Lately there has been a run of clients in my clinic all focusing on gut health – namely food sensitivities and allergies. What we don’t often realise is just how much inflammation that actually creates in the body, leading to an increase in lymphatic fluid as well as your general size and weight – I’m talking up to 4 to 5 kilos! This can be easily seen through body scan measurements – you can really see the immune system kicking in. You can see the inflammation in relation to food allergies and sensitivities appear in the sinuses and in our liver and large intestine. There is literal stagnation there when it comes to lymphatic flow.

We have talked a lot about lymphatic flow and how it is really important to dry body brush the skin everyday to get our lymph moving because it’s our garbage disposal. It is one of our primaries for our immune system since our gut holds 90% of our lymphatic vessels. Also, it’s about how we store inflammation, especially inside our fat cells as our body is trying to protect itself.

There are also other symptoms that may occur, which means we need to take a look at the role lymphatics play in inflammation. Things like an underlying nasal drip, itchy eyes, itchy ears, excessive ear wax (or on the flipside, no ear wax and very dry ears!),  can all be indicators that you have a food sensitivity. This is on top of the more common digestive upsets like constipation and diarrhoea, and also things like headaches too.

And you thought the symptom list for Hashimotos and hypothyroidism was big!

So our focus needs to lie in the identification of these food sensitivities. 
Knowing your individual food sensitivities can be powerful. Sometimes removing common culprits such as gluten can have massive effects on your body – a Hashi’s client of mine dropped 10kgs in two months just by removing gluten from her diet and has stabilised her weight since. Whereas other people would only lose a kilo or two from the removal of gluten, because it’s not of their stronger drivers of inflammation in their individual body.

Further to this, it can be really hard to pinpoint food sensitivities ourselves since symptoms can appear anywhere from immediately to seven days later. I recommend using a food diary to document what you eat and how you feel (energy levels, mood, hydration levels, bowel movements, etc). Seven days worth of documenting is a good start, but 21 days will really give you a good overview of where there might be a food sensitivity pattern and working out what that is. Alternatively there is testing that can be done to be able to find out your food sensitivities quicker, and we can also review your CRP and ESR levels on blood tests.

If you are after some help with pinpointing your food sensitivities, please book in with me.