Can you react to healthy food?

As I like saying, there is no "good" food nor "bad" food.

There's just.....food.

Each of us is intrinsically different, which means our needs, wants, culture, and how our bodies react will also be different. 

The thing is, sometimes our body reacts differently to the everyday food we consume. Now, I've been trying to hold off on talking about this topic, since it can be like opening a can of worms, but I just want to touch on it for a bit.

In this episode, I talk about the difference between a food allergy versus digestive issues.  See, sometimes, a digestive problem is the root cause as to why your body reacts to certain foods- even if said food is healthy. 

If you've been doing some food restrictions for more than a couple of weeks now and your body is still reacting to specific kinds of food, you may want to try a different strategy to address this.

Have a listen to episode 163 of the Less Stressed Life, where I talk about the possibility of reacting to healthy food. if it's about time to take one of those food testing protocols. and why it's vital to target the root cause of food sensitivities.  

Scroll down to listen to the episode or read the transcript!

PODCAST TRANSCRIPT

Someone asked the question recently, can you react to healthy foods? And the short answer is yes, absolutely. A while back, I took helping people overcome food reactions off of my main marketing messaging. Not because I don't do it, but because it's kind of a mouthful and it's like a whole can of worms. And today we're going to talk a little bit about that. Can of worms often reacting to healthy foods is related to gut imbalances. Now let's get a visual. I've been telling people, this is kind of how I like to view it, or look at it. You've got two hands, like put both hands out there. So you got two hands or two buckets. There's two types of food issues. People can have one hand or one bucket is food reactions and other hand or other bucket is food digestion problems. And I'll relate those in the food reaction hand, you have allergies, intolerances and sensitivities.

Now allergies are what we recognize unanimously conventionally, functionally integratively. Everyone knows what an allergy is, right? We often associate them with anaphylaxis, um, tongue swelling, et cetera, but it can be, it can be as light as watery eyes, sneezing, itchy nose, et cetera. It can be things like that. As we think about with seasonal type allergies. Now allergies are considered I G E or immunoglobulin E reactions intolerance, kind of like lactose intolerance is sort of really, it's really actually a food digestion issue. Um, but people think about it as a food reaction. And I think sometimes people use the word I have had more than one, man tell me that he has lactose intolerant. And I'm like, yeah, I think there's more to it than just that. But anyway, and then there's sensitivities and sensitivity. Is this something that we do not agree on unanimously convention?

Like we do not agree overarching and in the world about, however, if you're scrolling social media, you'll see advertisements for food system, sensitivity tests. And even those of us like myself who will occasionally use sensitivity testing and I'll get to it and the purpose and the point and why I would do that. Yeah. In a moment. But it, each different irritates people like us because it's, charading like an allergy. And so people get the, the idea that they look at that test and it could be things that they eat all the time, which I'll talk about why that one, but also they're treating it like an allergy. And that is my pet peeve. You do not treat a sensitivity like an allergy. You are not going to make anything better. Okay. So that's the hand or the bucket of food reactions. And let's talk about food digestion in the other hand are the other bucket.

So in the food digestion bucket, you probably don't necessarily know the majority of people don't know that they struggle with this, but if you burp after you eat, sometimes maybe you're not digesting protein very well. It's kind of like a back fluxing a little bit, but basically undigested food, particles, microorganisms, et cetera. Um, your body is supposed to metabolize or digest proteins, fats and carbs, right? So them not getting digestible because enzymes will like the level of enzymes will get kind of mucked up when there's gutting imbalances going on. So basically gut imbalances throw a wrench in normal enzymatic processes. I don't care which enzymatic process it is, whether it's digesting the fats, proteins carbs, or breaking down other things that most people don't know a lot about, which are like histamines. For example, I work with that in practice, like crazy. So you want to be able to digest, you know, these, we wanna be able to process these neuro-transmitters process, all of these things, including foods.

And when you have gut imbalances, overgrowth of bacteria, fungi, et cetera, it will create a problem in the enzyme chain that digest things. Now you may not totally see it in your stool, right? Like we eat. And then we see it on the other end and you don't see everything. There's like a long, there's a lot of stuff going on in between there that you don't always see. So when we have digested food particles, I want you to think about your gut lining. It's got a bunch of doors type junctions in the doors and in the gut lining, there's all these finger-like projections. So you go your hands in front of you anyway. So they get these little finger like projections and you put the, but those hands up next to each other. And if, if those doors are shut, well, then these undigested food particles don't get in.

