Food Sensitivities

As I mentioned in the last episode, there is so much misinformation out there about gut health and food sensitivity testing.

Today, I want to talk about food sensitivity testing, how elimination diets should be handled, what should be done simultaneously to actually heal the gut, and when to consider bacterial overgrowth, Candida or yeast, and parasites as the answers to your gut issues.

Remember to share this episode if this helped you today and tag me on Instagram at @simplyhealthykacey!

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Transcript

[00:10] Kacey K: Welcome to the Simply Healthy You podcast, your place for overcoming overwhelm with your health to reach your fullest potential. I'm your host, Casey Canaan. I am so pumped to have you here. I'm a recovering burnt out high achiever who is diagnosed with an autoimmune thy, a condition by my early thirty s. I didn't realize that running myself ragged in the name of being superwoman and determined to achieve all the things in life was killing my body. I created this podcast so that you don't have to continue the struggle like I did for over a decade. I sat down, studied the data, and simplified what it means to prioritize your own health needs so that you can be the best for all the things on your to do.

[00:50] Kacey K: List.

[00:50] Kacey K: Everything you hear on this podcast I have tested and implemented in my own super pact, life with my family to bring you the tips, tools and strategies that will keep your life simply healthy.

[01:06] Kacey K: Hey. Hey friend. Welcome to another episode of the simply healthy you podcast. I am so grateful to be infiltrating your brain with today's topic. My name is Casey Kane. I'm an integrative health practitioner and certified Holistic nutritionist with a master's in Psychology and I'm here to bring you science based conversations to help you live a healthier and happier life. I'm a little bit subdued at the time of recording this. I really need to just get it done. This is my podcast recording time in my work schedule. My work schedule is very tight because I have limited hours dedicated to work, because my first priority is being a mom to my two small children while they are small. And this time goes by so fast. And I'm grateful for this opportunity to be able to do this and just had an off morning. And those people in your life that it's not necessarily the best relationship, typically family members, because most other people we would kind of cut out of our lives. We'd set that boundary pretty easily and move on. But we all have those family members where sometimes no matter how much you try to set the boundary, like some days they're just really fucking draining. I had one of those mornings and so I'm just moving forward. I'm excited to talk to you today about food sensitivities. In the last episode I talked about your gut, what it is and what kinds of things we look for with food sensitivities versus food allergies. Today I want to talk about food sensitivity testing, how elimination diets should be handled, because I've seen some really horrible recommendations out there and what should be done simultaneously while doing an elimination diet to actually heal your gut. And when to think about bacterial overgrowth Candida or yeast and parasites as part of the gut issues that you might have going on beyond food sensitivity. So as a quick recap, in the last episode I talked about when we're doing food sensitivity testing. We're actually looking at IgG markers, which are different than Ige markers for food allergies. And the IgG markers show us whether foods have caused any sort of short term or longer term triggers of inflammation in our body. On the test itself, this is really easily represented by a colored graph. If you've ever done a food sensitivity test, you've seen that graph, and it's very easy to look at it and say, okay, this is slightly inflammatory for me or triggering for me. This is very triggering for me. This is not very triggering for me. It's easy. It's easy for you to read your own results. So from that standpoint, it's great, because you don't necessarily need someone else for that part of interpreting. But depending on the patterns of things that are triggering on your food sensitivity testing, this is where having the right practitioner who studied more than just, hey, yeah, this is elevated. You need to eliminate this food if that's what you've been given as an answer, or you do these tests at home with yourself, and you don't know the nuance to the patterns behind what you might see on a food sensitivity testing. This is where my IHP certification has really helped me see the usefulness of a food sensitivity test, because in the past, I had done them myself, and I had worked with practitioners who did not study the nuance part of it. And it wasn't that helpful for me. I thought it was a waste of money. It was a waste of $200 at the time that I did this food sensitivity test, because all I knew is that I just couldn't eat these foods anymore, and that was it. And I didn't know that there were patterns even to recognize within the results. So on the test itself, it's really easy to read that colored graph, but that's not the whole story. The typical shades that you might see on this graph are from shades of green to yellow to different shades of orange, typically to show little or no reaction on the green side, all the way up to extreme reactions on the