Research has now proven beyond doubt that your microbiome the bacteria and other microorganisms that live in your gut has a huge bearing on your health.

Recent findings tell us that the microbiome plays a key role in the development of both allergies and intolerances.

Pregnancy appears to bring about food intolerances for some women, while it can reverse food intolerances for others! Nobody knows for sure why food intolerances or allergies develop.

Gut dysbiosis an imbalance of the communities of bacteria and other microbes in your gut. Dysbiosis compromises your gut immunity and digestive power, and increases your chances of leaky gut which has in fact been linked in research to food intolerances and allergies.

Allergies are much less common in rural environments. Some experts say that children should be exposed to allergens like wheat earlier, while others say that delaying exposure can decrease the incidence of allergies. Breastfeeding has been proven to reduce allergies.

Many people suggest that our bodies cannot recognise the altered proteins in genetically modified or processed food. We only started eating wheat and dairy ten thousand years ago: a tiny fraction of our evolutionary history.

Our nutrient-poor, calorie-dense diets compromise our immune systems. Poor diets are the leading cause of immunodeficiency worldwide. However, we do know which foods—or components of foods, to be more precise—are most likely to give you your symptoms.

A carbohydrate, or sugar, found in all milk products to a greater or lesser extent. That means a type of sugar made up of two molecules. In fact, only 13 percent of ethnic Chinese adults 9 produce lactase.

Gut dysbiosis and some diseases can also hamper our ability to produce lactase. Fructose is another type of carbohydrate, or sugar: a monosaccharide, to be precise.

There are a few different types of fructose intolerance. The most common is fructose malabsorption. It affects 40 percent of people in the western hemisphere. People with fructose malabsorption cannot properly absorb or digest fructose.

As a result, fructose passes into the large intestine, causing gas, diarrhoea and pain. Gluten is a general name for the proteins found in wheat.

Gluten helps foods maintain their shape, acting as a glue that holds food together. However recent research is proving otherwise. Alessio Fasano, a Harvard gastroenterologist, found that in gluten sensitivity, your immune system can respond to gluten by fighting it directly.

That creates inflammation both inside and outside the digestive system, with documented effects on the brain, 10 thyroid function 11 and more. Coeliac disease is different. Raisins, prunes, apricots, blackberries, blueberries, cherries, cranberries, grapes, pineapples, plums, oranges, tangerines, strawberries, guava.

Broccoli, cucumbers, okra, chicory, endive, radish, zucchini, watercress, alfalfa sprouts, eggplant, squash, sweet potato, spinach, artichokes, broad beans. Curry, aniseed, cayenne, dill, ginger, allspice, cinnamon, clove, mustard, cumin, oregano, pimiento, tarragon, turmeric, paprika, thyme, rosemary.

Tea, rum, wine, cordials, vinegar, gravies, mints, almonds, water chestnuts, honey, licorice, jam, chewing gum, pickles, olives, food colourings, aloe vera. A salicylate allergy or intolerance is a reaction that happens when you come in contact with salicylates, also known as salicylic acid. Salicylates are found in almost all plants.

The buildup of leukotrienes in the body leads to symptoms related to salicylate intolerance. The most common symptoms involve the respiratory tract. However, the skin and intestinal tract may also be affected. Symptoms can include : You can get food poisoning from any food or drink contaminated with infectious organisms usually bacteria.

However you can also get food poisoning from viruses and parasites, or their toxins. Food poisoning symptoms vary. Most types of food poisoning cause one or more of the following signs and symptoms:.

A lot of people report food intolerances after a bout of food poisoning. Many people with IBS remember their symptoms beginning after an upset stomach or vomiting bug.

This particular study showed a particular type of immune reaction IgE to be responsible for symptoms of stomach pain and other IBS symptoms. Food additives are in almost all processed foods. A good way to avoid them is to only eat whole, unprocessed foods! They usually fall into one or more of the following categories:.

Specific types of additives that you may react to include:. These preservatives are common in processed meats. Symptoms of an intolerance can include headaches and hives. It can give you headaches, chest tightness, nausea, and diarrhoea.

Wine, dried fruits, and shrimps are all sources of sulfites. If you have an intolerance, you might experience chest tightness, hives, diarrhoea or even anaphylaxis. The food industry claims that all additives are safe, but many experts believe that a number of them can cause problems for some people.

There are thousands of different food additives. For instance, one study 15 showed that food additives used to thicken and stabilise processed foods may disrupt the bacterial makeup of the gut, causing health problems.

In the study, mice that were fed two chemicals commonly added to foods gained weight, had altered blood sugar and developed intestinal problems.