So that's like nylons, right? Nylons are semi-permeable. But if you have fishnet tights, those doors are more open. So undigested food particles go through the gaps. And when they cross that barrier, that tight gap junction barrier, they cross that lining. It sort of sends some alarms to essentially the immune system. And what happens on the other side is that you have like all these inflammatory mediators or purchase inflammation in an acute sense as protective, you know, when you stub a toe, like stuff's going to go there and be like, Hey, let's go like help this recover. So in the short term, it's going to be protective, but this is like now a structural problem. You have holes in the fence or open doors. And so it's a structural problem. And so until you correct that, um, it's not an acute problem, right? So like you eat all day and it becomes a chronic problem.

And now you have chronic inflammation, which feels like fatigue. Maybe just like holding onto a water weight, just like feeling blocked and crappy. That's how I feel anyway, when I'm inflamed. So we have undigested food particles crossing the doors or the membranes. So it's going through fishnet tights. Instead of nylons, you will create inflammatory responses from the immune system because the immune system is supposed to like process vitamin B and C and manganese and all these micronutrients. And when you've got these undigested food particles, it's like, I do not understand part of this Apple. I do not recognize this avocado. You are eating every day, but you eat it every single day. So then you, it crosses the lining, these undigested verticals cross the line and every single day. And on the other side over time, it just continues to throw inflammatory reactions at it. I call these Nerf bullets and I've talked about this on another podcast as well, which you can listen to and get kind of a different angle of it.

But basically the immune system is going to shoot these Nerf guns at these foods. And so those bullets might be labeled IgM, IgG. T-cells all these different inflammatory cytokines or messengers. And so there's a compilation of Nerf bullets, all different colors. And for example, that one test that you keep seeing when you're scrolling on Instagram or Facebook is just IgG. And so it's just one color of Nerf bullets. So it's not the full situation, but why don't we turn the gut lining from nylons back into I'm sorry, from fishnet tights back into nylons, right? That would be nice because then you wouldn't have undigested food particles crossing the membrane. What if you improved digestion of the food in the first place? This is like a huge deal. Top three, top three, you have to improve digestion. So at the root of this, there's a lot of little things we could do, right?

Like you can go Google, how to fix gut permeability, because now there's like thousands and thousands of articles on pub med, which is our research repository on gut permeability or leaky gut. And we recognize this, your doctor might even know about this, right? Like it's been in research long enough, it's mainstream. And it takes 17 years for something from, to go from research to kind of mainstream. And so we know this is a thing, but we're missing another part. So one of the reasons you have this permeability, there's a lot of reasons, a lot of lifestyle reasons, a lot of stress, et cetera. Um, and then also gut imbalances. Now, unfortunately I always say gut, this'll be another whole topic for another day, but gut imbalances aren't as sexy because they don't really fit into like a one-liner. And so it's these bacteria fungal, et cetera, overgrowths that create problems in the enzyme chains or reactions.

So until you fix the gut imbalances, you will continue to relapse. Even if you are taking things that will heal your gut, that is my opinion. You may get some relief after a couple of months from taking things that heal your gut. And so that's a good thing, but it is my opinion from experience that you need to fix those gut imbalances and that they can be rampant. And if they run in your family, so can you respond to healthy foods? I went off on my tangents. So is this a permanent problem? I would like to think that it's not permanent. There are some people that respond better to addressing food reactions and food sensitivities than others, but is it due to just reducing inflammation overall or a reduction in? So when we're, when I'm doing an anti-inflammatory food protocol, I'm pretty much like doing something kind of dramatic.

I'm just cleaning up everything or doing a whole food diet. So I think the people who respond best to a food sensitivity protocol are those that maybe have tried to do something whole food, and they've had improvements, but not like all the way. So they think there must be some, an address things. For example, I have a woman who has a pretty unfortunate unlucky autoimmune condition right now, and she's got a lot of it the basis. It's a very highly involved medically. Um, she's getting lab testing done a couple of times a month, et cetera. And so, because it's essentially an inflammatory condition we chose to do this infant anti-inflammatory protocol symptoms just got reduced. I think like 70% in a couple of weeks, that kind of stuff is kind of fun and addicting, but I usually go forward and still work on gut stuff.

I do. I always do. I never used to years ago, but now I've learned I go through and fix gut things anyway. Right? So in her case, this is just the one I'm thinking of recently, it was really reacting to cauliflower and avocado and they weren't necessarily things that, and time will tell we're not, we're not to where we've like brought that back yet, which is always the goal to not be reacting to food things Long-term. And I think I've gotten some other questions. I know I've gotten some other questions recently about how long does it take to see something start to work? I think you should start to see improvements in two weeks. If you're not, you should probably reconsider what you're doing. Cause you don't need to be hanging out in a, um, in a elimination world. It's good to like clean up and eat a whole food diet, but restrictions are problem.

