Hi! My name is Heather Caruso and I am a homeopath from Guelph, Ontario, Canada. I wanted to talk a little bit about food sensitivities and food allergies. Can they be making you sick? Many people have food sensitivities and they continue to consume the foods that they are sensitive to, because they are having difficulty finding out what is really their triggers?
First of all, a food allergy is a full-blown immune reaction where one can detect an immune complex in the blood. A food sensitivity is more subtle and less often, it causes problems like anaphylaxis but it can cause a number of other symptoms. Hidden food allergies can cause things like acne, chronic sinusitis, ADHD, constipation, diarrhea, heartburn, insomnia, depression, rashes, the list goes on and on what different food sensitivities can cause.
It's a good idea to figure out what your triggers are? Ways that you can test for food sensitivities are to do; you can do an electro-dermal screening which challenges an acupuncture point, an allergy acupuncture point against certain foods. You can see if that would be a sensitivity for you, if you should stay clear of it. There are some blood tests that you can do to detect food allergies and sensitivities. And as well, you can also do a food challenge test.
In my book called 'Your Drug-Free Guide to Digestive Health', it has a full chapter dedicated to food sensitivities and allergies. And it has a checklist that you can go through to plot what symptoms you have and then when you eliminate one food at a time, you can recheck after a few days. This food challenge test is all laid out in the book, if you are interested in more information about it.
Possible causes of food sensitivities are things like enzyme deficiencies. You might not have the proper enzymes to break down the food that you are eating. For example, lactose intolerance is a food sensitivity. It's not a full-blown allergy. It doesn't cause anaphylactic shock in people. It usually is a digestive problem. Also, you are not eating foods given the irritating reaction. So for example, if you drink too much coffee, your stomach will get upset, of course. You might get diarrhea, you might get heartburn. Spicy foods might aggravate you; make you go to the bathroom more often and that sort of thing.
Another cause can be hereditary. Some people inherit a lack of enzymes from family members. Some people can't break down lactose products. It can be biologically based. As well as I've mentioned in some of my other videos, the gut-flora is really important to breaking down foods. There's always a balance of good and bad bacteria in your intestinal tract and if this bad bacteria overgrows, it affects your immune system negatively. It also can irritate the lining of your intestinal tracts, so that you have more inflammation there.
So when foods come through to be digested, your intestinal tract is already brawled up, and then a lot of other foods that might not be true allergies or sensitivities might bother you, only because you have too much bad bacteria in your gut. There's things that you can do to help improve that and there's also tests you can do to see what kind of bowel flora you have. You can go to my website at www.carusohomeopathy.com to get more information on tests and things that you can do at the clinic.
Another cause of food sensitivities is an over-consumption of certain foods. If you eat particular foods too much, which is usually things like wheat and dairy products, some people have a certain load that they can tolerate. It's called a toxic load. If you have a lot of toxins built up in your system, it's like a bucket. Once the toxins get to the top, the symptoms start to spill over from this bucket. If you can empty the bucket out, detoxify, help with your elimination and detoxify your liver, a lot of times food sensitivities don't bother you.
Actually, allergies in general improve when you detoxify it in some cases. It just depends on your particular case. So over-consumption of the wrong food tends to increase your toxic load. So just be aware of what you really eat a lot of and try and vary your diet a little more, it's helpful. So there's a few things you can do; to test yourself as I mentioned, the electro-dermal screening, a food challenge test. You can do a blood test. The food challenge test is outlined in my book, called 'Your Drug-Free Guide to Digestive Health' and you can plot your symptoms, and go through that whole chapter on food sensitivities.
Some ways you can treat yourself naturally. Just a few things I want to talk about while I have time, is change your pH. It should be slightly more alkaline and that is when allergy symptoms don't occur. Anytime that you can do your saliva pH with the pH strip. Anytime that your pH gets below 6, you are very acid. You should try and be 6.8-7.2 is perfect. If you are below that, you could be too acid, and it can be a reflection of the foods that you are eating.
Typically, fruit and vegetables are much more alkaline. So it helps with allergic reactions because you make an acid condition in your body, when you are having allergic reactions. So to combat that, try and consume more fruits and vegetables, at least 50% of your daily intake. You don't have to measure anything. You just look at your plate and divide it in half or even 75% fruit and vegetables. That will make you feel better in general as well.
You should try and avoid the trigger, the food trigger. Try and ruled it out by doing that allergy elimination diet or you can get test it through the clinic to see what foods are the triggers. Avoid that food and definitely, if you are anaphylactic to anything, never, never, never consume that food. Don't even try it. Some things you can also do through supplements are to take probiotics to improve your gut flora. Probiotics are things like acidophilus and bifidobacteria.
You can get those at your local health food store. They improve your gut flora in your gut. So it helps to normalize the beneficial bacteria. It displaces the bad bacteria. Some other things you can do to reduce inflammation is to take L-glutamine. L-glutamine helps heal the lining of the intestinal tract. It reduces allergies. Another thing you can do is try fish oil, if you are not allergic to fish. Fish oil is anti-inflammatory as well for your intestinal tract.
There's a few homeopathic remedies that also help to reduce allergic reactions. Apis is an excellent remedy for people who have swelling and swollen lips, swollen tongue, they might feel tingling on their lips or their throat might bother them when they take the food in question. Apis is a homeopathic remedy; you should be able to get that at your local health food store. And as well, there're other remedies like Homeopathic Histaminum, it reduces your histamine which produces allergic symptoms.
And Nux Vomica also called Colubrina is very good for those who overindulge and eat too much of the foods that are triggers. Nux Vomica helps to clear out the system and it's a slight detoxifier and you would use these in probably of 30 cH potency. Try them for a few days. See how they work for you. If they don't suit your symptoms, you can contact the clinic to get more information about setting something up to get started on a regime for yourself. You can also look at other remedies, there's many, many remedies that are helpful for food sensitivities.
For more information on the clinic or to purchase a copy of my book, 'Your Drug-Free Guide to Digestive Health', please go to my website at www.carusohomeopathy.com. There will also be a link to follow.
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