and basophils are specialized warriors in our immune system that contain potent histamines, bradykinins, and other chemicals that cause localized inflammation in an effort to wall off a foreign invader—even if the invader is a food like nuts or strawberries.
In my mind, tigers are big kitty cats. That’s probably not wise on my part, and I’d certainly change my mindset about them if ever I was to come across one in the wild. However, in every zoo I’ve ever visited, the tigers are always horse-playing with one another. Everything is great until someone takes it too far and gets a little rough. Wham—it happens in a matter of seconds! Playful tugs become ferocious bites and paws suddenly bare claws. This is exactly what happens with food intolerances. Bear with me here…this is an analogy after all. When you eat something like cheese, you need to have the right digestive enzymes to chew up the proteins, the fats, and the sugars found in cheese. If you don’t have enough of the enzymes or if your enzymes are a bit lazy, you won’t digest the food item completely. Digestion may be percolating along just fine in the stomach and then in the duodenum (where the stomach empties its contents). Then, the problem comes in the next part of the small intestines. It’s time to start absorbing the nutrients that you just ate, but you can’t absorb them well because you’ve only partially digested your food. Wham. All of the sudden, you go from feeling okay with that eating that hunk of colby to feeling bloated, gassy, and maybe even a bit nauseated. Then, you’re hit with abdominal cramping or even watery diarrhea. This is the typical scenario with food intolerances—they’re usually caused by a lack of a digestive enzyme and don’t have a thing to do with your immune system like in the previous lion/allergy scenario.
Last, we have the bear. Beyond Pooh’s insatiable appetite for honey, he also has a penchant for sleeping. After all, bears do hibernate for months at a time, right? During hibernation, all of the inner workings and systems of this glorious animal are affected and slow down. This is where food sensitivities come in to the analogy. Food sensitivities are tough and they’re actually more prevalent in our society than food allergies! They can affect any or all of our systems! It’s not just about lip swelling and hives anymore. Now, we have a multitude of systems that can be affected:
- Neurological: brain fog, difficulties concentrating, irritability, depression, headaches, and even migraines
- Immune: recurrent infections of the sinuses or ears, congestion, runny nose, post-nasal drip
- Dermatological: rashes, itching, allergic shiners
- GI: gas, pain, bloating, stomach upset, diarrhea, constipation
- Somatic: joint pain, muscle pain, muscle fatigue, or even general fatigue
Some people experience only one or two of the above symptoms; some experience even more when they eat a food to which they are sensitive. The worst part of it all is that these symptoms may be delayed by as much as 24, 48, or even 72 hours! Some studies show that food sensitivity reactions may be delayed as much as 7 days!
Real quick: what did you eat 72 hours ago? Can you recall breakfast, lunch, dinner, and that mid-afternoon snack you had 7 days ago? It’s hard to recall, and herein lies the problem with food sensitivities…they’re really a “bear” to deal with because often we’re not aware that we’re eating something that we’re sensitive to because the symptoms from eating it may be delayed by days. People don’t often put two and two together when symptoms aren’t immediate as is the case with food allergies and food intolerances.
So what’s the delay all about? With food sensitivities, we’re dealing with a completely different part of the immune system. After ingesting a food that you are sensitive to, the body is going to work on it within minutes. Your immune system is surveying all that food you’re eating and when you eat something that you’re sensitive to, command central in the immune system will identify these foods through IgG antibodies. These IgG antibodies work quite differently from the IgE antibodies that we talked about with food allergies. IgG antibodies go to work to recruit more IgG antibodies that are specific to the food item that is now considered a “foreign invader”. It may take a while for IgG to migrate to the right place and attach to the “foreign invader” to create what we call an “immune complex”. Think about how bees will swarm around the bear when she finds the honey in their hive…you have one foreign invader (the bear) and hundreds to thousands of bees (IgG). That’s one heck of an immune complex.
Immune complexes can travel through our circulation and deposit in any number of sites, from the brain and nervous system to sinus and lung passages to skin to the GI tract to muscles and joints. This process can take hours to days to take place. This is why we can experience delayed symptoms throughout so many of our different systems.
What are the foods that are the most likely culprits? Are you eating any of them? In today’s food landscape we have the sinister seven:
- Beef and pork (both red meats)
- Gluten (found in wheat, rye, barley, triticale, spelt, kamut)
- Dairy
- Eggs
- Soy
- Peanuts
- Corn (It’s the “new gluten” now that over 95% of our corn is genetically-modified.)
How do you know if something in the sinister seven is a problem for you? What if it’s something seemingly innocuous aside from these “sinister” foods, like chicken or broccoli or apples? In functional medicine, we can test for the most common food sensitivities and beyond. These aren’t the tests that the traditional allergists use either—no skin pricking, just routine blood work with vast panels to give you detailed and personalized information that you can use to become as healthy as possible. For those individuals who may not want to test for food sensitivities, you always have the option to do an elimination diet, wherein you eliminate a suspicious food for a period of time—usually 21 to 28 days. You then reintroduce the food to see if it causes symptoms on reintroduction or even 24 to 48 hours later. The elimination diet is a powerful tool in helping many to sort out food sensitivities, but when the answers aren’t clear, we always have the option in functional medicine to test for IgG-mediated food sensitivities.
Food allergies, intolerances, and sensitivities…oh my! If you suspect that you may have a food-related problem, we’re here to help you find your way down that curious yellow-brick road—especially if you find that you have multiple food sensitivities as most people do. Multiple food sensitivities are a hallmark of leaky gut syndrome…but that’s a topic best-suited for the next blog post!
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