Do you ever have food cravings…urges for a particular food that makes you feel better even when you are full? Have you experienced eating a favorite food only to end up hungrier than before you ate it? Do you have any foods that you really can’t imagine going days or weeks without?
If you answer yes to any of these questions, you have food allergies that are affecting your brain and controlling your choices. “So what?” you say. The allergy makes you crave foods that make you feel good – so what is so bad about that? Yes it makes you eat more than you need so you gain weight, but that is not such a bad price to pay to feel good. You might know that these allergies cause inflammation just like a skin rash only in your brain that kills your brain cells, but how do you know? You know that health wise these foods could lead to heart disease or diabetes, but that possibility is so far down the road it is hard to care about. Besides, these foods make you feel happy. What is the point of being alive if you don’t feel happy?
If you can relate to any of these thoughts it is for good reason. Most food allergies or sensitivities are also addiction reactions. These thoughts are not really your true thoughts, but the simply the control of an addiction talking. The pathways involved are the same pathways the heroin addict, crack addict, alcoholic, and nicotine addict have running their lives. Your free will has been replaced but the needs of the addiction. Your body’s innate wisdom to seek health through balance is replaced by the overwhelming drive to feel better. Normally balance makes us feel better, but the addiction creates an imbalance that can only be satisfied by more of the addictive substance… a drive so strong that it is willing to sacrifice the health and natural happiness a balanced life would bring you. You have no idea that that your daily food cravings or eating habits are based on a physiological need to stop withdrawal symptoms caused by food allergy addiction.
Simultaneous allergy and addiction to both foods and chemicals is now well accepted by doctors specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of allergies. These specialists, known as clinical ecologists, believe that many chronic health problems, such as migraine, fatigue, depression, and arthritis are caused by allergies to foods and chemicals and affect approximately one-third of the population living in industrialized countries.
The same food will cause different reactions in different people. Each person’s genes will cause the allergies to target different body tissues. Any area of the body can be a target. Cerebral allergies include hyperactivity, depression, irritability, headaches and some forms of schizophrenia. Hypoglycemia can be a manifestation of pancreatic malfunction, frequently caused by allergy; while in other cases, the blood vessels may be the target organ with the resulting signs of vasculitis and edema. Flare-ups causing joint swelling, colitis, heart palpitations, even muscle spasm can all be due to a food sensitivity.
Water retention, or edema, is particularly common among allergic individuals and is an important contributing factor to obesity. The removal of an offending food will often result in a rapid water loss of five to ten pounds within a week’s time, all without the use of a diuretic.
One of the most compelling reasons to deal now with food allergies is that they can make you stupid … seriously. A former patient of mine, Dr. Joan Smith – an expert on learning disorders, once told me that the number one reason for dyslexic reading disorders she found in children was milk sensitivity. She would test the actual brain processing speed in children while they read and found the allergy to milk slowed the brain down so much that it caused learning disabilities in sensitive kids. (Check out her book here.)
Food allergies and sensitivities are a chief cause of brain inflammation. Unlike inflammation in the rest of the body, when the brain gets inflamed it causes permanent brain damage and nerve death. Fortunately we have a lot of brain cells so it takes many years to really see the effects in most of us, but they are building up every day. Brain inflammation not only decreases mental capacity, but it also decreases your capacity to feel joy, happiness, or even simple pleasure. It decreases your ability to taste and smell. Eventually it starts affecting your balance and muscle function. Some of those back pains you come in to see me for may be caused by brain inflammation from food allergies.
Everything you value in your life depends upon you having a well functioning brain. You can lose you legs, your eyes, even your ability to speak, and you can still participate with life in a meaningful and fulfilling way. But lose your brain function and you are gone…no one home…no reason to be here any more. So protecting your brain from inflammation has to be a number one priority. You lose an average of 10,000 brain cells every day even when you are healthy. With brain allergies you can lose 10 times that many.
So think twice before you grab that comfort food that makes you feel so good. That feeling is no different than the high the heroin addict gets, with the same quality of life destroying consequences…it just takes a few years longer…but not that many more years. Make different choices. Find comfort in other ways. Food poisons are just not worth the price you have to pay. Find a healthier replacement food or even better find an activity that makes you feel more connected and alive.