Food Sensitivities and Diabetes
I want to talk about one of the most common things that I get asked in the office. And that is, “What should I eat?” I have so many patients who come into the practice and they’re asking me, “What diet do I need to do? Is it a ketogenic diet? Is it Atkins?” And they’ve tried different things, and they’ve cut calories and all these types of different reducing intake diets or foods and everything else under the sun. Well, in regards to type two diabetes, and really any health condition, but we’ll focus on type two diabetes today, there’s something that you need to know. And that there is no one size fits all diets. There is no specific diet for diabetes. Now, I know you may be thinking, well, “I’ve gone to Amazon, and I read different books, and it says, I ate this food to reverse my diabetes and blah, blah, blah.” Well, what I can tell you is that there is no one size fits all diet for diabetes. Now, what we do know is that you need to make sure you’re eating the right types of foods for your body to be in an environment that it can heal. Anytime your body is not able to heal, it’s because the environment it is in is not working appropriately, it’s in a dysfunctional environment that is reducing your ability to heal. So how can we create an environment that’s going to be healthy for you? Well, there’s a couple of steps that you have to take advantage of or look into first before we even really put together the right type of foods. And that’s what I want to talk about today. So we’re going to talk about food sensitivities. Now, not to be confused with food allergies, because food allergies is a different immune response than food sensitivities. So we have to make sure we really distinguish between the two, because oftentimes, I’ll talk to patients and they’ll say, “Oh, I’ve been told I have an allergy to this and allergies to that.” And what they’re really saying is they have a sensitivity to the food and not an allergy to the food. So what is the sensitivity and what’s happening inside the body to create this? Well, sensitivities are acquired, mean that your body develops these types of things over time by eating certain types of foods. Whereas an allergy is typically something that you’re gonna be born with. Someone may be allergic to nuts or seeds, they may be allergic to shellfish, they may be allergic to bees or whatever else are certain allergies. And it’s a different type of immune response called IgE. So that’s that type of immune response, where sensitivities are going to be more of an IGA or an IGG, or even an IgM response, which was more of different types of responses for the food. And what’s even more interesting is this is where it gets really crazy, is that you can eat food today and the sensitivity reaction may not occur for two to three days later. So imagine that you are eating the food today, and two or three days from now, your blood sugar will go up. And you’re like, “I don’t understand I just had a salad or, I ate hardly anything that should not have caused this.” And it was potentially because of the food you ate a couple of days ago. And that’s where it starts to get really chaotic and not knowing what to eat what to do. And there and a lot of our patients are afraid to eat because they don’t know what’s going to do to their body. So what I’m going to talk about today is “What is the sensitivity? How does it occur? And can sensitivities be fixed, if you will?” So let’s talk about that.
The first thing is when you have someone with diabetes, or any other health-related issue that’s really impacting their body, it’s going to leave their body in a vulnerable state, they’re going to have a lot of inflammation, they’re going to have a lot of problems in many cases. So if they’re having these problems, there’s going to be other secondary symptoms or scenarios they’re going to be experiencing, that are not going to be helpful for them either. And that’s usually going to happen in the gut, right? The intestinal tract, we know, is a major area that allows for the regulation of blood sugar. Of course, it’s where your food is digested, it’s where you’re absorbing food, those sort of things. But what we may not understand is your immune system is also really heavily impacting the way that your intestinal tract is functioning. So if you start eating foods, and maybe the foods aren’t that great quality, they’re more pro-inflammatory foods or maybe you’re taking medications or maybe you’re in an environment, we’re getting a lot of toxicity. Things start to get into your body, it can start to disrupt the way that the gut functions. And over time, the gut will start to have problems and start to create a barrier issue. Meaning the intestinal lining starts to become very thin, and now becomes too thin, larger particles that are in the gut can now start to get through, where mostly only small particles are able to get through. It’s kind of like a cheesecloth, small particles are only supposed to get through and capture the larger ones and keep them out of whatever you’re trying to put into, whatever you’re cooking. Well, if you had little cuts or big holes inside your cheesecloth, now larger things would get through, and it would not do the job appropriately. This is similar to what happens to the gut overtime when there’s a lot of dysfunction going on. So when that occurs, just beyond the intestinal tract is your bloodstream. Now inside the bloodstream, obviously, is your immune system. So if your immune system kind of comes around, it sees this large particle of food, for example, called a macromolecule, start to attack it, because it’s not supposed to be in your body. Now, let’s say that food is a piece of broccoli, for example. Now your immune system doesn’t know that’s a piece of broccoli, it just knows that it’s something that shouldn’t be there. So it starts attacking it to the next thing you know, it starts to create what’s called a B cell or a memory cell to remind the immune system, that is something that’s