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One Billion People WorldWide Are Obese. Food Sensitivities Explained.
This week on the Harmony With Food Radio show, I talk about a new study that shows that one billion people are obese and explain exactly how food sensitivities are developed, and how they can be resolved.
One Billion People Are Obese
A new study came out that said that more than one billion children, adolescents, and adults live with obesity around the world. We hit that number 7 years earlier than predicted. I've talked about obesity on the show many times, and I'm here to tell you that you can learn to have a wonderful relationship with food. And if you feel like you have tried everything but you still can't lose weight, it's time to get to the bottom of why through testing.
Food Sensitivities Explained
Usually, when you start experiencing stomach problems, your first step is to go to the doctor. Your primary care doctor will likely refer you to a gastroenterologist, who will run some tests and do an endoscopy and colonoscopy. Often, those tests don't reveal anything and you're left with a diagnosis of IBS, or Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and shown the door without getting any real help. While it's nice to know you don't have a severe illness, you shouldn't have to live with your symptoms. Luckily, there's more that we can do.
For example, we've recently discovered that 80% of people with IBS also have SIBO, or small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, and there's testing we can do for that. The good news is there are herbal antimicrobials and other neutraceuticals that can help kill those bad bugs, get the good bugs and the short-chain fatty acids higher so you can go back to living your life again.
Another thing we can do is focus on antibody or food sensitivity testing. In my opinion, everyone needs antibody testing because none of us live in a perfect world. We have toxic exposure from the chemicals we breathe in, the food we eat, the chemicals in our food, and our household products. So, none of us live in a world without toxic exposure. You're exposed to different inflammatory insults, whether it be food or inhalants or sensitivities or inflammation from allergies, it just tends to make everything else worse.
How Antibodies Contribute to Inflammation
High antibody levels can and do contribute to inflammation through multiple pathways. Antigens are environmental proteins that are also called lipopolysaccharides. They're found in microbes, food, pollen, and mold. That means that almost anything you eat or breathe can have antigens. At low levels with infrequent exposure, antigen exposure tends to promote tolerance. However, at high chronic levels of exposure, the antigen can overwhelm our systems and promote antibody responses. This eventually leads to inflammation which can present as joint pain, weight loss resistance, headaches, sinusitis, and more.
So, say you're exposed to pollen. When you ingest the pollen, it presents antigens to local immune cells in the lymph nodes or other lymphatic tissues. Those cells decide whether the antigen can be tolerated, or if it is an inflammatory insult to our skin and body. That information can then be sent to the gut, and you develop gut sensitivities. So now your inflammation has been stimulated by these antigens.
With IgG testing, we look for antibodies secreted from the foods we consume and see which foods cause us to produce more antibodies than others. The good news about food sensitivity testing is that you don't always have to stay away from the food that is creating antibodies. Say eggs came up as a food that you were creating very, very high antibodies against. You would need to stay away from eggs for a while, then we would use a protocol to reintroduce the eggs to see if you could tolerate them now that you've given your body a break from them.
Cells have both short-term and long-term memories. Short-term memories tend to live on the mucosal surfaces in plasma cells. Antibody responses can happen for years to decades, or even a lifetime. Tolerance to these antibodies is pretty much what determines our total well-being and health.
Test, Don't Guess
The type of antibodies we are talking about today is called IgG antibodies. I like to think of G meaning 'gradual.' You can eat something on Thursday, have pain in your elbow Monday, and think it is from something you at at breakfast, when in reality it could be something you ate Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. That's why I recommend testing instead of elimination diets. This delayed response makes it difficult to identify offending foods properly.
Enzymes are important to digest food. For example, if you have a lactase deficiency, you have lactose intolerance. That means that your genetic makeup doesn't produce enough lactase to properly break down the lactose found in dairy.
Dysbiosis, also known as intestinal permeability or leaky gut, occurs when the tight junctions that form your gut wall begin to loosen. This allows food antigens to exit your intestines, which can create more antibodies. Leaky gut can occur from poor digestion, motility disorders, stress, and more. 80% of your immune system is in your gut, so you have plenty of immune cells located there. When you're eating the same foods over and over again, the cells are overloaded and create an IgG response, which leads to inflammation and even autoimmune disease. The response can go away if you give your immune system a break from those foods for a certain amount of time.
All in all, we want to reduce inflammation. Inflammation is the core part of almost every single autoimmune disorder and other diseases like cardiovascular disease. By testing instead of guessing, you can get to the bottom of what is causing your symptoms.
