It’s so common to have a food allergy these days. Gluten allergies and dairy intolerances are as normal as having brown eyes. It seems like more people than not struggle with one or the other.

Today I would like to share some surprising things that can help you to support your body in healing your food allergies for good*.

We’re going to cover how you can heal your body from the inside out, both mentally and physically!

I share this because I used to believe I had all kinds of food allergies — everything from gluten to dairy, to cruciferous vegetables to beans. As I implemented many of these tips, I have been able to heal my body of these ailments.

I will say that on occasion they do pop up here and there again, but every time, as I have pulled out these “tools” I keep in my toolbox, I’ve been able to bring my body back into alignment. And I’ve witnessed the same for many clients too.

I share my full story at the end of this article, so if you are interested, be sure to read all the way to the end.

Two Surprising Ways to Heal Food Sensitivities

1. Stress: The Main Food Allergy Culprit?

Stress affects digestion. DRASTICALLY. You could eat the healthiest, most organically grown food in the world, but if you are stressed out before and/or while you eat it, your system isn’t going to be able to process it well. Think gas, indigestion, and even nutrient depletion!

Reading the book The Slow Down Diet by Marc David was one of the most impactful resources for me in my understanding of how our emotions have a direct physiological affect on our body’s ability to function optimally.

When we are consistently stressed out, burnt out, and operating in fast-forward, of course our body is going to suffer. And digestive issues are one of the first signs from our body that there are clogs in the system. Makes sense right? It’s almost literal!

Here’s the problem. These days, stress is almost an acceptable badge of honor in our society. The busier you are and the more stress you have, the more we equate that to being important.

People ask how we are and we give them a laundry list of all the things we have to do. Yet we never do anything to change it. We think that we’re supposed to just keep going at that pace even though we’re exhausted and don’t feel well.

Your body is trying to warn you. It’s giving you signals all day long. You just aren’t listening. So the signals get louder. They start with digestive issues, headaches, fatigue… and eventually they get so loud and big that you have no other choice but to listen. Yes. I’m talking about sickness, heart attack, disease, or worse.

It’s time to let go of trying to live up to that impossible Super(wo)man standard.

While it may be unrealistic to think that you can get rid of stress completely, you can learn how to manage it better.

Awareness: The Main Food Allergy Cure?

When you become aware of these negative habits of behavior, you suddenly also have the ability to change them.

Awareness = Control

When you become aware, you gain your power back.

This week, pay special attention to what’s happening in your life real time or just before you notice food allergy symptoms and specifically, digestive upset.

For most people, digestive problems usually show up pretty quickly, so the trigger (stressor) is probably something that is either happening while you eat or shortly before. Or it could be an ongoing stressor that is more chronic. In other words, you may have low level stress running in the background all the time that has added up, taking your body to its breaking point.

Reduce Stress

Clearly, this is the Mack Daddy of all holistic remedies, right? But seriously. Once you identify the possible trigger, the next step is to (obvi) look at how you can reduce, manage, or alleviate the stress.

Another reason why people continue to operate in a stressed out mode the majority of the time — besides that it makes them feel important — is because they think that it will take a lot of time and action to reduce, manage, or alleviate the stress, but this is not necessarily the case.

Something as simple as making a list of 5 things you appreciate in your life is a great way to reduce stress in a matter of minutes. It doesn’t change the grind, but it changes your perspective of it. And that’s a start!

Another way to reduce stress is to take 5 deep breaths. You can reset your entire nervous system by doing this. It gets oxygen to the cells and into the brain. We tend to breathe pretty shallowly when we are stressed, so the more often we can deliberately breathe deeply, the better our body as a system will function.

Here’s a more analytical approach. When was the last time you prioritized your priorities?

Take out a sheet of paper and write down your top 3-5 priorities, or the things you value most in life. Now pull out your schedule and look at where you are spending your time. Do these two things match up? Meaning, are you spending time with your priorities or are you spending your time on other things?

These are just a few suggestions to get you started, but the main thing to note is that you need to take steps to learn how to manage stress better or reduce it altogether.

What If You Continue To Ignore Stress and Just Keep Going?

If you choose to NOT address the stress, continue to have digestive issues and you try to cover up the problem with a Band-Aid (i.e. prescription medication, antacids, etc) that ignores the underlying issue, you may find some relief but the stress will likely pop up as another physical ailment.

While this may not be the case for every circumstance (as always, consult your doctor), consider it. We are often so quick to assume we have some permanent condition. What IF your body was capable of healing itself and working like the well-oiled machine it was made to be?

Beyond reducing and eliminating stress, I have found several other possible food allergy cures.

Let’s talk about what you are consuming.

2. Restore Good Gut Flora

If you are gassy and bloated, constipated (or worse) most days and/or when you eat certain foods, there are several other reasons why this could be happening, one of the biggest being that over time (or with the use of antibiotics or birth control pills), and from consistently eating acidic foods (like sugar), the ratio of good to bad bacteria in your gut has gotten skewed.