not supposed to be in the body, and we need to fight it off. And so what it does, it creates a response if that food comes back in, but it’s only seen the structure that was called a protein structure, it doesn’t know that it’s a piece of broccoli. Now that the immune system has a memory of that specific protein structure, so anytime that comes back into the body, it’s going to attack it. Now that is what’s referred to as food sensitivity, you just developed a sensitivity to that food. And it’s not because it’s bad food, it’s a good quality food broth is good for you. But it’s because of the dysfunction of the gut. And now the immune system is attacking things that it shouldn’t be attacking. Now, here’s where it gets really complicated because these protein structures of foods will mimic other types of foods. So a protein structure of broccoli could be similar to like a piece of chicken, or a peach, or something like that. So as you start eating more of these foods, because you have a dysfunctional gut, because you have a development of food sensitivities, you start to develop sensitivities to other types of foods. So the next thing you know, you’re thinking you’re eating healthy, but in reality, because you have these sensitivities that are going on, your immune system is attacking it, causing an inflammatory reaction, which will, in turn, cause your blood sugar to go up, causing more insulin resistance. And next thing you know, you’re confused about what you should be eating. And you have this confusion on your face when you come in and see me and I’m like, “I know because there are so many things that are going on here.” See, reducing blood sugars has nothing to do about trying to lose weight, exercising, having a good diet. Now, of course, you can reduce blood sugars by doing that. But it’s not going to fix the underlying cause of why you have the elevated blood sugars or the cause of your diabetes. Having food sensitivities and an unhealthy gut are some of the underlying mechanisms that many of our patients that we work with, are going to be experiencing. And if we don’t fix those, we don’t fix the problem, then that individual is going to get worse over time, be more and more frustrated, taking more and more medication, and recreating that vicious cycle of the unhealthy functions in the body. So we have to look at things a little bit differently from the perspective of health rather than trying to suppress the symptoms. So can you fix this? Absolutely, we can fix it.
Number one, we have to understand what foods are okay for you to eat and which ones are not. So we can do testing, there are things called food sensitivity testing. Now, I want to warn you, because there’s a lot of things on Facebook and different other online channels that are doing sensitivity testing, but they’re not the full components of sensitivity testing. The type that we do in here is going to analyze the IGA and the IGG, which is very important to look at those ones is an immediate reaction and one is in a delayed reaction, where a lot of these tests online are going to be IGG only, so you won’t get the full gamut of the analysis. But once we know what foods the person has a sensitivity to, then we can customize their diet more appropriate for them. So then we can go in, do the healing that’s necessary, give the gut the proper protocols that it needs to, solidify everything, get it nice and healthy, calm down the immune system. And then when that happens, in many cases, the person can go back to eating those foods where they had developed sensitivities because the underlying problem has been fixed. And as we fix those underlying problems with the sensitivities, guess what happens with your overall blood sugars That’s right, they start to come down and start to reverse the person doesn’t need as much medication may be getting off medication, they’re getting their life back, they’re feeling better having more energy, and because their body’s functioning better. So it goes back to looking at the underlying cause of the problem, and not just addressing the symptoms. So if you’re in a situation right now, we are dealing with type two diabetes, and you’re thinking, “All I have to do is change my diet and eat more vegetables and more protein or whatever else.” That may be the case to lower blood sugars, that may not be the best step for you. You have to know what type of foods, what exact foods for yourself. When we’re working with diabetics in our office, we customize their diet to their needs. And in many cases that may be based on a food sensitivity analysis of what they should and should not be eating.
Customization is key, you will not find any patient in my office is doing the same stuff, the same protocols, they may have similar problems, which may require similar protocols, but they won’t be in the same steps as we’re working with them and taking care of the underlying issues, which is why we have such a high success rate of helping patients reverse their diabetes. It is possible we see it happen all the time, we rarely see a patient fail with diabetes. And what I mean by that as they’re getting off their medications, they’re able to lose weight naturally with little to no exercise reducing the risk of future complications.
Not only do they feel better, but we can actually see it in physiology on black and white testing as well, our patients do better. And part of that is understanding the intestinal tract as well as these sensitivities as well. So I hope that today’s information was worth your while. Listen, if there’s anything that I can do for you to help you out in any way possible, please give our office a call, we can set up a consultation, it can be virtually or an office. And if there’s something I can help you in regards to maybe helping you customize a better quality diet by looking at sensitivities, gut issues, helping with diabetes, or maybe someone you know, who has diabetes needs to see this or read this article, so share with them. I’m always here for you.