These particular chemicals were emulsifying agents, very common additives that hold together food products that include fat and water, which would otherwise separate. Why the difference? The peanut-allergy mice, another report showed, had a genetic glitch that damages a receptor called TLR4 that sits in the membranes of immune cells and recognizes microbes.

It looked as though the peanut-allergy mice lacked the normal cross talk that takes place between gut microbes and immune cells. Perhaps the trillions of microbes that live in us suppress immune responses to food by stimulating the TLR4 receptor. And perhaps perturbations in that teeming microbiome alter the suppression and cause a rise in allergies.

The idea meshes with historical trends. As societies modernized, people moved to urban areas, had more babies by cesarean section, took more antibiotics and ate more processed, low-fiber foods—all of which shake up microbiomes.

The timing of these lifestyle shifts parallels the observed increase in food and other types of allergies, whose steep rise over a generation points to some environmental cause.

In , Nagler and her coworkers published a report showing that peanuts provoked anaphylaxis only in mice with a mutated TLR4 receptor , not in genetically related strains with a normal TLR4. The difference disappeared when the scientists wiped out populations of gut bacteria with antibiotics.

Then, even normal mice became susceptible to food allergies, implying that bacteria are at the heart of the protection. Working with mice bred in a germ-free environment and thus without any microbiome at all, the team found that Clostridia , but not Bacteroides , prevented food-allergic responses when introduced into the guts of the squeaky-clean mice.

The Clostridia mice also produced more of a molecule called IL that strengthens the intestinal lining. A new theory began to emerge: If protective microbes are missing, the gut barrier weakens, allowing food proteins to seep into the bloodstream and potentially trigger allergic responses.

This reasoning jibes well with the curious observation that top food allergens certain proteins found in milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, soy, wheat, fish and shellfish bear little biochemical resemblance to each other.

What they do have in common is the ability to remain intact in the digestive tract, which normally breaks food into small pieces that the body absorbs as nutrients. Analyzing feces of healthy babies and those with egg or milk allergies, researchers showed that allergic and nonallergic infants had different communities of gut bacteria.

Another study tracked children with milk allergy from infancy to age 8. The scientists found that certain bacteria, including Clostridia , were enriched in stool samples from 3- to 6-month-old infants who eventually outgrew their allergy , compared to those who remained allergic.

From birth, our immune systems get schooled in life-or-death choices. They learn to kill germs, tumors and dying cells. Much else in their surroundings they must learn to leave alone—nerve fibers, bone tissue, proteins from milk and cookies consumed at snack time.

In one of the studies, Nagler and coworkers collected gut bacteria from the feces of healthy and milk-allergic babies and put those collections of microbes into the digestive tracts of germ-free mice.

Using mathematical and computer science techniques to analyze the results, the team identified bacterial strains that were present in healthy but not allergic babies. They also examined gene activity in cells lining the intestines—certain gene patterns are characteristic of a healthy gut barrier—and looked for microbes whose presence correlated with a healthy barrier.

One Clostridia species, Anaerostipes caccae , popped out of both analyses. When the scientists transferred A.

caccae alone into germ-free mice, it seemed to mimic the protection imparted by a full, healthy microbiome. Regulatory T cells were key to the response and were spurred into action by the microbes. These and other studies clearly show that the microbiome is important for preventing food allergies and inducing tolerance, says Carina Venter, a research dietician at the University of Colorado in Denver who is studying links between maternal diet during pregnancy, microbiomes of infants and risk for eczema and allergies.

The many unknowns leave a quandary for researchers hoping to develop better treatments for food allergies: Is it better to supply a full, healthy microbiome, or to replenish just a few helpful microbes?

In this small trial , adults with peanut allergies will swallow pills containing a full slate of gut bacteria from healthy donors pre-screened for safety by the nonprofit stool bank OpenBiome.

The approach, known as fecal transplantation , is not FDA-approved but is increasingly used to treat severe intestinal disorders with the aim of fixing diseased microbiomes by infusing healthy, balanced ones. Other trials are also underway. Using the protective strains identified by the Boston team, Pareto Bio of La Jolla, California, is developing a live microbial product to treat food allergies.

Another company, Vedanta Biosciences of Cambridge, Massachusetts, is developing a probiotic capsule that contains a mix of Clostridia strains selected for their ability to induce regulatory T cells.

Vedanta is testing the capsules as an add-on to oral immunotherapy in adults with peanut allergies. A third company, Prota Therapeutics of Melbourne, Australia, is commercializing a similar strategy combining peanut oral immunotherapy with a probiotic—in their case, a Lactobacillus strain commonly prescribed for gastrointestinal problems.

