How often were we told this in our training?  And how often have we found this to be true in practice?  And now suddenly, it seems, the medical researchers (at last!) are rapidly coming around to this core concept?? Our microbiome is suddenly the hottest property on the body block, and it seems every interested party is shouting, ‘Buy!Buy!Buy!’ As integrative health practitioners, of course, we had a major head-start, not just by appreciating the gut’s central positioning in the whole health story (iridology beliefs, maps & teasers aside!!) but also a heads-up about the damage the western diet, our medication exposures and lifestyle tend to wreak upon it. A favourite quote of Jason Hawrelak’s by Justin Sonnenburg, “The western diet starves your microbial self”, underscores the significance of just one element of this impact. And…are we all clear that the increasing number of patients reporting adverse food reactions, once again, overwhelmingly are a response to aberrant processes in the GIT?

Sounds silly it’s so obvious right, but it’s easy to get distracted & misattribute blame…for example, it’s the food that’s the problem. Well yes in a minority of situations interactions between someone’s genes, immune system and a particular food turns something otherwise healthy into something pathological, but for the majority, the food itself & in others is healthy, & could  be beneficial to this individual, if only we could resolve their GIT issues…like FODMAPs for example.

Not the problem, just the messenger.

So if the ‘problem food’ is just the messenger, what’s the actual message we need to understand?  Is it that this patient has medication, disease or otherwise induced hypochlorhydria, impairing ‘chopping up’ of potential antigens implicated in immune mediated food reactions? Or is that this person’s got fat maldigestion &/or malabsorption so that in addition to not tolerating fats, they may experience dietary oxalate intolerance to boot? Or are the food reactions the result of altered microflora changing what we can and can’t digest (via their critical contribution) & absorb?

So what message does the presence of IgG antibodies to consumed foods send us about the state of someone’s gut? It’s telling us 2 things: this individual exhibits abnormal intestinal permeability  & currently in the context of this leaky gut, these foods may constitute a barrier to resolving this & other symptoms as well.

We’ve recently released the mp4 (that’s audio plus the movie version of the slideshow so grab your popcorn…that’s if you don’t have a corn issue!)  of A Guide to Investigating Adverse Food Reactions – What’s IgG got to do with it? which details the science behind IgG, including debunking, the incorrect debunking of IgG food antibody testing!! But more than this, it overviews the whole maze of adverse food reactions, articulates a logical investigative path for practitioners through this maze, and helps us to really understand that finding the food(s) responsible for a patient’s symptoms is not the final destination..and can be in fact a distraction, if we don’t cut to the chase and find out the why…and funnily enough…my dear old iridology teachers and colleagues...it almost always comes back to the gut 😉

Confronted with the possibility of adverse food reactions in an increasing number of our patients can be an overwhelming prospect, in terms of accurately identifying and understanding the faulty mechanism underpinning these aberrant responses to healthy foods.  Elimination of culprits in most situations is only a short term reliever, not an appropriate long term solution, so to optimise results we need to know the real mechanism of action.  The majority of these, of course, stem from the gut, but being able to elucidate exactly which of the many things that can go wrong there, is going wrong and therefore what foods are problematic until we address this, is the key. This 2hr mp4 is all about the bigger picture and helping you find method in the madness that can be the AFR landscape. Along the way, we detail the science of where IgG reactions fit into this and it’s a fascinating story that just might be the missing puzzle in your leaky gut patients.
and watch this presentation now in your online account.