orange side. It is normal and healthy for you to have reactions show up to a variety of foods on these tests. The one that I use now, the food sensitivity test, there is so many different foods that they test, I mean, pages of foods that come back for you, which is great. It's great that we have that diversity now, and they're starting to include more foods that are becoming more common in people's diets. As we look to diversity of plants, this can be really helpful. So it's normal and healthy for you to have some reaction. It's normal for you to see that little black bar, which is your reaction to that specific food showing up somewhere in the shades of green. When you start to get to high green, low yellow, or any of the oranges. That's where the body is going to start experiencing inflammation from these foods over time. If you're constantly triggering the body initially, this might not have caused disruption. But when you're constantly it's like one of your favorite foods and you're eating this every single day, that chronic irritation will turn into inflammation. For the most accurate results on a food sensitivity test, you want to add in all the foods that you want to test for, not including actual allergies. I know this seems self explanatory, but like, if you have celiac, do not eat gluten. No matter what someone tells you. You should not be eating gluten if you have confirmed celiac's disease. If you are allergic to nuts, do not eat nuts, please. These are allergies. These are not ones that we mess with when we're talking about food sensitivities. And even with food sensitivities, if you are never going to eat that food again, don't bother adding and testing it. It will be included on your test results, but just ignore that result. Most of us know that dairy does not agree with us. Even if we're talking about those digestive symptoms, which is not what food sensitivity reactions are, we know that those are those two to three day latent responses that we have coming up. But most of us know that dairy does not agree with us. Many of us have already eliminated dairy because of its inflammatory properties and because it doesn't agree with us. So if you are never going to eat dairy products again, there's really no point in eating them and going through the pain and suffering to take the food sensitivity test when it's just probably going to come back as triggering for you, that is one of the most common ones on food sensitivity testing. And I mentioned one of the common food sensitivities on the last episode as well. If you're someone like myself who chooses not to eat animal products of any kind, then I'm not going to add animal products into my diet for the case of food sensitivity testing because I don't ever plan on eating them again, right? So if there are foods like that in your life, I know different religions also exclude some foods for different reasons. Whatever it is, if you are never going to eat a food again, then you don't need to eat it prior to food sensitivity testing. These are only things that you actually want the results for, because they're foods that you actually eat on a regular basis. So try to include a wider variety of foods for at least two to three days before you plan to take your test. But ideally, this is something you can really put some thought into ahead of time and you're eating a wider, wide why am I having a hard time with the word wide, wider variety of foods for a couple of weeks prior to taking the test? Because if you haven't eaten something in a few months. Even if you eat it once or twice, two to three days before the test, there's a chance that you're still not going to really stir up enough of a reaction in your body if it's a triggering food for you, which you don't know yet, because you haven't taken the test in just a couple of days. So having it for a couple of weeks, mixing in that variety can be helpful because you can get more exposures in that time and give your body more time. Because remember, these reactions take two to three days, so sometimes on just one time of eating it, we're not necessarily going to see that reaction right away. It might take two or three times then. The other thing is, you don't want to take this directly after a meal. You want it to be between meals first thing in the morning. There are specific instructions, at least on the one that I use with my clients. There are specific instructions as to how to best complete the food sensitivity test. That includes these, but just for your general knowledge, if you're doing one on your own, I wanted you to have this information. I can interpret any food sensitivity test, they all pretty much look the same. So if you've happened to have gotten a food sensitivity test recently and you are looking for someone to help you interpret it, because you have not been given any sort of information as to what you're supposed to do with those results, happy to help in that way. Definitely happy to help. There many food sensitivity tests may also test for yeast, or you'll see it listed as Candida albicans, but this is not the best way to test for yeast, so it can be helpful on there. But honestly, after learning what I know about all the functional labs, I'm not really sure why they still include it on there anymore. Because if it's not elevated on your food sensitivity test, that doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have Candida overgrowth. If it is elevated on the food sensitivity