Food Intolerances

Accustomed to hearing about food allergies, the word intolerance is very seldom understood. Intolerance occurs when our pancreas is deficient in a certain type or group of enzymes. These enzymes help breakdown our food into their individual nutritional components, such as: sacarides, amino acids, lipoproteins, etc. When these deficiencies are present and a certain food is only partially digested it can cause a variety of unwanted results, ranging from immune reactions and intestinal problems, to weight gain, inflammation, skin problems, hyperactivity, mental problems and insufficiency of certain organs or glands.

Symptoms of intolerances are usually very mild at first and tend to be ignored or blamed on excesses of rich food, drink or some bug we caught. However, since the effects tend to be cumulative, and as the offending foods are continuously consumed, the symptomology continues to get more severe until it is hard to ignore that we have a problem.

Unlike allergies, where ingestion of the offending food causes a violent and immediate reaction, intolerances can take months or years to show their effects. Once these effects are noticeable, we tend to receive all kinds of erroneous diagnosis and try a variety of remedies which are of little help without removal of the cause.

Even though we have seen intolerances to a wide variety of foods, the two most common ones today are to gluten and pasteurized milk.

Gluten is one of the protein components of wheat, barley and a few other grains. It is also found in many grain based products such as breads, pasta, beer, whiskey, vodka, flour tortillas, cookies, cakes, pastries, etc. Soy sauce is fermented with wheat and a wide variety of commercial products contain wheat proteins and by-products. Since gluten is very cheap and sticky in nature, it is often used to thicken or give consistency to many commercial products such as pressed meats, sausages, nutritional drinks, sauces, soups and spreads, just to name a few. Also, any product with malt or referred to as malted is very likely to contain gluten.

Of all food intolerances, gluten is the one that is by far the most harmful and leaves more accumulated toxins within the body.

For a detailed list of products that contain or may contain gluten, see: http://www.spiritcentral.net/gluten.doc .

Even though oats are listed as a suspect grain in this list, most people with a gluten intolerance do not have a problem with oats.

Pasteurized milk is the second greatest offender in this category, however, cheese and yogurt are usually not included in this group as they are partially digested products. Butter and cream are also well tolerated because they are mostly fat with very little if any milk solids.

And while intolerance to Lactose is well known, Lactose is not the only component of milk which produces problems. Casein and other milk proteins are also an integral part of the milk intolerance picture. The problem is aggravated even further because of the modern practice of pasteurization and homogenization. The high temperatures in these processes alter the integrity of the proteins, cross-linking and denaturing them which by itself makes them a lot harder to digest. While the milk content of baked products seems to not cause a problem when this intolerance is present, puddings, flan, ice cream and other similar products made with the more liquid form of milk usually end up being problematic and should therefore also be avoided.

Even though we have seen intolerances of a temporary nature, unfortunately, the majority of the intolerances we see are permanent and the only effective way to undo their negative effects is to completely avoid the ingestion of the offensive food. It is not enough to reduce consumption, as experience has shown that even drastic reduction only produces minor and barely noticeable improvements, while total avoidance produces incredible and life changing results.

If you have symptomology for which you have tried about everything and nothing seems to help, do yourself a favor and have yourself checked out by someone trained in the identification of these kinds of problems.

If you would like additional information or would like to make an appointment to see if a food intolerance could be part of a chronic symptom you are experiencing, contact us at [email protected] or at the phone number listed on our website.