Food Sensitivity Testing: A Way To Optimize Your Health

There are many proposed theories about the cause of food sensitivities but by far one of the most prevalent is stress. So, let’s start by understanding how stress can trigger food sensitivities.

Stress. We hear this word so often we have become almost desensitized to its real meaning and the effect it has on our bodies, our health and our quality of life. Stress can be defined as either a physical or an emotional impact on the body. Physical stressors include low blood sugar, injury or trauma, pregnancy, environmental exposure to extreme hot or cold temperatures and toxicity. Emotional stressors are unique to all of us but the ones we all share are the death or illness of a family member or friend, divorce, work and financial stress.

It’s all about Cortisol

You may have heard about the ‘stress hormones’. You may even have heard of cortisol – the main stress hormone – but what is it and what does it do?

Cortisol is one of over 125 hormones produced by the adrenal glands and is our major stress hormone. Cortisol, in the right amount, is what keeps us healthy. It keeps our energy up, our immune system strong, our weight regulated and inflammation low.

When we experience any kind of stress our brain, or more specifically the pituitary gland, produces a hormone called ACTH whose job it is to tell the adrenal glands to either increase or decrease the production of cortisol. We all experience stress from time to time, it’s what ensures we get up in the morning and live our lives, and under these normal conditions, our cortisol levels remain fairly stable and our adrenal glands have plenty of time to recover. However, the problem arises when we are under prolonged stress. We produce too much cortisol for too long – eventually our adrenal glands become exhausted and our cortisol levels drop; if we do not have enough cortisol, or if the demand for cortisol is too high and we cannot fulfill that demand, then we will begin to feel unwell. The most common symptoms of cortisol imbalance are fatigue, sleep disorders, frequent infections, anxiety, increased pain and inflammation, sugar cravings, abdominal weight gain and food sensitivities.

Cortisol is an anti-inflammatory hormone that helps regulate the effect of histamine, a compound that is released by a kind of white blood cell called mast cells when they break down. As it is released, histamine causes swelling and irritation and again, stress is the culprit! It is stress that causes these mast cells to break down and release histamine all over the body including in the digestive system – which brings us back to food sensitivities.

When histamine is released in the digestive system it creates an inflammatory reaction that causes the normal tight junctions of the intestinal cells to gap – what is most commonly referred to as Leaky Gut. These tight junctions are our protection between the outside world (our digestive tract) and the inside world (our blood) and it is a really important defense mechanism in our body. In the presence of Leaky Gut, the foods we eat are not broken down and digested properly, and large protein molecules get absorbed into the blood and trigger an immune reaction. Once the immune system sees this food protein an immune reaction is triggered and a memory cell is created. The next time we eat this food in the presence of Leaky Gut, our immune system remembers this foreign protein and creates an IgG immune reaction calling white blood cells to the “rescue”. With the stimulation of white blood cells come those histamine-releasing mast cells which are the cause of food sensitivities.

Closing Thoughts

Maintaining good health is a process that we must work on on a daily, monthly, and yearly basis and this includes managing our stress levels.The havoc that prolonged stress can cause the body is unique to each person however the triggering of food sensitivities is one effect that is fairly universal. Discovering what your food sensitivities are and eliminating them from your diet, while simultaneously taking steps to heal your gut and get you back on the path to optimal long term health. For this reason, food sensitivity testing is something I do with almost all of my clients and it can really be a pinnacle in their healing process. Knowing can help prevent further dis-ease. 

If you are curious about your food sensitivities and would like to be tested you can schedule a session.