Defining Food Sensitivities

by | Mar 6, 2012 | Diet, Digestion, Elimination Diet, Food Sensitivities, Gluten Free, Leaky Gut, Naturopathic Philosophy, Nutrition, Skin health, Therapeutic Diets, Treating the Cause

It seems that almost everyone is “gluten-free” these days.  I often hear the following Frequently Asked Questions surrounding the gluten and dairy-free phenomenon: Is this a trend?  If these people have gluten allergies, why don’t they need to carry an epi-pen?  Is this just a weight loss fad?  For answers, read on for a naturopathic medical student’s explanation about food sensitivities.

Our immune systems are powerful things, they prevent us from the deadly pathogens we encounter daily (even those that happily reside in our own bodies).  When we get sick, it is often not the bug that causes our symptoms, but our own body that creates inflammation and feelings of lethargy and malaise as it fights the pathogen.  As necessary as our immune systems are, they also have the potential to attack the cells of our own bodies, which we see in a class of diseases termed autoimmune diseases.  Our gastrointestinal tract also has a powerful immune system of its own because it is important for our body to ensure the harmful pathogens that we accidentally ingest don’t enter the rest of our body.  This immune system, however, has the potential to react to non-harmful substances, like food proteins, and cause detrimental effects to our body.  This is known as a food allergy.

There are many types of immune reactions but one of the most common is the IgE (a type of antibody) hypersensitivity reaction.  This is the reaction experienced by people with hayfever and anaphylaxis (from peanut allergies, for example).  In these reactions, the body reacts to the otherwise non-harmful substance, such as a peanut, in a severe manner – potentially causing the throat to swell to the point where it closes, causing suffocation.  This is why people with peanut allergies must take extreme caution to avoid the source of their food allergy.

When someone claims to be allergic or “sensitive” to gluten or dairy, however, they are likely referring to an IgG mediated immune reaction, which causes different effects, to varying degrees. Rather than the very acute, life-threatening effects of some IgE anaphylactic immune reactions, IgG-mediated reactions often manifest as inflammation and chronic disease. In these types of food allergies, there is often the presence of “leaky gut” or intestinal permeability.  A normal intestine has rows of cells into which food molecules enter.  These cells are normally tightly linked by molecules called “tight junctions”, which prevent food molecules (proteins, fats and sugars) from entering the spaces between the cells.  This means that food molecules must go through the cells in order to get into the rest of the body.  When food enters our gut it is broken down by enzymes into its most minute particles and absorbed into intestinal cells.  In a normal, healthy body, we do not want complex particles of food to get into our blood stream. When large proteins are found in our blood, our body sees them as being foreign and potentially harmful, and our immune system attacks them.

In a person with leaky gut, however, the junctions between the intestinal cells are broken and spaces are created between the cells.  When food is taken in, whole proteins from the food (gluten is the protein found in wheat and casein is the protein in dairy products) slip through the spaces between the intestinal cells and enter the blood stream in large pieces.  The immune system then attacks these proteins, causing a series of unpleasant events, mostly involving inflammation and feelings of malaise.  Many scientists claim that chronic inflammation is the cause of all major disease.  Scientists are unsure what causes leaky gut, but some theories include general inflammation from stress, excessive alcohol consumption or a lack of friendly gut bacteria that keep the “bad” bacteria from taking over and wrecking havoc. However, there is an increasing body of evidence showing that leaky gut may be caused by a hyper-reaction of the gut’s immune system to certain foods.  These proteins then enter through the spaces between the cells into the bloodstream and to the rest of the body, causing a widespread array of unpleasant symptoms.

Most naturopaths profess that autoimmune-type diseases, inflammatory diseases, gastrointestinal complaints and some cases of psychiatric disorders coexist with some form of food intolerance and that, when the food that the patient is sensitive to is removed, the disease symptoms go away.  Examples of diseases that may be a result of food sensitivities include:

migraines

acne or other skin conditions

Lupus

Arthritis and gout

Irritable Bowel Syndrome or Inflammatory Bowel Disease

GI complaints such as bloating, gas or constipation

Ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s

Celiac disease (specifically defined as an allergy to gluten, the protein in wheat, rye and barley)

Psychiatric disorders, such as depression, schizophrenia or anxiety

Asthma

Childhood ADHD

Autism

Any disease in which there is pain or inflammation

And the list goes on.

Naturopathic testing for food intolerances involve the Elimination Diet, which is a strict removal of all foods that are common causes of sensitivities.  My clinical nutrition professor claims that in the majority of cases, gluten and casein (from dairy products) are the culprit.  The foods are removed for 30 days and most patients experience a complete reversal of their pain and symptoms.  Our professor told us an amazing story about a patient with autism who, at the age of 9 years old, began to talk for the first time after eliminating an allergy-causing food and then proceeded to live a normal life.