Administering whole microbiomes from donors is not without risk: Four patients have been hospitalized, and one died, from serious infections linked to stool transplants. So some researchers think it may be better to use precisely defined species. Traditionally, patients receive antibiotics to help new bacteria gain a foothold.

A start-up that Nagler cofounded with University of Chicago biomolecular engineer Jeff Hubbell—ClostraBio—is developing a therapy that combines live bacteria with a key microbial metabolite, butyrate. The chemical is known to enhance gut barrier function and may also have antimicrobial effects, which could help create a niche for the added microbes.

ClostraBio plans to launch its first human trial by , Nagler says. Over the next few years, researchers will learn more about harnessing the microbiome to fight food allergies.

However, the skin and intestinal tract may also be affected. Symptoms can include : You can get food poisoning from any food or drink contaminated with infectious organisms usually bacteria. However you can also get food poisoning from viruses and parasites, or their toxins.

Food poisoning symptoms vary. Most types of food poisoning cause one or more of the following signs and symptoms:. A lot of people report food intolerances after a bout of food poisoning. Many people with IBS remember their symptoms beginning after an upset stomach or vomiting bug. This particular study showed a particular type of immune reaction IgE to be responsible for symptoms of stomach pain and other IBS symptoms.

Food additives are in almost all processed foods. A good way to avoid them is to only eat whole, unprocessed foods! They usually fall into one or more of the following categories:. Specific types of additives that you may react to include:. These preservatives are common in processed meats.

Symptoms of an intolerance can include headaches and hives. It can give you headaches, chest tightness, nausea, and diarrhoea. Wine, dried fruits, and shrimps are all sources of sulfites. If you have an intolerance, you might experience chest tightness, hives, diarrhoea or even anaphylaxis.

The food industry claims that all additives are safe, but many experts believe that a number of them can cause problems for some people. There are thousands of different food additives. For instance, one study 15 showed that food additives used to thicken and stabilise processed foods may disrupt the bacterial makeup of the gut, causing health problems.

In the study, mice that were fed two chemicals commonly added to foods gained weight, had altered blood sugar and developed intestinal problems. These particular chemicals were emulsifying agents, very common additives that hold together food products that include fat and water, which would otherwise separate.

Packaged products are very loaded with emulsifiers and freshly cooked foods are not, so this is one of the simplest ways to avoid these agents. Food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances can go unnoticed for years. You might have no idea that the foods you eat every day are causing your symptoms.

Unfortunately, the only way to work out which ones could be bothering you is to systematically remove the most common offenders from your diet. At Healthpath we use a wide range of elimination diets with our customers.

Our practitioners choose the best one for each customer based on their health history, their symptoms and their food diary. After following the diet for a number of weeks, we recommend that you reintroduce foods one by one and watch what happens to your body.

Many people find that they can reintroduce foods after a few months of cutting them out. All our elimination diets are nutrient-dense, whole-food eating plans that aim to heal your gut lining and promote a healthy microbiome.

By improving your overall gut health, intestinal permeability and digestion, you might find that you enjoy your favourite foods—in moderation—again.

Before her natural health career, Alex was a journalist and copywriter. She continues to write for magazines and media agencies, and now combines her two great passions—writing and health—by creating content that empowers people to claim their right to a healthy body and mind.

SIBO is confusing. Functional Medicine seeks to identify and tackle the root causes of disease. The twentieth century saw incredible advances in the Introducing the Grilled Salmon and Herb Frittata — This recipe promises to refresh your meal routine with its simplicity and nutrient-packed Our products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult with a qualified Functional Medicine practitioner or your local GP. At the time of purchase, you will only be charged for the first payment.

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Alexandra Falconer 22 Jan Gut Health , Latest Articles. By Alexandra Falconer Registered Nutritional Therapist. Test, don't guess. Choose a food intolerance test that's right for you. Shop our at-home tests. Test over foods with our at-home food intolerance test.

View our food intolerance test. Tags: causes of food intolerance , Food Allergies , food intolerances , Gut Health. Bacteria , Breath , Diet , Gut , IBS , Intestines , SIBO , SIBO test , Symptoms , test.

chronic disease , conventional medicine , Functional Medicine , functional medicine practitioners , Persistent Bloating. Solutions Tests Supplements Partnerships Find a practitioner. Learn Help Blog Podcast Symptoms. Some people are intolerant to animal meats.

Food intolerance to meat might be linked to the way the livestock is reared. Conventionally raised livestock are given corn and soy as primary feed sources, as opposed to grazing on grasses in a pasture. These animals are also given hormones and antibiotics, all of which have the potential to affect the meat that you're eating.

If you don't tolerate certain kinds of meat, you might have indigestion, nausea, and bloating when you eat them. If you think that you are intolerant to meat, try looking for pasture-raised animals and do a food challenge with meats, paying attention to the way the animals were raised and fed.

