A food allergy is an adverse reaction that occurs when you eat a particular food. It can caused by any component of the food, including protein, starch, fat, food coloring, flavorings, stabilizers, or preservatives. Many studies have indicated that food allergies In cause or contribute to numerous medical conditions, including gastrointestinal, urinal musculoskeletal, skin, and respiratory.

Common Symptoms

• Puffiness and dark circles under the eyes
• Fluid retention
• Swollen glands
• Stomach aches
• Diarrhea
• Stiffness, pain, or swelling of joints

What You Need to Know

Conventional skin-prick or blood tests such as ELISA/Act, IgG ELISA, or RAST test measure the antibodies that are directed at specific food and chemical allergens. However, the tests are expensive and can be unreliable in diagnosing many food allergies. They are often misleading if you’re taking prednisone, aspirin, antihistamines, and other drugs. I recommend the following elimination diet to find the foods to which you are allergic:

Step 1: Discontinue commonly eaten foods and replace them with hypoallergenic foods, or special hypoallergenic formulas. The standard diet consists of lamb, chicken, potatoes, rice, banana, apple, and cabbage, broccoli, or Brussels sprouts. There are many companies that sell hypoallergenic foods, and I suggest that you ask a registered dietician about them.

Step 2: Stay on this diet for one to four weeks. If your symptoms are caused by a food that you were previously eating, they’ll disappear, usually within one week. If they don’t disappear, you may be allergic to one of the foods in the elimination diet, and you will have to restrict even further the foods you eat.

Step 3: After the elimination period, reintroduce foods individually. You can either reintroduce a single food every two days or every two meals. If the food is causing your symptoms, they’ll reoccur or get worse.

Your Balanced Healing Action Plan for Food Allergies

If you can identify the foods that are causing your allergies, eliminating them from your diet can end your symptoms. This can be a time-consuming process, but it’s ultimately successful. However, even if you can’t detect the foods responsible for your allergies-or can’t or don’t want to eliminate the foods you eat-the following steps should give you significant improvement.

Step 1: Try Probiotics and Digestive Enzymes First

If your digestive tract does not work well, your food will be incompletely broken down. Incomplete proteins can cause an allergic response, so improving your digestion is of the utmost importance. Start with digestive enzymes to help break down your food better. There are many products that contain digestive enzymes; get one that contains some or all of the following: protease, papain, amylase, lipase, bromelain, cellulase, and lactase.

I also recommend taking probiotics with the enzymes. These consist of live cultures of organisms (the “good” bacteria) that help digest food properly. Of the beneficial microorganisms in probiotics, L. acidophilus and bifidobacteria are the best. Other beneficial bacteria include L. salivarius, L. rhamnosus, L. plantarum, streptococcus thermophilus, L. bulgaricus, L. casei, and L. sporogenes.

You should notice improvement in two to six weeks. During the first week, you may initially have increased gas, bloating, or cramping; if so, reduce your dosage, and then gradually increase it as the side effects diminish. Contrary to common belief, yogurt is not a good choice for supplying probiotics. Yogurt products do contain beneficial microorganisms, but they are not the most important or potent. Also, many yogurt products are pasteurized, but this process kills most of the good bacteria and eliminates their benefits.

Step 2: Use the Nambudripad Allergy Elimination Treatment (NAET)

If Step 1 does not help or gives you only partial relief, I recommend the Nambudripad Allergy Elimination Treatment, or NAET, which has been shown to be an effective way of reducing or eliminating food allergies. This system combines acupuncture, chiropractic, kinesiology, herbs, and nutrition to eliminate food allergies permanently. However, NAET can take several months to work, depending on how many allergies you have, which is why I recommend this step second.

Kaye, a bright, easygoing teenager, had numerous food allergies and was underweight because there were so many foods that caused her to react. She had tried elimination diets, but there were too many foods that caused symptoms. I started her on probiotics and digestive enzymes (Step 1), and she then underwent NAET (Step 2). She was allergic to almost everything, but especially eggs and wheat. After three months of treatment, she was able to eat 90 percent of all foods without any reaction, and she started gaining weight.

Step 3: Take Appropriate Chinese Herbal Remedies

If you still have problems with food allergies after trying the previous two steps, try Chinese herbs next. I recommend the 900-year-old formula, Ping Wei San. Consult a practitioner qualified in Chinese herbal medicine to determine whether other formulas are appropriate for your particular problems. You should start seeing benefits within three weeks (sometimes sooner), but you may need to take the herbs longer, depending on your condition(s).

Step 4: Try the Rotary Diversified Diet

If the previous steps don’t help you, then I recommend trying the rotary diversified diet, developed by Dr. Herbert Rinkle. This diet requires you to eat a highly varied selection of foods in a defined rotation. The goal is to prevent the formation of new allergies and control existing ones. In this diet, if you eat a particular food on one day, you cannot eat that food again for four to seven days.

Tagged under:adverse reaction brussels sprouts dark circles under the eyes food allergies food allergy food coloring General Ailments puffiness stomach aches swollen glands

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Filed under: General Ailments