What I Eat - Day Sixty-Seven

Hello to all my readers!   Some of you may have noticed that I've been gone for a few weeks.   There has been a lot of change in my life, but I'm back on track now for regular posts!   

I help a lot of patients with poor digestion...heartburn, cramps, spasms, pain, diarrhea, constipation, bleeding, hemorrhoids...all symptoms that often resolve once we sort out what is irritating each patient's digestive tract and help it heal.   

One of the tools that I use is a food intolerance test.   This test measures the reaction of a particular antibody in the immune system to a bunch of commonly consumed foods.  This test does not measure allergic reactions (a different antibody).  It serves as a fantastic guide for what foods might be making a patient sick.   I got curious and ran one on myself.    I've posted my test results below.   

Please note two important things:

1) Eating the food being tested for at least a few weeks before the test is conducted is necessary to get an accurate result of your antibody levels.   Given that I have been strictly avoiding gluten for over a decade, it's pretty crazy that my reaction to wheat and gluten was so high.   

2) Even a 'low' reaction is still significant, and warrants considering removing the food from your diet for a period of time.

3) Last but not least, there's a lot of experience and expertise that goes into reading these reports.   I won't be providing a complete interpretation of my results, I just thought it would be interesting to share them.  

If you want to learn more about this test, click here. 

The most interesting thing about the results, for me, was my extreme reaction to eggs.  I already knew that eggs were a problem because they give me heartburn if I eat them too frequently.  In fact, I found if I ate them a couple of mornings in a row I would have trouble swallowing them!   More and more of my patients are reacting to eggs too.    What these results mean to me is that I need to become more vigilant about avoiding trace amounts of eggs; something I was already trying to do!   Trace amounts of a food can irritate your immune system and increase your inflammation, even if you don't notice any particular symptoms after you eat it.

So, I had a last hurrah and ate the snack cakes pictured below.   I have fond memories of eating 'wagon wheels' when I was a child, and these reminded me of them.   They were good.

Next week I'll be back with my regular posts.    Happy summer!