Some people are intolerant to certain ingredients in a food product rather than the food itself. Preservatives, dyes, or other ingredients may be behind their symptoms. The most common food additive intolerances are food coloring, sodium benzoate, and sulfite in addition to the following.

Aspartame: Aspartame is an artificial sweetener used as a sugar substitute. While research is conflicting, some studies have reported depression and irritability in people with a sensitivity to aspartame.

Yeast: Symptoms are typically limited to the digestive system for people with a yeast intolerance. They are generally less severe than those of a yeast allergy. Sugar alcohols: These are often used as zero calorie alternatives to sugar.

Some people can experience major digestive issues, including bloating and diarrhea. Food allergies are diagnosed with blood tests that measure IgE antibodies, which are produced due to the body's immune response to certain foods. However, there are no tests that can diagnose a food intolerance.

Your healthcare provider might start with blood tests or even skin tests to rule out food allergies or environmental allergies as causes of your symptoms. If these come back normal, the next step is to use a food elimination diet to identify if you have a food intolerance. With an elimination diet , you remove a food from your diet completely for two weeks.

If you notice that your symptoms ease, slowly reintroduce the food. If you begin to notice the sensitivity symptoms again, go back to step one and eliminate the food for two weeks and test reintroducing it again to confirm whether there seems to be a connection.

Based on your symptoms, you might not be able to tell the difference between food intolerance and a food allergy. You should work with your healthcare provider to do an elimination diet. It can cannot be difficult to tell the difference between food allergy symptoms and food intolerance symptoms, and if you're suffering from an allergy, you need to be more cautious about re-introducing the trigger food.

You should not follow an elimination diet for a long period of time. It should be done under the direction of a registered dietician or other healthcare provider who can help you identify the specific food or additive causing symptoms and then prepare an individualized eating plan.

Throughout the period of testing a specific food, track what you eat as long as pay close attention to other factors such as weather humidity may be related to an increased rate of GI infections , mood, exercise, and menstrual cycles, all of which can affect your gastrointestinal GI tract and impact symptoms.

Keeping a food diary is key to successfully tracking your food intake and pinpointing problems. Food intolerances are not the same as food allergies although they can have similar symptoms.

A person with a food intolerance gets digestive symptoms like gas and bloating when they eat a particular food. People with an allergy have an immune response to allergens in specific foods, and they can develop serious symptoms like trouble breathing, rashes, and even anaphylaxis.

While food intolerances can be difficult to identify, they are rarely life-threatening. The best way to find out if you are intolerant to a food or an ingredient in a food product is to do an elimination diet under the guidance of your provider.

Food intolerance defined. University of Chicago Medical Center. Food allergy or food intolerance? Di costanzo M, Berni canani R. Lactose Intolerance: Common Misunderstandings. Ann Nutr Metab. Pal S, Woodford K, Kukuljan S, Ho S.

Milk Intolerance, Beta-Casein and Lactose. Published Aug Barbaro MR, Cremon C, Stanghellini V, Barbara G. Recent advances in understanding non-celiac gluten sensitivity.

doi: Rej A, Sanders DS. Gluten-free diet and its 'cousins' in irritable bowel syndrome. Samady W, Warren C, Wang J, Das R, Gupta RS. Egg Allergy in US Children. J Allergy Clin Immunol Pract. European Centre for Allergy Research Foundation. Egg intolerance. Johns Hopkins Children's Hospital.

Diet vs. What are Salicylates? Kęszycka PK, Szkop M, Gajewska D. Overall Content of Salicylic Acid and Salicylates in Food Available on the European Market.

J Agric Food Chem. Peanut Allergy. Skypala IJ, Williams M, Reeves L, Meyer R, Venter C. Sensitivity to food additives, vaso-active amines and salicylates: a review of the evidence. Clin Transl Allergy. Published Oct Harvard Health Publishing.

Try a FORMAPs diet to manage irritable bowel syndrome. University of Iowa. Uses of corn. Wilson JM, Platts-mills TAE.

Meat allergy and allergens. Mol Immunol. Lindseth, Glenda N. Neurobehavioral effects of aspartame consumption. Res Nurs Health Jun;37 3 Cuomo B, Indirli GC, Bianchi A, et al. Specific IgE and skin prick tests to diagnose allergy to fresh and baked cow's milk according to age: a systematic review.

Ital J Pediatr. Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. What is an Elimination Diet? Ghazani, M, et al. Temperature Variability and Gastrointestinal Infections: A Review of Impacts and Future Perspectives.

