Food Sensitivities

A serious food allergy is hard to miss. The symptoms are usually immediate and dramatic enough to get your attention. These may include swelling or itching of the mouth or throat, nausea and vomitting, itching and watering eyes, difficulty breathing. These allergies are sometimes serious and require immediate medical attention.

There are many people, though, that suffer from more subtle food sensitivities and don't even realize that the symptoms they experience may be related to something that they are eating. These symptoms may include eczema, headaches, mood swings, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, excessive sweating, fatigue, joint pains, sinusitis, a prolonged cough, dark rings below the eyes. In babies and toddlers it is common to see these dark circles below the eyes and / or red circles of eczema on the cheeks.

Many of these symptoms can be dealt with by taking medication, but this will only cover up the symptom without dealing with the underlying problem. This can be compared to having a red warning light flashing in your car. You can cover the light with a piece of tape so that it doesn’t bother you. Covering it up may hide the light, but you would probably rather find the reason that the light is flashing, and fix it. This may seem like a silly example, but this is what we are doing every day… covering up symptoms with medication without searching for a cause. I am NOT saying that you should suffer with your headache or eczema without treatment. I AM saying that having recurring headaches and eczema is not a normal part of life, and it is worth also searching for a cause.

If you or someone in your family has recurring symptoms it is worth looking further into what might be causing it. To have this kind of a reaction to a food that you are eating, it is most likely something that you are eating on a regular basis… in amounts that throw off the balance in your diet. Every body has a threshold of tolerance to different proteins from different foods. When you continually pass this threshold, your body will give you signs (sometimes subtle, sometimes not so subtle) and the threshold drops to an even lower level of tolerance. This is one of the many reasons why eating a varied diet is important. Are you eating something so often that you can’t imagine how you would live without it? Try eliminating it for two week and see how you feel. Then add it back in and see how your body reacts. The most common food sensitivity AND food allergy that I see in my practice is: Cow’s Milk Protein.