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Overcoming Food Allergies –My Personal Experience

I recently had the ALCAT Food Intolerance test done and the result was mind blowing. I discovered that perfectly healthy foods, that I thought of as “safe”, were responsible for many of the symptoms I had been experiencing like chronic fatigue, weight gain, skin problems, and trouble concentrating.

Over the last 2 years I had become more tired than usual. It happened gradually so there was no one day that I felt like everything changed or even particularly took notice. Looking back to 2 years ago I see that a lot had changed. I used to workout regularly and enjoy it. Since then I have had to make myself go and it was always a drag. As a result of all of this I rarely did it and gained weight. I used to wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, not sleep for 8 hours or more and wake up feeling tired and hung-over –even though I don’t drink. Even the healthiest of meals left me feeling lethargic, unfocused and sometimes even dizzy. I don’t l know why it took me so long to notice, or to think of getting retested for Food Intolerance (a.k.a. food allergies), but it did.

The foods I have eliminated over the past month since getting the results of the test read like most peoples’ “healthy foods” list. They include: apples, onions, garlic, ginger, eggs, lamb, pepper, lemon, and turkey, and more –I won’t list them all.

I had this test done 25 years ago and it dramatically changed my life. I had been dragging around, feeling totally exhausted for more than 2 years before I was tested. It followed a bout of Mononucleosis, which had lasted for an entire year before being diagnosed. I had gone to doctor after doctor looking for answers as to why at the age of 20 all I wanted to do was sleep. The best any of them could do was to tell me I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. All that meant was that I was tired all the time and they couldn’t figure out why. My mom finally took me to a Holistic doctor in the city, who my uncle, a doctor, called a quack.

Among the many tests he did, was the ALCAT Food Intolerance test. This is a blood test that looks at the immune response of live blood cells to different antigens. The result was that I was “allergic” to things I was eating every day. They included: corn, tomato, potato, bakers yeast, and shrimp. I stopped eating them immediately, and within 1 week was feeling dramatically better. After 6 months I had lost 20 lbs and was back to my energetic old self. I was also able to start putting those foods back into my diet on a rotational basis (not more than once every 4th day). Keeping to that rotation I was able to enjoy all of those foods and feel fine.

So, this “quack” cured me in 1 week where all the different doctors had failed. The cure was giving me the vital piece of information I was lacking; that there were a few foods I was better off not eating. It was that simple.

And now, one month after my re-test, since removing the newly discovered offenders from my diet, I feel significantly better. My energy is coming back and I have lost 5lbs already. I don’t have the new regimen completely down to a science yet, but it gets easier every day. I have been here before and I know the benefits of abstinence strongly outweigh the inconvenience of avoiding foods I enjoy.

I should note too that the foods that were troublesome for me 25 years ago no longer showed up as being problematic. I am sure if I had been retested earlier they would have come up as “safe”. This is because our bodies change throughout our lifetimes. We can become over sensitized to things with which we are in constant contact. Frequently it is a bout of illness or extreme stress that precipitates food intolerance.  Additionally certain cosmetics, sucralose (Splenda), and amalgam filling have an effect on the mechanism behind it. Continual exposure to problematic foods does not give the body a chance to break the inflammatory cycle and heal.