Int J Environ Res Public Health. The Role of Diet in Symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome in Adults: A Narrative Review. The Journal of the American Dietetic Association. July ; 7 Mullin GE, Swift KM. The Inside Tract: Your Good Gut Guide to Great Digestive Health. New York, NY: Rodale; By Barbara Bolen, PhD Barbara Bolen, PhD, is a licensed clinical psychologist and health coach.

She has written multiple books focused on living with irritable bowel syndrome. Use limited data to select advertising. Create profiles for personalised advertising. Use profiles to select personalised advertising. Create profiles to personalise content. Use profiles to select personalised content.

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List of Partners vendors. Digestive Health. Irritable Bowel Syndrome. By Barbara Bolen, PhD. Medically reviewed by Shadi Hamdeh, MD. Table of Contents View All. Table of Contents.

What Is a Food Intolerance? Foods to Eliminate. Food Allergy vs. Food Intolerance Food Allergy Symptoms Vomiting Diarrhea Skin rashes Trouble breathing Swelling Itching Hives Anaphylaxis.

Chronic stress is a significant risk factor for developing food sensitivities and is often overlooked. The gut-brain connection plays an essential role in overall gut health. Cortisol is released when we are stressed, and when released in high amounts it can decrease Secretory Immunoglobulin A sIgA.

sIgA is an immune antibody found throughout our mucosal barriers. It is the first line of defense against bacteria, food residues, yeast, parasites, and viruses.

When sIgA is decreased, our mucosal first line of defense is reduced. This can begin to disrupt the integrity of our intestinal lining, causing leaky gut syndrome.

The body starts to make antibodies to attack these foreign substances to protect you, but long-term consumption leads to GI inflammation, dysbiosis unbalanced gut bacteria , and eventually leaky gut. Food sensitivity symptoms can show up days after consumption.

This is why it is vital to test, not guess which foods are causing your reactions. I have seen patients react to spices, additives, animal proteins, and varying fruits and vegetables.

The reason behind this is once those holes are in your intestinal lining, multiple different food proteins can slip through, causing a reaction. I prefer to offer my patients a blood spot option for food sensitivity testing to increase patient compliance.

They can complete the test from the comfort of their own home. Most labs also offer serum and whole blood testing as well.

A therapeutic approach known as the 4 Rs is commonly prescribed to heal the gut. One of the first steps in addressing food sensitivity is eliminating the food or foods that are causing symptoms for a period of months while addressing the other underlying factors.

Research shows that it can take up to 6 months for the body to stop making antibodies against the food and longer depending on several other factors. It will most likely take you longer to stop producing IgG antibodies if you have a higher existing concentration and are not as strict with avoidance of foods.

The second step is to replace these foods with nutrients in the diet that help to reduce inflammation and optimize digestive health. The third step is to reinoculate the intestinal microbiota with beneficial bacteria.

Probiotics and fermented foods are added to rebuild good gut bacteria. A Functional Medicine Practitioner will most likely add in therapeutic grade supplements to help heal the gut lining.

L-Glutamine, Zinc Carnosine, Curcumin, Vitamin D, Collagen, and Fiber have all been shown to help decrease intestinal permeability and help reduce inflammation.

Patients should avoid highly reactive foods for at least three months. A typical reintroduction is one new food every three days to see if there is a delayed response.

Typical food sensitivity responses will be unexplained digestive upset, headache, or skin condition reemerging. Most food sensitivity tests only test for sensitivities to the proteins in foods, and lactose is a sugar.

If you have an IgG response to dairy, this means you are sensitive to the proteins in milk casein or whey protein , not the lactose sugar. If you want to test for lactose intolerance, a lactose hydrogen breath test or elimination of lactose are normally prescribed.

A Celiac diagnosis is complex and usually requires a combination of blood tests and other procedures. The antibodies traditionally tested for Celiac Disease are not the same antibodies measured in food sensitivity tests. We do have multiple different celiac disease tests on our Rupa Health platform.

Food sensitivities are commonly reintroduced after an elimination diet and most patients are able to handle them in small amounts after their immune system and gut has had time to heal. Food Sensitivities are on the rise. But with proper testing and treatment, along with nutritional guidance and education, patients can regain their gut health and enjoy their favorite foods again.

Documents Tab. Redesigned Patient Portal. There are thousands of different food additives. For instance, one study 15 showed that food additives used to thicken and stabilise processed foods may disrupt the bacterial makeup of the gut, causing health problems. In the study, mice that were fed two chemicals commonly added to foods gained weight, had altered blood sugar and developed intestinal problems.

These particular chemicals were emulsifying agents, very common additives that hold together food products that include fat and water, which would otherwise separate. Packaged products are very loaded with emulsifiers and freshly cooked foods are not, so this is one of the simplest ways to avoid these agents.

