Why Your Food Diary Isn’t Working

The Broken Barrier

When you develop an intolerance to food, it means that undigested food molecules are migrating from you gut into your bloodstream, which activates an IgG antibody response. This IgG antibody has a memory, and you have now just activated it. Therefore, every time you ingest that food, this antibody will initiate an inflammatory response, and this inflammation now accumulates in the tissues, skin, joints and all other areas of the body, causing symptoms to ensue.

Our symptoms are a sign of a broken barrier in the gut epithelial wall. This damage is like leaving the front door wide open, allowing food molecules and all manor of other debris and bacteria into the blood stream. As you can imagine, this creates chaos leading to a plethora of symptoms.

The Accumulative effect

Intolerance reactions are accumulative. Unlike immediate allergic reactions, which hit you square on minutes after consumption, food intolerances can take some time to kick in.

Your immune system is the body’s internal army. Imagine this IgG antibody is a bit like the sergeant Major on the front line, he’s a busy guy. This means he can carry anything up to a 72 hour delay. Meaning he might notice the offending food in 20 minutes, but equally it might take him 3 days!

So, when you’re looking at a diary and trying to identify the odd man out, it usually isn’t him.

The Solution

When keeping a food diary, don’t just consider food items, you need to be looking at other factors also. The environmental exposure also counts, along with dehydration and stress when it comes to symptoms. So moving forward, try some of the following;

• Look at the foods which are predominant in your diet, in particular the major food groups such as wheat, gluten and dairy. These are usually the main offenders.
• Keep an eye on hydration. Try to drink at least 2.5 litres of water per day, and consider caffiene. For each cup of tea or coffee you consume, it will cancel out around 3 glasses of water!
• Look at stress management, and how that fits in.
• Consider seasonal eating, are you eating the same fruits and vegetables all round keeping that IgG antibody on full alert 52 weeks of the year?
• Don’t forget the 72 hour delay rule!

A word on hydration and stress

Your body loses around two and half litres of water every day whether you like it or not. By not replacing it, your bowel will quickly become dehydrated which can lead to sporadic constipation, diarrhoea, migraines, headaches and a host of other symptoms including malabsorption.

Stress is another important consideration. The adrenal glands (which aid in fight or flight) are still primitive, and not able to differentiate between external stressors. They don’t know the difference between a sabre tooth tiger stalking you, financial problems, grief or chronic inflammation. It all looks the same to them!

So, while cortisol (your body’s hormone triggering fight or flight) is necessary for the body’s stress response, prolonged exposure to high levels of cortisol can be toxic. This in turn can lead to a range of health problems, including chronic disease such as diabetes, heart disease, arthritis etc.

We mention this because there is no one single thing which leads to chronic inflammation (symptoms), but rather a combination of many. Hence, it is necessary to consider the bigger picture when keeping a food diary.

Get Tested

It may seem obvious, but getting tested for food intolerances is a must for everyone today. No one is immune to the relentless onslaught of environmental triggers today, which means none of us can avoid it. This is ultimately leading to excess inflammation in the body, which damages the gut epithelial barrier.

Of course, once that barrier is damaged, there is no way of avoiding food triggers, because these undigested food molecules are always going to find their way into the bloodstream.