test, it's a sign you have at some point in the past few months reacted to Candida, but it's very nonspecific. So it does tell us a little bit more if it's elevated, but if it's not elevated, it really doesn't tell us anything. It's not ruling out Candida for sure. And if Candida is suspected, if you're having fungal issues and things, I'll talk more about that on the next episode. You really want to do an organic acids test for that and I'll definitely go into more detail. That's a huge test, but it is now my new favorite functional lab. I can't wait to run it on myself because as of yet, I am just finishing my certifications to be able to run these tests and interpret my own results. And so I'm waiting to run all of my own labs when I finish all of this when you get your results on food sensitivity testing, let me reel this back in again because I'm going off on tangents here. When you get your results from your food sensitivity test, what a good practitioner would do with you is an elimination plan depending on the severity of your symptoms. So not a just blind, don't eat these foods ever again. That absolutely is not necessary in most cases with most foods. So depending on where you are on that colored bar, on that colored graph, eliminations could be anywhere from six weeks if it's a minor trigger, to twelve weeks if it's sort of moderate, to six plus months if it is more of an extreme reaction in those orange spaces. But they should also be giving you a full gut healing protocol with clinically backed supplements. I cannot emphasize this enough. I know I talked on a whole previous episode about supplements and how we need them and that was more from a nutritional foundational perspective. When we're talking about these healing protocols, these body supportive protocols, they need to be clinically supported by the evidence. You can, and I think I might have mentioned this in the last episode, I'm not really sure. I've been recording so many different things lately for Simply Healthy Academy, my group coaching program. I don't remember where I've said these things before, so if I'm repeating myself, forgive me. Although it does take us at least like seven to ten times to hear something before we actually retain it in our brain. So enjoy the repetition to help get this emblazed in your memory. So clinically backed supplements or clinically supported supplements means that the dosage of the ingredients in that supplement has been supported by evidence in clinical trials. I think that clinical trials aren't the be all, end all, but when you're talking about using these supplements, if the effective dosage like, let's just say ashwagandha, right? Fabulous, root, powerful. I love ashwagandha for so many different reasons, but if like the clinically effective dose of ashwagandha, for someone who's using it as a healing protocol and not just like a daily supportive this is nice to have this adaptogen on board. If you're talking about clinical application, if the dosage is 200 milligrams, let's say I'm completely pulling this out of my ass, so do not quote me on this. I'm just pulling this number as an example. If the clinical dosage is 200 milligrams and you go and buy a supplement from somewhere, not really understanding this information, I don't expect you to, that's your practitioner's job. And the dosage is 50 milligrams. And you're taking it hoping that it's going to make a difference in the issue that you are taking it for. And then you're sitting there wondering why, one, it's probably more affordable because it doesn't have as much ashwagandha in it. And two, you're like, well, I'm kind of feeling better, but I'm not really feeling that better. And you're using a dusting of ashwagandha instead of how much you're supposed to be using. Right? So it's really important if you are going to be using these supplements for healing that you are making sure that the effective dosage is there. And honestly, even for your nutrition foundation, if you're just taking like magnesium or something, but again, you're taking it at such a low dose because maybe it's a more affordable supplement, I totally understand, everyone has budgets, I get that, and I work with my clients in their budgets all day. I give them what I think is the most important based on their health status and based on what they can afford in their budget and we work from there. Healing can happen in all of those situations. But I will not compromise for my clients on the quality of the supplements. I will give them fewer supplements so they can afford the best quality. And that's what I would recommend for you as well. You need to make sure, especially in the cases of what I'm going to be talking about over this podcast over the next few weeks with all of these lab tests that I want to share with you and what we use them for and how I can help you heal using the results from these labs. You really need to make sure that there is clinical evidence to support the dosage of the supplementation, the combination of the supplementation that you are taking. And I'm just really fortunate to have discovered these IHP certifications and also the supplement company that they partner with that really provides top notch supplements. Like, I'm just really impressed and I've had some other brands too that I do love and I keep those in my back pocket. I have another dispensary that I use with clients and that I'll be sharing with the public soon when I set up