Food allergies, sensitivities and intolerances can go unnoticed for years. You might have no idea that the foods you eat every day are causing your symptoms. Unfortunately, the only way to work out which ones could be bothering you is to systematically remove the most common offenders from your diet.

At Healthpath we use a wide range of elimination diets with our customers. Our practitioners choose the best one for each customer based on their health history, their symptoms and their food diary. After following the diet for a number of weeks, we recommend that you reintroduce foods one by one and watch what happens to your body.

Many people find that they can reintroduce foods after a few months of cutting them out. All our elimination diets are nutrient-dense, whole-food eating plans that aim to heal your gut lining and promote a healthy microbiome. By improving your overall gut health, intestinal permeability and digestion, you might find that you enjoy your favourite foods—in moderation—again.

Before her natural health career, Alex was a journalist and copywriter. She continues to write for magazines and media agencies, and now combines her two great passions—writing and health—by creating content that empowers people to claim their right to a healthy body and mind.

SIBO is confusing. Functional Medicine seeks to identify and tackle the root causes of disease. The twentieth century saw incredible advances in the Introducing the Grilled Salmon and Herb Frittata — This recipe promises to refresh your meal routine with its simplicity and nutrient-packed Our products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

If you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition, consult with a qualified Functional Medicine practitioner or your local GP. At the time of purchase, you will only be charged for the first payment.

On the same day of the following month your card will be charged the second payment and so on for each remaining month of the purchase plan. To be eligible, you must own a Visa or Mastercard credit or debit card and have the entire amount of your purchase available on your card at the time of authorisation.

Debit cards have a maximum transaction value of £ per transaction. If you require to spend over this amount, you may carry out two transactions.

Credit cards have no maximum. Splitit works by pre-authorising you payment card and then splitting the payment down into monthly charges.

There is no extra charge for this service. Alexandra Falconer 22 Jan Gut Health , Latest Articles. By Alexandra Falconer Registered Nutritional Therapist. Test, don't guess.

Choose a food intolerance test that's right for you. Shop our at-home tests. Test over foods with our at-home food intolerance test. View our food intolerance test. Tags: causes of food intolerance , Food Allergies , food intolerances , Gut Health.

Bacteria , Breath , Diet , Gut , IBS , Intestines , SIBO , SIBO test , Symptoms , test. chronic disease , conventional medicine , Functional Medicine , functional medicine practitioners , Persistent Bloating. Solutions Tests Supplements Partnerships Find a practitioner.

Will Bulsiewicz: Sure. So it's important to make a distinction between these things because I find that many times we make a mistake where we were almost using these expressions with these terms interchangeably. These are [] not interchangeable terms. They shouldn't be used that way.

So, food allergies, food intolerances. Now, there is a reason why we make this sort of interchangeable. They both are manifest with symptoms. A person eats food.

And then there is a response that their body has, and that response could be many different things. So it could be digestive symptoms like gas, bloating, discomfort, change in bowel habits, like diarrhea or constipation, but it could also go beyond the gut.

It could be with the skin - you could get hives or rash, flushing, swelling. It could be something involving your cardiovascular system. You can get rapid heart rate, low blood pressure, feel lightheaded.

So there are a number of different ways that we can manifest symptoms after eating a meal. And the pattern that you will see with food allergies versus food intolerances [] is a bit different and so it's worth kind of unpacking a little bit.

Food allergies are the response of your immune system to a food. It is your immune system that is basically getting activated and going on the attack. And when this happens, it occurs with specific foods. In fact, Jonathan, there are eight specific foods that we know constitute the vast majority of food allergies.

So for people who are interested in the topic of food allergies, let me share with you what those foods are. And if you need to play this back later and write it down on a piece of paper, go ahead and do that. Those are eggs, milk-related products, wheat, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, fish [], and shellfish.

So eggs, milk, wheat, soy, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, and shellfish. These are the eight specific foods that are most likely to cause an allergy.

Now, this doesn't mean that these are bad foods or that they're harming us, but these are what we're seeing in as the most likely foods to -. Will Bulsiewicz: Exactly. So, when you eat those specific foods, you get a response, and the response with a food allergy could be digestive symptoms alone.

But most of the time, it's not. Most of the time, it's going to involve other parts of the body, like a rash, hives, swelling, runny nose, or the one that we really worry about as medical doctors is swelling - like swelling of the throat, swelling of the lips.

That's very dangerous. All right. So a food allergy is a higher level of concern for me as a medical doctor. This is the reason why, when a person has a severe peanut allergy, they can't even have the peanuts on the airplane at all. The most minimal amount could activate it.