You may have more “bad” bacteria than good. This can be fixed by incorporating foods that are rich in good bacteria to re-populate the gut flora.

Here’s a few options you can try:

Raw Dairy

The reason why many people struggle with digestive upset when they consume dairy products, is because most dairy is pasteurized. Pasteurization is the process of heating milk to a specific temperature for a predefined length of time to destroy bacteria and microorganisms found in milk.

The pasteurization process does not discriminate what is killed. As a result, many of the beneficial bacteria, delicate enzymes, proteins, fats, vitamins and minerals are altered, destroyed, or denatured. The nutrients that were killed or damaged during the pasteurization process remains in the liquid milk as a dead cell rather than a living cell. This can be highly allergenic to some people.

Unlike pasteurized milk, raw milk is a gut friendly food, easy to digest, and is less likely to cause milk allergies. Because of this, many people are able to add raw milk to their diet without any problems.

For some people who have been treated with antibiotics, have gut problems, or a diet that consists of processed foods, the bacteria in their gut may be out of balance and if they consume raw milk too quickly, they may experience mild cramping, diarrhea, or bloating. This is the bodies’ way of adjusting to this living food.

For this reason, slowly introduce raw milk to your diet. I recommend you start with ¼ cup of raw milk, or raw kefir. Wait several hours. Slowly increase the amount of raw milk as tolerated. This will allow your gut to re-build its gut flora slowly. Within a few days, you should be able to consume as much raw dairy products as you like.

Many people (myself included) actually see that they are able to digest pasteurized milk products much better after incorporating raw milk into their diet for several weeks/months because they build up the enzymes in their system to be able to digest it properly.

For more information on the benefits of raw dairy and (FAQs) check out my favorite brand here in California, Organic Pastures.

Also, if you are looking for an un-denatured, high quality protein shake option, I have an amazing recommendation for you. Apply for a 30 minute Discovery Session and we can chat more.

Note, the dairy kefir you find in most groceries stores will not be raw. This is because most grocery stores will not (or are not allowed by law) to sell raw dairy products.

Fermented Foods

If you don’t have access to raw dairy, don’t worry, there are other options such as raw sauerkraut, kimchi, kombucha, and non-dairy kefir.

My favorite option is naturally fermented sauerkraut, which can be found in the refrigerated section of most Whole Foods Markets and some health food stores.

The kind I love is Farmhouse Culture Kraut Smoked Jalapeno. I eat it straight from the pouch but you can put it on sandwiches or salads. It smells horrible, but I have actually grown to really like the taste, and… I even drink the juice too because it has all the same gut flora boosting benefits.

Another option is GT’s Kombucha, which you can find at most Whole Food Markets or health food stores too.

Probiotic

I tell most of my clients, if you haven’t taken a really good probiotic for 30-60 days, that’s step one to improving digestion and elimination.

There are a bunch of refrigerated options that you can find at most health food stores, but honestly they aren’t my favorite and it’s a pain to have to keep them in the fridge, especially if you travel.

I have had the best success with Dr Ohirra’s, which is super high quality AND you don’t have to refrigerate it.

I’ve found the best price on iHerb.com. I buy many products through their site all the time. In fact, if you use this link or enter the code KEK380 at checkout, you’ll get my $10 OFF discount on your first order.

Cellular Cleanse

The last option is the cellular cleanse, which alkalinizes the system, making it an environment where “bad” bacteria (think candida) can’t survive. I used to be totally against cleansing because the word “cleanse” to me meant 21-day sugar detox, or a juice cleanse, or restriction/diet. The mention of this would literally make me run in the other direction!

And you may know, my stance is that those types of restriction or elimination based detoxes just don’t work because they are too harsh, too restrictive, and not sustainable because odds are, you’re probably going to eat sugar or whatever again at some point in the future, right?

But then I was introduced to the cellular cleanse I now use myself and with clients. The main purpose of this cleanse is to support the body in removing toxins and impurities from our cells so that, and here’s the key point, our cells can then receive the full benefit of the nutrients we take in from our food.

If the cells are filled with toxins, there isn’t going to be any room for them to take in nutrients properly. So we need to get that stuff out. The reality is that toxins are all around us in our air, water, and soil.

I recently read that the average person consumes 14 pounds of toxins per year.

The more we can support our body in getting that gunk out, the better off it is to work properly as a system. This makes sense, right?

As we cleanse the body, it becomes more alkaline, making it tough for disease and bad bacteria to survive. In addition to improving digestion, cellular cleansing also boosts energy, mental clarity, and supports the immune system.

And as a bonus, as we release toxins, we reduce fat too. Toxins are stored in our fat cells, so when we cleanse out the toxins, our fat cells shrink, especially visceral fat around the midsection of the body.

If you’d like to learn more about cellular cleansing and/or try it out yourself, fill out this application and we can chat.

