Often, new clients will say to me: “I am here because I have a ton of food intolerances. I need to figure out a diet that avoids all these foods that I react to.”
If one food bothers you, maybe it is that food. But if 20 or 50 foods bother you, it isn’t the food, it is your gut. So while I believe that these foods are problematic, I am much more interested in getting to the root cause of their symptoms (which is usually something else) and not just eliminating a ton of good food. So what are the potential root causes?
- Microbe imbalance:
- We have hundreds of trillions of microbes in our colons. We hope there is more good than bad, but oftentimes there is: too much bad, not enough good, or both. Sometimes there is a pathogenic overgrowth or they migrate up to our small intestine where they don’t belong and wreak havoc (SIBO).
- Dysbiosis is the word for any of these imbalances and it causes all types of reactions to all types of foods. It can be confusing because it isn’t clear which foods; it isn’t consistently a certain food. That is because it isn’t the food. It is the microbiome imbalance.
- Digestive insufficiency:
- We need stomach acid, enzymes, and bile to digest our food. For a number of possible reasons (antacid medication, aging, digestive dysfunction, microbe interference) we often don’t have enough of one or more of these. And that causes indigestion, heartburn, bloating… all in reaction to food.
- Motility issues:
- Food moves through our digestive tract. It needs to move not too fast that we don’t digest and absorb, but not so slow that we feel sick or have trouble processing. We need our stomach to empty at the right rate, our food to move through our small intestine at the right rate and so on. Many people have trouble in this area for a variety of reasons.
- Leaky Gut:
- This is a buzz word for a real thing: increased intestinal permeability. The integrity of the lining of our intestinal wall makes all the difference in whether we feel good or whether we react to foods.
- Immune imbalance or dysregulation:
- If our immune system is overactive (perhaps because of leaky gut) we will react to foods that should otherwise be safe.
- Food sensitivities:
- Sometimes it is food. Gluten and dairy are the most common food sensitivities. A sensitivity is similar in some ways to an allergy (and different in other ways), in that the immune system sees and responds to the protein of a food as if it is a threat. Sometimes this is temporary in the case of some of the bullets above.
- Other times we truly can’t eat gluten anymore (like an allergy).
These are all things we dive into with clients here at Health Takes Guts, Inc. Schedule an appointment here!
Additionally, these topics are all explained at length in my ebook: Health Takes Guts® Your Comprehensive Guide to Eliminating Digestive Issues, Anxiety, and Fatigue.