some different protocols. I think there's a lot of great companies out there, but I've been really impressed with this newer company that I'll definitely talk more about on future episodes. So I've just seen so many bullshit protocols out there with not clinically significant doses of things that actually help to rebalance and heal the gut and I think there's a slew of that kind of shit out there on the internet. And it's not just probiotics. Like, you don't just need probiotics, and in many cases, probiotics can actually exacerbate issues if there's a chance of yeast or bacterial overgrowth. So you really need to be careful here with what it is that you're deciding to do. And I'm all for learning on your own and trying to put things together, but I think that there is a time and a place where we need to recognize the scope of what we are looking at is just too big for what we might have time for. You want to go get these certifications, go for it. Do it, please. We need more people like me out there spreading this information. But if you don't have the time for it, like the investment in someone else who can give you the right information, I mean, it's invaluable because who doesn't want to feel better faster? Who doesn't want to feel better like yesterday? So in the case of yeast or bacterial overgrowth, like I said, you can't get these answers from a food sensitivity test. But if you see high markers on a lot of foods or extremely low markers on all the foods and you're not reacting to anything now, I mean, that could be a sign that you have a phenomenal gut. But chances are if you're taking a food sensitivity test, it's because you're experiencing symptoms. So if the results don't match the symptoms, that can tell us that something else is going on here. And these are signs that further testing should be used before continuing and depending on what those results look like. And this is where the nuance to interpreting the results is really fucking important. Because if someone doesn't know what they're looking at, if your practitioner doesn't know that all low markers on your food sensitivity test matched up with your specific set of symptoms might equal candida or might equal bacteria, or might equal parasites, like if they don't understand that, then there's a problem, right? Because they're going to tell you, well, it's not food, it's not your gut. Your gut's fine, right? No, not the case. And the longer you leave things like bacteria, yeast and parasites, the worse things are going to get. I'm going to again dedicate the next episode to all of that because they really deserve an entire episode themselves. So you're doing the food elimination based on what you get back on your food sensitivity test, your practitioner interpreting those results, making sure that it doesn't seem like there's anything else that might be out of whack, giving you a gut healing protocol. And then after the protocol is complete, a slow reintroductory period should be followed. You should be trying to reintroduce these foods again. Some of the food sensitivities that I have seen clients have, or just other people that I know that have used these testings on their own, some of these are very nutritious foods. They're whole foods that you should just not stop eating forever. Because a food sensitivity test once told you that you reacted to it. You add one food at a time and you wait three days. Remember, we look for those reactions after two to three days. So you eat one food and you wait three days to look for a reaction. Remember, these are not those digestive symptoms that you might be experiencing that I talked about in the last episode. After two to three days, if there's no reaction, you would eat that same food a second time. Then you look again two to three days later for a reaction. If you still have no reaction after the second time, you would add that food back into your diet one to two times a week, but spacing them three days apart. Right, because we're still looking for that reaction two to three days afterwards. And if you start eating it too frequently, you might miss that reaction, and or you could ramp things back up really quickly. And we're not trying to reinflame the body. We're trying to see if the trigger is still there. And you would do this for one to two months at that rate. So one food, one to two times a week, three days apart for one to two months. Now, I know what you're thinking, Casey, this sounds so fucking slow. Like, what if I have a lot of foods? I know, but do we want to throw you back into an inflammatory cycle again? No, absolutely not. It might take a while, depending on the results, on your food sensitivity test, to see how you react after healing to these different foods. But it's worth it. It's worth the time. Right. And this isn't hard for you to monitor on your own. I don't think you would need to pay someone for this whole reintroductory period. I think that you could follow these steps very easily and keep a food journal and every two to three days, just be checking in with yourself about how you're feeling after the one to two months with that one food. If you're still having no reactions, you could increase the times per week that you are eating that food. But really, retesting is best to ensure you are no longer having reactions. So typically, the really high reactions, the ones that take eliminations for six months or so, those are going to be ones that you want to retest for. Some