Common Food Allergens
Some of the most common foods people are sensitive to and should be tested for are:
Dairy products Tomato
Wheat Egg
Corn Citrus
Soy Legumes (peas, beans, peanut)
Seafood Vinegar
Yeast Spices
Whenever we are working with patients to restore their health, one of the first things we have done is a food sensitivity test. This way, we are assured that the food they are eating is adding to, not taking away from their health. Remember, if you are sensitive to just one of the above list (and you might have no obvious symptoms) with every meal you are causing a leaky gut to develop and are stressing your total health as well as your immune system. This is why it is so important to be tested, so you can start a plan for total health = wholeness. This plan begins with what goes into your mouth every meal. As Hippocrates once said, “ Let food be your medicine” or as Dr. Victor Rocine said in the 1930’s,“ If we eat wrongly no doctor can cure us, If we eat rightly, no doctor is needed.”
What causes food sensitivities? They can be genetic. If one parent has food sensitivity, the child has a 50 percent chance of having it too; the number jumps to 75 percent if both parents have it.
Another cause of food sensitivity is overeating the same food too often. For example, most people drink cows milk daily their whole life. Not coincidentally, dairy products are the single greatest allergen, causing a wide variety of symptoms and diseases. The best way to prevent this kind of allergic response is to totally give the food up for 30 days, then slowly reintroduce it into your diet—starting off only once every two weeks, then progressing to possibly once every four days.
There are four types of testing done to determine or diagnose food sensitivity/allergy:
1. Skin tests in which a small amount of the suspected allergen is injected under the skin and then is checked for a reaction in the skin. According to Dr. Thrash,“Most food sensitivities are skin test negative; in other words, skin tests are not accurate for diagnosis of food sensitivities,”7
2. Radioallergosorbent testing (RAST) is designed to pick up the presence of IgE antibodies to each given allergen. “RAST is unreliable for testing for food allergies. It has been shown to produce approximately 20% false positives and 20% false negative results,” according to Thrash M.D.8 Also the RAST test is expensive, being about $12 per allergen tested so 40 allergens can cost well over $500.
3. Blood tests are only up to 25% accurate so are basically considered unreliable by most food allergists.9
4. Body reactive testing
A. Pulse test
B. Muscle test
C. Body balancing test
D. Elimination test
All of these are the simplest yet the most accurate ways of testing for food allergens because they produce a systemic body response to the allergen being tested.
Want to find out if you have got a particular food sensitivity? Then follow this schedule:
For one month, completely avoid a particular food, or anything containing that food. For example, if you want to find out if you are allergic to milk, you must avoid not only milk, but also cream, butter, cheese, yogurt, etc. You must read labels too; even a small amount of a dairy product will trigger the allergic antibody histamine response. After one month of abstinence, you can reintroduce the food and eat or drink it with each meal and see if your body produces any symptoms that it did not have for the time period you abstained from it.
There are two ways to monitor your sensitivity at home. First, you can check for any symptoms of sensitivity, like clearing your throat, mucous in your throat, stuffier nose, closing of nostril or runny nose, any noticeable change in breathing, any tightness in breathing (more difficult to completely inhale), any minor skin reaction or hive, any gastrointestinal problems (looser bowels, increased gas, stomach cramping or colic), headache, brain fog or cloudiness, lack of mental alertness, or any perceivable change that is not present before eating the food.
Another way to monitor sensitivity is with the pulse test, which is a bit more difficult to master. Take your resting pulse before eating the food you are reintroducing. Then eat only the food you are checking for sensitivity. Take your pulse right after eating, then at 20, 40 and 60 minutes. A drop or rise in pulse rate of 20 or more beats is indicative of possible food sensitivity.
There is another testing procedure, but it takes some skill in mastering: the applied kinesiology technique of muscle testing. After eating a single food to be tested, a previously tested strong muscle is tested again right after the food is chewed and put under the tongue. If the strong muscle goes weak, it is an indication of food sensitivity. For example, you could stand and hold your arm straight out in front of you testing the anterior deltoid muscle. After eating the food, the tester applies moderate pressure to your arm, checking to see if the muscle weakens or feels spongy, rather than the firm feeling a normal strong muscle has. The weakness indicates possible body irritation or sensitivity.
At the Institute, we do a food sensitivity test to determine what to limit the diet to. Then 30 days later, we do another one to see what we can reintroduce into the diet. If a person still shows sensitivity to dairy products after 30 days of abstinence, then dairy is and never will be a good food for their total health.
Upon rechecking if you are not showing sensitivity after the first time eating, then you gradually reintroduce the food first after 30 days, then after 14 days, seven days, and then four days. Usually a person can go back to eating the food between once every week to once every four days, but not on a daily basis.
Another way to check for food sensitivities is the elimination diet, which is similar to the procedure described above, but much more rigid. This is for those who have either multiple sensitivities or are just having a difficulty pinpointing the offending food. In this diet, recommended for adults only, you eliminate all food for 3 days, drinking nothing but purified or distilled water. This gives your body a chance to clear itself of all allergens. Then reintroduce only one food only per day and check by one or more of the testing methods described. Keep a record of each food eaten each day, adding one food per day until you find a sensitivity. Make a list of the offending foods, and keep them out of your diet. When you find a food you are sensitive to, wait three days to give your body time to clear the offending food. (Note: If beginning this test with a 3-day fast seems too extreme, you can modify it by eating a food known to not cause symptoms, like brown rice. Once you have eaten just brown rice for five days with no allergic reactions, you can begin reintroducing other foods.
If you find that you have sensitivities to certain foods, you do not necessarily have to completely eliminate them from your diet. You can lessen their damaging impact by going on a rotation diet, in which you eat the “offending” foods only once every four to seven days. Dr. Marshall Mandell thinks a rotation diet done properly will eventually allow a person to eat 50 to 70 percent of foods he is sensitive to.10 In the rotation diet, list all known food sensitivities and eliminate those from your diet for at least a month. Then write down a 7-day menu, planning only one sensitive food per meal and eating that same sensitive food only every four to seven days. When you plan your meals, avoid foods in the same family—for example, legumes (beans, peanuts, peas, and soy.) In other words, if you have pinto beans for lunch on Day 1, wait 4-7 days before testing another legume, like green beans.
The rotation diet is good even if you don’t have any known food sensitivities, because it prevents them from occurring. If you’ve been eating cornflakes for breakfast every day for years, it’s time to make a change: Cornflakes one day, oatmeal the next, rice cereal the next, and cream of wheat the next, a four-day cycle. Then start again with the cornflakes. Try to rotate all foods in your diet. This will help prevent food sensitivities/allergies and leaky gut.