A food intolerance can arise when certain foods you eat for one reason or another are not completely digested and in turn enter the blood stream through our digestive tract. As a result your immune system works on attacking these foreign objects and produce a tailor made form of defence called antibodies which attack the unwelcome food particles. While you may think this is great, your immune system is doing a great job, you need to understand the full picture.
Food intolerances can create both low grade and high grade inflammation in the body causing a variety of possible symptoms such as joint pain, skin problems, IBS, weight gain, bloating, stomach cramps, migraines and many many more.
While these symptoms are your bodies way of telling you to listen up somethings not right, there can be a lot more happening underneath the surface that may not be detected for some time. For example while your immune system & tailor made antibodies are attacking the foreign food particle, it can also cause additional inflammation, damage or at worst destruct other bodily tissues. By continuing to expose your body and immune system to the specific undigested food particles you are simply adding fuel to the fire and in turn creating a situation of chronic inflammation.
Inflammation is now thought to be a key component or central aspect of many disease states or impaired conditions such as obesity, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, eczema, psoriasis, depression, neurodegenerative disorders, cancer and many more. When the immune system operates in a state of homeostasis or balance its process is self regulating & beneficial to the hosts state of wellbeing. The immune systems ability to adapt and respond with an immune response e.g. inflammation is key to the survival of the host. However when the immune systems ability to respond to a wide range of systematic dysfunctions including inflammation, this can lead to an impaired immune response and system and in turn be detrimental to the host.
We take a systematic approach in supporting your dietary changes in order to eliminate any trigger foods as a result your food intolerance results with a four R approach (listed below). We also work with you providing a tailor made dietary guide including replacement foods for any trigger foods identified, easy to implement nutritional recipes, “Free from” shopping guides and a diet diary to log your success. Our systematic approach is as follows:
Remove
Removing trigger foods from your diet can be difficult, especially when it comes to hidden trigger foods in your everyday diet. We can provide you with a dietary guide, nutritional recipes and “Free from” shopping guides to help & support your dietary needs at this time.
Replace
Your comprehensive dietary plan will include alternative replacement foods, giving you many whole food nutritious options. Replacing trigger foods with healthy whole food alternatives can support satiety throughout your day making dietary changes more possible and easy to implement as well as improving your nutritional profile.
Reinoculate
A comprehensive dietary plan can include a protocol to address and support digestive imbalances & gut permeability, problems that can lead to IgG intolerances in the first place.
Repair
There are many different contributing factors that can lead to food intolerances, we can help identify these possible causes, design your dietary plan and address these needs through diet, supplementation or lifestyle change.
Call or click today for your free 15min assessment or to book your Food Intolerance test with Helen Finn, an NTOI registered Nutritional Therapist & Practitioner of Functional Medicine with the Galway based Combination Cooking – a nutritional approach. Our registered practise is based in Galway city and throughout Galway County.