At the end of the removal phase, the patient is then asked to reintroduce the foods, in a controlled and systematic fashion, under the guidance of their naturopathic doctor.  If symptoms return upon reintroducing a certain food, then that food is deemed the culprit and, if they want to remain free of disease, they are advised to avoid that food for life.  Being gluten or dairy-free may be a difficult lifestyle change for some individuals, but, for most, it is a small inconvenience compared to the incredible results they experience.  Also, due to the growing understanding about the prevalence of food sensitivities, many gluten-free options and dairy alternatives are available at most restaurants and grocery stores.

Medical doctor Alan R. Gaby, wrote an excellent paper examining studies of patients with migraine headaches, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), asthma, arthritis and ADHD.  When put on the Elimination Diet, 92% of the migraine sufferers and 91% of the people with arthritis experienced complete reduction of symptoms.  No drug in the world has shown to produce results like that!

For the full paper, and the rest of the results, click here: http://www.altmedrev.com/publications/3/2/90.pdf

The Elimination Diet is a powerful naturopathic tool and has shown to improve and cure many patients’ symptoms.  It’s a great example of “identifying and removing the cause of disease”, which is one of the 6 principles of naturopathic medicine.  If you are interested in seeing how this diet may help you identify a food allergy and experience freedom from your symptoms, please contact a naturopathic doctor in your area.

Also check out http://www.elanaspantry.com/ or more of this blog, Art and Practice, for some excellent gluten and dairy-free recipe ideas!

The Power of Gratitude

by | Mar 5, 2012 | Addiction, Balance, Breath, Emotions, Empathy, Exercise, Finding yourself, Gratitude, Love, Meditation, Mental Health, Mindfulness, Psychology

I don’t know about you but the word “gratitude” carries a fair amount of guilt and resentment for me. Being citizens of privileged countries like Canada, we’re constantly told that we should be grateful, as in, “finish your food, there are starving children in Africa!”

This realization that we have certain things that others do not often results in guilty feelings about the facts of life that we’re not responsible for (directly) and cannot change.  Gratitude, at least for me, has associated feelings of injustice and helplessness.  It is almost as if that by admitting I am grateful for my food, my home, my family, my friends, etc., I am acknowledging the fact that I, more than anyone else, did not earn or deserve them and brings to light the possibility that these things can be taken from me.

When we talk about meditating on or cultivating a feeling of gratitude, the opposite is usually understood.  We seek to cultivate gratitude precisely for the reason that we are, in fact, not grateful and are focusing on the negative aspects of our lives, the things we are not grateful for.

However, gratitude is not about guilt-trips or comparisons.  It’s simply recognizing that we are all fortunate in our own way, helping us to see the full half of our glasses.

A classmate once showed a group of students and I a powerful and engaging visualization exercise based on recognizing the things to be grateful for in our lifes.  I often struggle in meditation, especially the stricter Vipassana or Zen meditations, in which we are told to calm and focus the mind.  It seems that more I try to focus the more I realize I am trying, pushing to make something happen and then the more I try not to try.  And try not to try not to try.  Until I get lost in a vast tangle of effort.  (How can we exert the effort to find effortlessness?) I found with the gratitude meditation, however, my mind calmed, focused and participated in the meditation.  My mind was free to conjure up images in a Freudian pattern of free association, and I simply had to acknowledge that I was, indeed, grateful for those things.

I started by sitting quietly and focusing on my breath, calming it, deepening it and quietening it.  The first thought I began with was “I am grateful for my breath.”  I began to feel a sensation of blissful relaxation as I reveled in the beauty, simplicity and luxury of my breath. Without trying to sound flakey, I found myself bask in the gratefulness for it.  I moved on to other body sensations, gifts and functions – “I am grateful for my lungs, for my brown hair, for a body that can meditate and relax, for this cushion, for the way I can stretch, enjoy yoga, exercise and move outside.” I let my mind wander on to the next object, maintaining mindfulness by reminding myself to acknowledge the gratitude I felt towards these things: my home, my dog, my school, country, books, nature, loving family, the sun.  Whatever came up, I recognized my gratitude for having it in my life.

The most therapeutic and eye-opening part of the meditation, however, was when my mind, as most minds do, began to wander to more negative aspects of my life, things that I wasn’t necessarily grateful for – my exams, work, stress, anxiety, family problems, school problems, uncertainty, long distance relationship, lack of money, etc.  I then realized how, despite what I originally thought, I was actually grateful for these things.  Negative experiences supplied the yin to my yang, they helped to balance and shape who I am and without these perceptibly negative times, I wouldn’t have faced the challenges and character-building situations that have made me who I am and led me to where I am.

Once I got the grateful ball rolling, the possibilities were endless.  After a few minutes, I ended the meditation and left with a clear sense of relaxation and satisfaction for all that I have, both positive and negative.

I’ve noticed that cultivating gratitude is an important ingredient in overcoming addictions and dealing with mental illness. In the AA meeting I recently attended, I noticed a running them of gratitude and the need to thank the Higher Power on a daily basis.  I once read a saying, “Image if you woke up tomorrow with just the things you thanked God for today.”  Whether you are comfortable with the G word or not, I think this idea opens our minds to the many riches we may not realize we have (not just the food on our table that we should eat because of the Africans who may not have it) but the totality of our life experience.

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