of the lower level ones, you might not need to retest for. But if you've got some high level markers on there, you definitely want to retest for. Those. Dealing with food sensitivities is really very simple. I mean, this is it. This is straightforward. This is how we deal with food sensitivities. But this system has to be followed fully in order to relieve yourself of the issues being caused by them. So many practitioners, like I said, use this test and tell people they just can't eat these foods ever again. And in some cases, that might be true. This is very common with dairy. But I have also seen in case studies that I've looked at, as I learned these food sensitivity tests, I've also seen in case studies that sometimes a random food comes up on retesting. We're all unique almonds or something, right? For some reason, I just can't eat almonds would come up, or for some reason, like, broccoli is just an inflaming thing for me. I've seen it in case studies, just random things where that food? That one food, just one thing. Not a whole host of things, just one thing. It's like, well, I just can't eat this for some reason. This is just one that is a sensitivity for me. And even after healing, it's still triggering. And so you just leave that food out, right, to stay in your best health, you would just leave that food out or maybe eat it on rare occasions, in which case you wouldn't have such an inflammatory response. I do think this is a valuable test to run, and I'm really excited to be able to have this available for my clients to choose from on their health journey, because I think it can inform us in gut issues. Now, this is probably one of the simplest ones where if you didn't have a whole ton of other things going on, I would recommend food sensitivity testing, but I would probably not recommend food sensitivity testing by itself. I think this only gives us part of the picture. I think if your body is developing food sensitivities and has gut issues, we have to figure out where they came from. Is it stress? Is it heavy metals? There's a lot of different things that can contribute to that. And so there are other tests that I now have available in my arsenal, like the organic acids test or the hair tissue mineral analysis where we can look at heavy metals. Those things are ones that I would probably run in conjunction with a food sensitivity test. So if you're thinking about this, I would really think about all the symptoms that you're experiencing. And if you do have food sensitivities popping up or you do feel reactions after certain foods, ask yourself if there are other things that can be contributing to it. Because the gut doesn't get messed up out of nowhere, right? There's a reason for it. And the gut might be the root of your food sensitivities, but what is it that disrupted the gut in the first place? What's the root of that actual issue right now? What if we see signs of bacterial overgrowth or Candida on the food sensitivity test? Or some symptoms persist after doing the healing and nothing's coming up anymore on the food sensitivity test, but you're still having some of these symptoms or things that might point to parasites. Even. That's where, like I said, the organic acids test can be really helpful in identifying bacteria and Candida and specific strains of bacteria, which can be really helpful. That would be my go to. Absolutely. For sure. To test for bacterial overgrowth and to test for Candida. If you were thinking parasites, you have to do a stool test for that. I know stool tests are not all that fun. If you don't know anything about it, feel free to Google that on your own time when no one else is looking at the screen with you. They're not the most fun, but they are simple to do, and that is really the only way that you can identify parasites. So I think that would be based on your symptoms. Parasites are not as common, but they can be prevalent depending on if you've traveled to other countries and things like that. There's a lot of individual factors that would increase your exposure. So if testing is outside of your budget, you can handle the bacterial overgrowth and candida with a full supplement protocol that would knock both out, which I am pretty pumped about because not everybody can afford the testing and the supplements. And if you're considering one or the other, well, what good is it doing the test and finding out you have something and then not being able to support your body and eliminating it? Right, so we could always do the full candida bacterial overgrowth protocol and it would knock both out and we would just assume that that was the case because we had all the signs and symptoms of gut issues. And you would want to be working with a practitioner on this. Again, with the clinical dosages and everything that are necessary to knock these things out, you don't want to mess around with this. Candida and bacteria can easily take over and if you try to only do like half of the process at a time, again, you're just going to waste time and money. So you really want to work with a practitioner to monitor your status. Sometimes, especially with die off of these things, you may need to do an intestinal cleanse while doing these protocols to kill off bacteria. And I'll talk more about that because the die off reactions can be pretty significant and uncomfortable. And again, you really need to know that you have those clinically backed supplements at Dosages that actually make