We'll talk about in a minute and then Hicks six weeks for the immune system to calm down. So, and then there's things. Um, so anyway, is it, do th do people get better because, um, the inflammatory markers, like all of those Nerf bullets that are being shot, and so we've taken that away cause we're doing the lowest inflammatory things at first or is it a reduction and all the extra stuff that's in our food. That's not always in the ingredient label, right. Making us eat whole food. And I think it can be a combination of both. So more often I get a lot more traction from gut testing to resolve food issues, but it depends on the pattern. If someone is reacting to a certain set of foods, which I know when people just tell me like, if it's oxalates or it's histamines or it's carbs or it's proteins and fats, I know it's an issue with digestion and gut imbalances because I know how those mechanisms work and I know what's going wrong, but it's so fun when people get a lot of symptom reduction out of there an anti-inflammatory food processor journey, um, that that should have some gut issues and they do according to their test results, but they could see the biggest changes in symptoms when doing an anti-inflammatory food protocol.

So usually I I've, I, I course correct for this situation when I talk to someone and an inter call and make the best recommendation for their particular profile. So I would say also that auto immune conditions respond more to food than some other people, bowel disease response, um, pretty well to food also. And in summary, I wouldn't stop at food for most people. I mean, I used to do that. Um, and if doing stuff with diet is helpful, yay, foundational. It literally feeds the microbiome. But if doing something with diet leads to more restriction and you continue to start to react to too many things, you're not addressing the root cause. And please get help. I talked to someone this week who said, I think I know just enough to be dangerous. And I would say that that was the truth for her. Yeah. If you're restricting healthy foods and reacting, there are broken mechanisms that should normally work on digesting and processing that particular food in the majority of cases and restricting is going to make things worse.

Long-term if it's extremely extreme, now, if you're doing a whole food diet and it's full of colors and variety does not restriction, but restricting natural limited, limited, limited number of foods and restricting entire food groups can make things worse. Long-term because you perpetuate nutrient deficiencies, which basically feels like breaking out slowly and you tend to get eventually, sometimes a little bit helpless and kind of like desperate and it sucks. And it makes you more stressed out, which perpetuates things too. So there's a lot of power in the power of food, but our goal is to tolerate the broadest range of foods possible and enjoy it. So depending on what you're reacting to, um, yeah, you may get most help from addressing gut imbalances, but sometimes doing a really good food protocol is appropriate. But I think the majority of information out there on Google and beyond is food protocol.

So we've seen a big influx in people doing diet changes over the last, maybe 10 to 15 years, which is awesome. But I want you to know that there can be more in episode 26 of the less stresssed life podcast listened to this before you do any food sensitivity testing, I go over pros and cons and who might benefit more from that testing. And if you enjoyed this episode, I would love, love, love for you to leave a review. All you have to do is go to review this podcast.com forward slash less stressed and reviews are like gold for podcasters. Now, lastly, since I was talking a little bit about stress and whatnot, one of the things I just feel really passionate about this year is helping people have good results. So when you have high stress, not only is your gut compromised, but your adrenals are your stress glands or organs are really compromised.

And so this Friday we're starting the resilience reset. And that's all about the goal here is to wake up with energy. Again, it's really four steps to nourishing your adrenals for sustainable energy to promote productivity and hormone harmony. We're going to cover the best diet diet for your adrenals and how you should eat for best mood and energy, how to help your adrenals run on all cylinders, even during the stressful seasons of life, instead of slowly fading of fatigue, into apathy, giving you exact protocols for that. And how do we evaluate stress hormone levels with, or without testing and get supplement protocols to implement for your current needs, if that's the right fit for you or put them in your back pocket for when you do need them and then understand what's going on with all your hormones, from your sex drive to heavy periods, to no periods, to hot flashes.

This is really for savvy women that want to take care of their stress hormones before they get totally burned out. I applaud you tired moms and high-performance women that want to wake up with energy again and health professionals that just want to swipe my protocols and assessments for adrenal cases they're working with and apply them to their own clients. So I would be so honored to see you there, and it starts this Friday and you can get to that by going to Krista bigler.com forward slash links. Of course, all of this will be in the show notes

And peace and love. We'll talk to you guys later.