Food elimination diets have become very popular in recent years, and for good reason. 

Eliminating foods that our body is reacting to can bring relief from uncomfortable and debilitating symptoms caused by the damage to our digestive tract and by our immune system reacting to those foods.

When our immune system sees a food as a foreign invader it mounts an immune response.  The resulting inflammation leads to pain and discomfort in our body.   

When we eat foods that our body is reacting to on a daily or even weekly basis, our body becomes chronically inflamed.  Our body hurts and our body systems don’t work well.

Often food reactions manifest as digestive symptoms.  Reactive foods  can damage our gut lining, disturb digestion, and promote dysbiosis of our microbiome.

When we have undigested food in our gut, our microbiome feeds on it.  Their byproduct is gas.  If there are large quantities of undigested food for our microbes to feed on, they can overgrow and the quantity of gas grows. 

What’s more, our body waits for our food to digest to a certain degree before moving it through the digestive tract.  If food isn’t digested enough, it doesn’t move forward.  Undigested food sitting in our gut putrefies creating more gas, damage and irritation to the gut lining.

So YES, eliminating reactive foods can decrease the damage happening to the digestive tract and reduce inflammation in the body. This can reduce bloating, relieve other digestive symptoms, and help you feel better!

The problem is that most of us stop there.

We go on living a life of limited foods while never really getting to the root cause of WHY we are reacting to certain foods in the first place. We never find true healing because we aren’t solving the entire problem.

Consider this… Since the industrial revolution with its onslaught of processed foods, we have been eating more genetically modified foods, food chemicals and pesticides.  Our body doesn’t recognize these items as foods but rather foreign invaders. This increases our body’s immune response. 

These foreign foods also cause damage to our gut lining making it “leaky”.  A leaky gut lining allows toxins, pathogens and larger than normal food proteins to be absorbed into our blood stream.

Our immune system doesn’t recognize these invaders, including the large food proteins that sneak through, so it mounts an immune response to protect our body.

We build antibodies to these food proteins so now every time we eat them, our immune system responds and creates inflammation. In some cases our body's immune response gets confused and starts to attack self. This is when autoimmune disease can appear.

When our gut becomes too damaged, our gut's immune army diminishes and our gut can become an ideal place for water and food born pathogens to set up shop. These hidden infections can continue to cause damage and dysbiosis.

As you can see, there really is more to solving the problem than simply eliminating foods!

We need to consider everything that can be causing damage and dysfunction in the gut.  We need to remove these interferences and provide the tools and opportunity for the gut to repair.

When working with clients I help them identify their food sensitivities so that we can remove them from their diet temporarily in order to reduce the damage and inflammation caused by them.

We also test for gut pathogens, dysbiosis and digestive dysfunction so that we can address these as well. We consider heavy metals, chemicals and biotoxins that can be disrupting our gut. 

We take steps to remove and reduce these blocking factors to healing, and then provide supportive nutrients to allow the gut to heal. 

When we heal and seal the gut we can, in some cases, reverse food sensitivities as well as prevent new food sensitivities from developing. 

Here is my 3 step process for helping my clients truly heal their gut so that they can say goodbye to their bloat, digestive discomfort, and systemic inflammation and finally get their life back.

STEP 1:  TEST.  Test the gut for hidden infections, dysbiosis, inflammation, and poor digestive function.  Test for the client’s specific food sensitivities. Consider heavy metals, chemicals and biotoxins.

STEP 2:  REMOVE & RESTORE.  Remove hidden infections in the gut and toxins from the body while restoring digestive function and regular bowel movements. Remove reactive foods to calm the immune system and reduce damage to gut lining.

STEP 3:  REBALANCE & REPAIR.  Rebalance the microbiome and repair the gut lining.

STEP 4:  REINTRODUCE.  One at a time reintroduce reactive foods to see if they are now safely tolerated.

So my friend, if you are struggling with bloating, digestive issues or chronic inflammation and reacting to foods, it’s time to take a look under the hood for the real root causes.  I can help! 

Let’s get you booked for a discovery session so that we can discuss your specific health concerns and potential root causes and how Functional Nutritional Therapy can help you reclaim your health!

In health,

Heather Glenn, FNTP, RWP, HHC