a difference. I have consulted people before, given them my supplement recommendations and then they go online and find their own versions because they're more affordable. And again, I understand budget, but if you don't look at the dosage differences or if you don't know what that clinical dosage amount is or the other added ingredients that might be in your supplement to cut it so that it seems like it's equivalent to some of these other things on the market. You're going to keep battling the same issues and then you're going to have spent all this time, money and energy on these other supplements and you're going to wonder why you still feel like shit. I think it comes down to with any of these tests. And as I go into the next few episodes here of recording all about these tests and understanding why you might want to use them, because I have started to get so many questions from people who I'm so excited that you're excited that I will have this as an option. Not many of us have functional practitioners near us geographically or ones that aren't going to cost a fortune to try to run some of these tests. So I'm hoping that it's going to be an affordable and accessible way. For people to be able to do this. And I'm excited that you're excited. So that's my plan here with these next few episodes is to talk about these different tests, talk about the reasons why you would want to take them so that you can think about it on your own. And of course, I'm always going to have my recommendations, right? And that's what I plan to do with my clients. Since I have Simply Healthy Academy, I already know based on their intake form and things, the things that they're dealing with, especially my returning clients. And I've already got ideas in my head of ideally, if budget was not an issue, all the tests that I would want to run for them so we could pinpoint every single possible thing and then put them on the absolute best protocol. But if it's not within their budget, I know what my top priorities are, but I want their feedback. I want them to tell me what is also most important to them. Because sometimes what I think might be the most important is not what is the most important to them. And at the end of the day, I want them to feel better in whatever way works for them, whatever works for their budget. So I guess this rant here, this tangent here that I've gone on, is basically you can invest the time, money and energy on doing it once and doing it well through someone who knows their shit. Or you can do it multiple times on your own, waste your time, money and energy trying to do it your own way. It usually never works out unless you've done the years of education that someone like me has done. You can't mess around with this kind of information. This is not the same as me telling you to eat 17 plants and you going off and actually eating 17 plants like, please do. You don't have to be in my program to learn how to do that. But if you've got health issues going on and you are trying to support your body in healing, you really can't mess around and try to piece this together. I mean, believe me, I've learned this the hard way because I am stubborn as hell with this kind of stuff. That's why I ultimately decided to do all of the education that I have to do all of the certifications to spend all of this time, it was really for my own benefit. First I was struggling and not getting the right answers from all the practitioners that I was seeing. So I said, fuck this shit, I'm just going to learn myself and I'm going to help myself. And when I saw how simple some of these things could be, like this food sensitivity test is not complicated. Knowing how to interpret it requires some nuance, but it's not difficult. And so when I saw how simple even the nutrition pieces and being able to support our body in the right way to be as healthy as you possibly can be. I had to share this with as many people as possible, and that's how this business was started, and that's how my group program, Simply Healthy Academy, was started. Now, not counting my two degrees though, I've spent tens of thousands of dollars and years on all that. I've learned supplements, I've tried programs, I've completed certifications, continuing education, with webinars and books and all sorts of things. You get to benefit from that. You don't have to spend tens of thousands of dollars, you get to spend less time. It doesn't have to take you years to figure this out, and you get to spend less energy trying to figure out all the things and piece it together, because I've got that figured out for you and you can get results faster. And that's really what I want to do for you in the next episode. Like I said, I'm going to talk more about stool testing, bacterial overgrowth, candida and parasites, and how to decide if one of these things might be an issue for you. Thanks as always for listening. I hope this was helpful and I will catch you next time.

[29:27] Kacey K: Thank you so much for listening to the Simply Healthy You podcast. If these episodes are resonating with you, go ahead and click that subscribe button and leave a review with all the great nuggets that you're taking away from today's episode. I promise you I read every single one of them, as your feedback is really valuable to me in creating future episodes. As your host, I look forward to having you join me for the next episode. But in the meantime, remember, keep it simple and eat more plants.