When I was much younger food allergies were fairly rare. We had never heard of a gluten sensitivity or a tree nut allergy. Or a lactose intolerance. And yet nowadays they are at such epidemic levels that most restaurants offer all kinds of gluten-free entrees and the supermarkets are filled with a variety of gluten-free, soy-free, lactose-free, and peanut-free foods to choose from.
So why are these food sensitivities so common now? And is avoiding the offending food really the best way to overcome the reactions to these foods?
Let’s start with the first question. From treating thousands of patients with food allergies over the past 35 years I have come to the conclusion that the majority of the food sensitivities and allergies people are experiencing are most commonly caused by the overuse of pharmaceuticals we use nowadays compared to the amounts used 50 years ago.
It is common for teenage girls to take birth control pills for decades, Children are given over 70 vaccines (I had two vaccines when I was young for a comparison), and many children are given antibiotics every time they get an infection, which weakens their immune system, requiring more and more rounds of antibiotics to the point where it is common that a child might take 6-12 rounds of antibiotics in just one year.
All this at a time when the immune system is just starting to develop. When a baby is born the gut is sterile. Then when the mother starts breastfeeding the baby the friendly bacteria begin to grow in the gut. And these friendly bacteria are responsible for stabilizing the immune system, preventing it from hyper-reacting to foods. So it is extremely important that nothing interferes with the growth of these delicate bowel flora in the early childhood and teen years.
The problem is this: the antibiotics, immunizations and birth control pills all deplete this friendly bacteria, so if the child has been exposed to too many rounds of these medications the strains of friendly bacteria get wiped out, which starts the downward spiral of the immune system, causing it to hyper-react to foods with each new round of antibiotics or immunizations.
The liver, which is also part of both the digestive system and the immune system has to intelligently process all the food once we swallow it and send it on its way. Since the liver is also the seat of detoxification, and has to process any and all chemicals that come into the body, if it is exposed to too many toxins it will overheat as it processes these very hot and acidic toxins.
Once it overheats it becomes highly reactive, so that when the food comes into it, instead of intelligently processing it the way it should, it has a temper tantrum on the food, oxidizing it and turning it into a poison, which we call ama visha in Ayurveda.
And it’s this combination of lack of friendly bacteria in the gut and an over heated and over reactive liver which disrupts the normal digestion of the food, turning it into a hot reactive poison, ama visha, which gives us all kinds of symptoms once it is formed. And it is this reaction we recognize as a food sensitivity or a food allergy.
The protein in gluten and dairy are the two most difficult to digest, so if there is any problem with digestion, they are the first to go. But the real truth is that once the gut and liver become so compromised, they can pretty much attack any food you eat and give digestive symptoms every day.
The answer isn’t to get fancy blood work done to see what you’re allergic to and avoid that food. Yes, it may help, and you can do it if you are desperate. But the best thing to do is to fix the friendly bacteria in the gut, cool down the heat in the liver and clean it out. And then slowly watch the food sensitivities go away, so you can enjoy the offending foods once again.
So the answer to the second question is that yes, while you may of course feel better avoiding each and every food that bothers you, you are not really getting to the underlying cause of the food sensitivity. Which means that when you do go back to eating the offending food after avoiding it for a while, you might start reacting to it all over again. Or you might now find that another food that you’ve been eating also starts to give you problems, so you have to avoid that one as well. And another one and another one until you feel like you’re backed into a corner with hardly any food left to eat.
I see many people in this predicament and it’s only getting worse as time goes on and more and more rounds of pharmaceuticals are given with each new generation of children.
But there is a way out of it which involves much more than just avoiding the offending foods. First, you have to regrow the friendly bacteria in the gut – and each person might have to do it in a slightly different way. Some people might be instructed to make their own homemade yogurt, lassi or buttermilk using very active yogurt starter cultures.
But then others might be sensitive to dairy so they cannot use these cultured dairy products. Which means they might have to use a lactose-free probiotic. Unfortunately a lot of the probiotics on the market are useless because they lose their potency during the processing. So unless you can look at their viability under a microscope you might have to try different brands to get the desired effect you’re looking for.
We use Natren probiotics in my practice, but sometimes if a person is sensitive to probiotics and sensitive to milk we have to teach them how to make cultured coconut water, using the water taken directly from a fresh coconut since the coconut water on the supermarket shelves has been sitting there and can lose its medicinal effects over time. Or sometimes we have to teach them how to make yogurt, buttermilk and lassi from goat’s milk, which is somewhat less allergenic than cow’s milk.
We also have to cool down the liver, again, tailoring the targeted herbs specifically for each person. Don’t forget: herbs are a sort of food and if the liver is in a bad mood it will turn the herb into ama visha as it tries to digest it. So we have various ways of avoiding the liver by giving transdermal creams, where we rub the herb onto the skin, where it goes directly into the bloodstream and doesn’t have to be digested by the liver. Or we give just the vibrational version of the herb in water so the water gains the intelligence of the herb and delivers it immediately into the cellular system, again bypassing the liver.
There are some great herbs such as bhumi amalaki, which can cool the heat in the liver and bring the intelligence back to the liver so it stops hyper reacting to the foods. Mankand is the only herb who has a cooling effect without cleaning it. Guduchi Satwa can clean the liver while keeping it cool, but again, if the liver is extremely reactive we may have to give the guduchi through the skin or through the herbal nectar drops to prevent the liver from attacking it and oxidizing it the way it oxidizes all the foods coming into it.
We teach the patients to avoid herbs which clean the liver but heat it — such as milk thistle, dandelion and many of our Ayurvedic herbs as well. Garlic pills, flax seed oil, lots of synthetic vitamins, especially B complex, turmeric and curcumin capsules all heat the liver so we have to take the patients off of all of these in order to help the liver to cool down.
And in the end, by fixing the friendly bacteria and helping the liver to do its job the way it’s supposed to, the food allergies eventually die down and just go away. Which is a great relief to people who have been suffering for years with their food allergies.
So I hope you can now see that there is a better way to address food allergies other than by just avoiding the offending foods. By regrowing your gut micro biome and calming down the liver and bringing its intelligence back to it, the food will digest the way it’s supposed to, breaking down into very small particles that can enter your bloodstream where the nutrients will be carried to every part of your body — all the organs, glands and cellular systems. Which means you will feel great when you eat — without gas, bloating and reactions to foods.
I hope you found this information useful. Thank you.