How I Personally Healed My Food Sensitivities

I’ve shared my story of digestive issues and hormonal problems in various publications and interviews, and I get asked questions about it fairly regularly. This email question from a woman in the community named Stephanie does a good job at covering the most common questions (and what I think most people are wondering) so I though I would share it here along with my response.

Question:

When you thought you were allergic to certain foods, did you get tested or have reactions? Or did you just fear the food itself? I got a skin test done that showed I was sensitive to wheat, rye, and barley. Although I don't avoid it ALL the time, 99% of the time I do, I feel so much better when I do, and I've done things to challenge myself to see if I will react, every time its pretty much the same way.

What do you think I should do? It's really aggravating having to constantly worry and think about it. I also feel like when I eat chicken it aggravates my stomach too.

Answer:

You're frustrations sound really familiar. When I was in the thick of struggling with food allergies, I was so tired and confused about what to do. I did not have actual blood tests done, which may sound silly (most people would think that would be the first logical step).

To be honest, I think I was scared as to what I would find out. And at the same time, I question whether or not blood work is as factual as we take it to be. Is it a black and white fact, or is it just a snapshot in time that can change and evolve? I still haven’t decided my stance on that.

My experience with primary care doctors up to that point in my life had not been the most positive, so I turned to an alternative approach fairly quickly (which was actually not much better).

I ended up going to a succession of alternative doctors that use something called Nutritional Response Testing (NRT) to test whether or not a patient is allergic to various foods, supplements, etc. They place the items on your body to see if your muscle strength remains strong or if it weakens your strength, thus meaning that item weakens your system.

Sounds interesting, right? But for me it was a very frustrating time. Each doctor told me different things contradicting one another and I just kept spending more and more money on supplements to fix myself, all the while never really getting better.

In hindsight, the woo-woo side of me wonders if each doctor's own body energy could affect the results they find for each patient because in NRT the doctor is using their own body as a conduit for the testing.

The breaking point for me was a Nutritionist telling me that he thought I had Hashimoto’s disease but the only way to know for sure was this really expensive test, so since I couldn’t afford the test, we would just assume that that’s what I had and treat me as such.

I walked out of his office so pissed off (at the time) with a level of clarity that I never would have had the opportunity to have, if I hadn’t have gone through that whole long, exhausting experience.

I was so frustrated, exhausted, and angry that I wasn't seeing any positive results from all the work (and dollars spent) that I just gave up on both alternative and traditional medicine and I made a conscious, clear decision in that moment that I was done with everybody else's opinion of what I needed to do. I was going to do it my way.

I KNEW my body was strong. And I knew, that if I could just figure out how to support it, it would be able to heal the digestive and hormonal issues (lack of consistent menstrual cycle) that I was dealing with.

This was actually a blessing in disguise and one of the pivotal points in my journey of learning how to tune into my own body above all other outside information.

So that was the beginning of my journey of me learning the emotional and physical health teaching that I use today.

The coolest part is that my body did in fact heal itself.

It did not happen overnight, but it healed. First the food sensitivities and then later, my hormones regulated.

The mind is a powerful tool. What we believe to be true becomes our reality.

After believing that everything from chicken, to wine, to spinach, to chocolate (!!), broccoli, and on and on (all things I love to eat) were the cause of all kinds of physical problems for me, it took me a while to work up to believing that this may not be in fact true.

I knew that if I just started eating these foods that I believed were bad for me again (even though I wanted so badly to believe that I could eat them and be okay), that they wouldn't do well in my body.

So, I waited. Over time that old belief that my body would have a negative reaction to certain foods began to fade and a new, strong belief that my body is a resilient, amazing machine took over.

In tandem, I had been working on a lot of emotional things and had been letting go of being so scared of food… ideas that I got from reading and researching A LOT about health, food, the "right" diet (online, in magazines, in the media, etc).

Once I started feeling strongly that maybe I would be okay eating these foods, I tested out high quality versions of them in small amounts. Not all at once, but little by little and guess what, my body responded well!

Now I am able to eat most of the foods that I used to think I was allergic to with little to no problems, although from time to time I do still have a slight reaction. Most often though, this is when I eat while multi-tasking, stressed, or if it was a really low quality form of that food.

These days, I live in a world of inclusion versus exclusion when it comes to food.

I believe that food — all food — is my friend.

I have wheat, sugar, alcohol sometimes too, in moderation. Meaning, in amounts that allow me to feel nourished and satisfied. This is my definition of balance.

I no longer feel deprived or go off the deep end eating amounts that make me feel icky after.

Getting to this point was a process. And for many reasons, it may not be possible for everyone but I wanted to share my story to give some clarity and hope that if I can do this, maybe if your situation is similar, you can too.

* As always, use your best discernment. If you are confident that in your particular case, this approach will not work for you, then please do not attempt it. I am not a doctor, so be sure to take responsibility for your health, and check with your doctor if you need medical advice.