It's not even like consuming a large amount. Transitioning over to food intolerances. Food intolerances are also symptoms that occur after food, but these are usually digestive symptoms: gas, bloating, abdominal discomfort, nausea, diarrhea, constipation.

These are the types of things that we're looking for. And food intolerances are not the immune system. This has nothing to do with the immune system, which is why we have to create this important separation. This is, if we were to simplify this, this is typically sloppy digestion. Your body is struggling to [] process and break down the food that you are consuming.

And there are a number of different foods that we know are classically associated with food intolerances. Perhaps the most common, most well-known, is dairy - milk. Because milk contains a sugar called lactose, and our body needs to break down lactose to properly digest the milk.

Will Bulsiewicz: Yeah, but actually, the population that has this the least are Northern Europeans. But, you know, lactose really exemplifies what a food intolerance is. This is not your immune system getting activated. This is different than a milk allergy. This is a case where you consume a glass of milk and you struggle to process it.

And then, as a result, you end up having cramps and [] bloating, and then you get diarrhea. And this is what people experience. Now what's important about food intolerances compared to food allergies is that this is a threshold event.

What I mean by that is there's a certain amount that you're capable of tolerating. Take the person with the most severe lactose intolerance on the planet. I can put two drops of milk on their tongue and they will not get diarrhea.

But if they have an allergy to milk, two drops on the tongue are certainly enough to activate the immune system and cause a problem. Jonathan Wolf: Got it. So this is an amazing difference in terms of scale you're talking about between this sort of allergy and intolerance then.

Will Bulsiewicz: A hundred percent - and the amount that you are capable of tolerating is very personal, and it's also a moving target. So the amount that you can tolerate today may be a certain amount, and then tomorrow it may be slightly different.

To me, a person [] doesn't have a food intolerance when they drink a gallon of milk and then get diarrhea. That would happen to any of us. But when a person is consuming a normal amount of dairy, like a glass of milk, and then they manifest symptoms as a result of that, that's what a food intolerance is.

But if hypothetically you were to reduce that amount of milk, cut it down to a quarter of a glass, they may be able to tolerate that. There's a certain amount that they would be able to tolerate. Jonathan Wolf: I think we all have the impression that there's a lot more food intolerance now than there was.

It's certainly something that people talk about a lot more. Why are people developing these food intolerances. What's going on? Is there a link with our gut bacteria? You talked about that before. Is there more now than in the past? Having distinguished now the intolerances against these very serious allergies, what's going on with this, um, apparent rise in intolerances?

Will Bulsiewicz: To comment quickly, [] Jonathan, on food allergies and it's important cause I'm going to shift gears back to food intolerances in a moment. So we have more than doubled in less than 60 years.

And the rise of food allergies is in parallel to other allergic and immune-mediated diseases. So we're seeing more celiac disease, more asthma, more Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, and we could go down the line, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, we can keep going.

There are conditions. A quick example is eosinophilic esophogitis. Jonathan, when you and I were children, this condition literally didn't exist. There was no name for this. It was in the late eighties that they started to [] identify this pattern. And this is, by the way, an allergic condition seen in both children and adults, where food is causing the immune system to get activated in the esophagus.

And it's quite common. I actually take care of it all the time as a gastroenterologist. So when it comes to allergies, our immune system is cruelly more confused in than it was 50, 60 years ago, and something is going on there.

Jonathan Wolf: That's the way to understand this, is it? Basically, it's confused because it's attacking food as if it's some sort of pathogen, some sort of illness or something when clearly it should be perfectly happy for you to be eating the eggs or the fish.

Will Bulsiewicz: Yeah, and, just to define the term a little more, an allergy is a response of your immune system to something outside of your body. So it's not just food.

In fact, the most common allergy that people have is allergic rhinitis, where, like seasonal allergies, you get exposed to pollen or dander, and you get a runny nose. Will Bulsiewicz: So asthma is an allergy, [] um, a reactive airway disease, asthma is an allergic disease.

And so those are more common, but on the flip side, you can also have a response to food. So that's what we're talking about here today. Jonathan Wolf: And Will, you've talked a lot about allergies. I think it's really fantastic to understand that distinction between the sort of stuff that's coming from the immune system and intolerances.

If we sort of switch over to intolerances, which I think for a lot of our listeners is what they're living with, right? Does exactly the same hold that you've described about where you think this comes from and why we've seen the rise? Will Bulsiewicz: Yeah, I think so, because I think that one of the critical parts of our gut microbiome that we're just starting to get a better understanding of, is that they're capable of producing digestive enzymes that we are not and they're also capable of supplementing what we are able to do in terms of our digestion.

