Today I want to talk a bit about allergies and sensitivities, why we might have them, and what to do about them. (With a side note of what I found for myself.)
Now, of course, this is a huge topic, so this is an overview, and I may miss some possibilities. But hopefully it’s enough to give you some insights or answers about what might be happening for you.
First off, when I talk about allergies, I don’t mean the medical definition, which is quite narrow. I mean any kind of bad reaction to a substance. So if you have any type of chronic health condition, food or environmental allergies or sensitivities are something you might want to consider.
This might include any type of chronic pain, autoimmune diseases, chronic fatigue, respiratory illnesses, brain fog, ADD or ADHD, depression or anxiety, inability to maintain a healthy weight, or even when you just know you’re not well but can’t pinpoint why.
I’m also not talking about curing the kind of allergies that cause anaphylaxis and can kill you. While some of these approaches might lessen your reaction, we can’t be sure they would and it is far too dangerous to ever test it.
The first step is to identify what you’re reacting to.
A medical doctor who specialises in allergies will be able to do certain tests which could identify some problem foods or elements in your environment. But this is unlikely to pick up non-allergic sensitivities. For example, tests for celiac disease won’t identify non-celiac gluten sensitivity.
Sometimes you can narrow it down by keeping a food, activity and symptom diary, and getting really clear on when your symptoms are worst. But sometimes, your body will have developed coping mechanisms, and although you are “allergic” you could also be “addicted”. So this means, you might feel worse for a while after you take a suspect food out, which makes it trickier to identify.
As a kinesiologist, I often muscle test people for their sensitivities, which is usually helpful. But it won’t tell you what kind of bad reaction you get. And some kinesiologists will do a single test for each item. This isn’t accurate enough to identify everything.
Probably the most accurate way is to do an elimination diet. Cut out the majority of foods for about a week, till your symptoms have gone away. (Consult an expert about what foods you should or shouldn’t eat. If there is enough interest, I could do a more in depth post on how to do this.) It needs to be that long, for you to recover from withdrawal from your allergy/addictions. Then reintroduce foods one at a time. (If they don’t go away, either you don’t have food sensitivities, your core foods included a sensitivity, or there are other aspects muddying the picture. In that case, if you have some improvement, you might need to start there.)
Back in the day (about 1996), @sift666 and I did our first elimination diet. This was way before I had any other ways of finding problems foods. We found some foods that made perfect sense, and others that were mystifying. But when you’ve been on a limited diet for a while, the reactions to problem foods are usually very clear.
Now what do I do?
At that time, the only thing we knew to do was to stop eating the problem foods. Over time, I became a nutrition consultant and a lot of my work was helping people to identify their problem foods, and teach them new ways of eating. This helped them manage their situation but didn’t fix it.
But more time went on, and I became aware of ways to reset the body, so that more foods could be eaten again.
This doesn’t usually apply to foods that are really not good for anybody, such as excess sugar, processed foods, anything artificial. And sometimes there might be foods that are not sensitivities, but are just not appropriate for how your body works.
The next step would be to look at how many allergies a person has.
Numerous allergies
If a person has lots of allergies, chances are the problem is something systemic. These might include:
• Gut dysbiosis - that is, the bacteria and yeast in the gut are out of balance. Often this will be described as having candida, but it could be a number of different elements that are out of balance
• Nutritional deficiencies
• Adrenal fatigue
• Dehydration
If the systemic issue is corrected, you would be able to eat a much wider variety of foods.
I often work with people using the GAPS diet (Gut and Psychology Syndrome) to repair gut function, for example. Some of my other posts about GAPS:
• About the Gut & Psychology syndrome (GAPS) diet Part 1 – Can it help autism?
• GAPS diet Part 2: Foods we can’t have
• GAPS diet Part 3: Foods we CAN have
• GAPS diet Part 4: What if I can’t eat some animal foods
Only a few allergies
This can often be caused by an emotional issue, which has set up a conditioned response in the body. Imagine if you were a young child, having eggs for breakfast every day. And every morning your parents are fighting at the breakfast table. This would cause the child’s body to be very stressed and anxious and, over time, that feeling would be associated with eggs.
These types of sensitivities can often be cleared with energy medicine.
I have learnt a variety of energy corrections from great teachers such as Sandy Radomski, Philip Rafferty and Wayne Topping. Some of these include:
• EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique)
• Ask & Receive
• Kinergetics
• Tapping down the meridian points either side of the spine
• Laser therapy on the palms of the hands and soles of the feet
• Identifying the underlying negative emotions and rebalancing with positive emotions and nutrition
What came up for me this time?
I have spent years working on my systemic health, and on rebalancing my gut health. But even so, when I did my water fast recently, I reacted to some foods when I reintroduced them.
They were almonds and peaches (which are the same botanical family) and ghee (which means I would react to any dairy).
I used some kinesiology to test myself, and found that I had an underlying negative emotion of “drained” which wasn’t surprising, given how last year went. The positive emotions I needed to install to offset it were “kind” and “respected”. I also need to supplement with zinc for 2 weeks, though I can reintroduce one of the new foods tomorrow, without waiting for the 2 weeks to be up.
I used some EFT to clear the “drained” emotion and install the two positive emotions, and have taken my first dose of zinc.
I’ll keep you posted on how reintroducing the foods goes!
Thanks for reading and don’t hesitate to ask questions
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Images by myself, @sift666 or from Pixabay, unless otherwise stated.
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