They're able to supplement and provide even more in terms of our capabilities to process and digest our food. So, you know, as a quick example, the [] most well-studied of these sorts of phenomenon is lactose.

So I keep coming back to lactose because this is where we have the most research and the picture is most clear. And what we discovered, Jonathan, is that our microbes produce the enzyme that break down milk. So whatever milk you do not personally digest and process with your enzymes, which by the way, are in the lining of your small intestine, if you don't have an adequate amount of enzymes, ultimately the milk will get all the way down to your gut microbes and they will process and digest it.

And there are ways in which you can actually train those microbes to become more capable of performing this job for us to the point that you can take a person who has lactose intolerance and you can train these microbes up so that that person who has lactose intolerance will actually be able to tolerate that food [] and tolerate it in even larger quantities, in many cases, amounts that they didn't think was possible.

Jonathan Wolf: And I guess that's sort of analogy a bit with like going to the gym or something, right? If you don't exercise at all and you do something hard, you're likely to injure yourself. It's going to be really difficult.

If you are good enough at going to the gym, which none of us do as often as we should, then you're just in much better shape, right, to deal with what gets thrown at you. And is that a sort of analogy to what you're describing, Will? Will Bulsiewicz: A hundred percent. That's the exact analogy that I love to use when it comes to this topic because I think it makes it very understandable for people.

You've made your new year's resolution. You're heading into the gym. You haven't been working out. And you start smashing the weights, and you go and you try to run a 10K like on your first day, you're going to be very sore.

Will Bulsiewicz: And there's a real chance that you could hurt yourself by pushing yourself too hard. And we know not to do that. So on the flip side, when we introduce [] exercise and we start at a lower threshold, a certain amount that we are actually capable of tolerating…And that's a personal thing, right?

So for me, I can lift more weight in the gym than my wife can lift, for example. But on the flip side, if go out for a run, my wife is burning me, you know, and I'm dragging behind. And so we have each individually strengths and weaknesses that are individualized and very personal.

Jonathan Wolf: I'm just on the internet, so I'll pretend I'm six foot four as well. Will, because you know, I'm not standing next to you.

Will Bulsiewicz: So, uh, this personal nature, you know, this is one of the things that we understand so clearly, with the work that we're doing with ZOE, which is that each one of us is unique and we have a unique gut microbiome, and that microbiome could be a fingerprint, like it's that personal and there's no one on the planet with a gut microbiome exactly like yours, [] including your siblings, even if you're a twin.

Tim Spector's research has shown us that even twins have a very limited overlap in terms of their gut microbiome. They're actually very much different. How do you figure it out in the first place whether you have an intolerance? Will Bulsiewicz: You go to the gold standard test.

And this food that you're telling me that I don't have a problem with… like when I eat that, I feel horrible. What are you talking about? What I've observed in my interactions with patients who do this is they try to use the information and implement it.

And they either end up on a very restrictive dietary pattern, or they just end up completely confused and frustrated and they throw their hands up and they don't know what to eat anymore.

And you have to understand that these tests, the reason that we know that they don't work, is because we can compare them to the gold standard.

And the gold standard is not a blood test or a poop test or a breath test. It is a method, a method of temporary restriction observing how you response to that restriction, paying very close attention to your symptoms, and then re-introducing. And when you do this like a light switch - on, off on, off - each time that you flipped the current like that, is an opportunity for you to see [] how does your body feel with this change that you've just made.

And so when you have a food intolerance, when you reduce the food intolerance, you notice that your symptoms improve. When you work it back in, you notice that some of those symptoms come back. Now, Jonathan, it is entry-level information from my perspective, to identify the food that you have a sensitivity or an intolerance to.

That is, it's a good place to start. Jonathan Wolf: I think the other thing to sort of recognize is this can be quite hard, right? Like I've done these managed-by-a-nutritionist-exclusion-diet…You take these things out; you sort of re-introduce, and this is quite difficult.

So you describe it as definitely the gold standard, being told by many people there is no other test. There's a reason why ZOE doesn't do any tests for allergies because there are no tests for allergies that actually work.

But it is also quite hard in part because you have to cut back your diet a lot to do it, but also because it's, you know, by scale it can be quite difficult to understand. You introduce something and actually it seems to be fine.

You've got to do something else. So it's not an easy thing. And I think you need support to go through to try and figure it out. What are your thoughts on that, Will? Will Bulsiewicz: There is no question that you need support.

There is no question. This is not intended to be done based upon something that you read on the internet. Um, you know, I think that, uh, probably the best way to go about this is to work with a registered dietician who is facile in these particular topics. And it is important to understand, though, that there is a methodology that exists that allows us to accomplish this.

And it can be very overwhelming to try to understand and unpack this without being formally trained in it yourself.