Note: The text below is a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
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Food sensitivities and Hashimoto’s. Food sensitivities are… I think they’re becoming much, much, much more appreciated. I have patients coming in, going, “I want my food sensitivities done. I want my food sensitivities done.” So, years of a lot of us talking about food sensitivities is paying off because it’s very, very, very important to an autoimmune thyroid case. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I had… I don’t think I’ve ever had anybody come in here who didn’t have any food sensitivities, and I rarely have somebody comes in here who has less than 20 food sensitivities, believe it or not. So, food sensitivities are really, really important.
Here’s the thing about Hashimoto’s. It is a very complex condition. Clinical entity, it is just… I have pages. I have five pages that I review on literally every Hashimoto’s patient that comes in and make sure that I’ve evaluated every single aspect of their case that could be flaring immune responses up against their thyroid, and one of them, of course, is the gut, and within the framework of the gut is food sensitivities, even though the gut is not where food sensitivities are actually made.
The bottom line is, people come in, and there’s 42 different triggers for autoimmune thyroid disease. If you’ve heard me say 39 in the past, that’s because there’s three more that have come to light since then. Okay? And so, food sensitivities are a big one. Food sensitivities are a big one. They’re a big one for Hashimoto’s. They’re a big one for setting off thyroids. They’re a big one for those of you who are suffering from chronic fatigue. They’re just huge, and they’re way up there on the list of those 42, because there’s an order in which you have to attack these autoimmune cases. I get doing all the testing, and doing the GI test, and doing the adrenal stress test, and I get you can do the pathology, test the pathogens, and you can do the chemical tests and all that type of stuff. All those things can be valuable, and I can get into the testing, and when you need to take it and when you don’t need to take it on a later video.
But for now, then there’s the food sensitivity testing, and for years, you’ve heard me say the food sensitivity testing out there is unreliable, and that’s being generous, and then there’s urine testing, and then there’s hair testing and there’s all this type of stuff, and food sensitivity testing, I’ll just leave it at this, this is not the whole subject, but it should be antibody testing. You should be testing. You should be testing IGG, and you should be testing IGA, particularly, without getting into all that, but the IGA is really, really, really, really a big one to test because any food that comes up as an IGA is really screwing you up because it’s affecting the inside of your intestines where 75% of your immune system are, and if you have Hashimoto’s, you don’t want anything irritating the 75% of your immune system, and food is something you’re putting in there all day, two, three, four, six, for some of you, all the time. For some of you, lots of food. Okay? So, the potential there for exacerbation to your retire is huge.
But beyond that, many of you probably heard of leaky gut. Many of you probably have heard a small intestinal bacteria overgrowth. Well, you’re not getting those things if you don’t have food sensitivities. It’s not going to happen. So, there’s an order in which the system breaks down and all of those things, I just mentioned, a leaky gut, the small intestine bacteria overgrowth, the food sensitivities, all of those flare immune responses that make cortisol go up in your adrenal glands, make your blood sugar go off like this, and all three of those things, or four or five of those things, what I already just said are inflammatory, and then inflammation goes up, and then it flares, and it tells your immune system to attack your thyroid. Your thyroid Proxide is antibodies or anti or your thyroid or your actual tissue, and then boom, next thing you know, you’re fatigued and your hair’s falling out and you’re getting jittery and shaky. Your heart’s starting to palpate and stuff like that.
So, so it’s a big deal, but here’s the reason it’s the really biggest, biggest, biggest deal. In the framework of attacking a case like this, if you don’t get the gut better… I think it’s fair to say I was an original group of doctors that went like, “Holy cow, it’s leaky gut,” and then we found out wasn’t just leaky gut, and that leaky gut was a key player. It was an early key player. It was a good place to start, but to get the leaky gut under control, you had to start with the diet. You had start with the diet. The diet is critical.
There’s a couple diets out there. Well, we use like nine different diets, and we combine certain ones of them, depending on the patient. That’s how critical diet is, because the diet is the baseline for everything. If you have a diet, you’re eating foods every day that are causing you to have food reactions, that’s screwing up the inside of your intestines. That’s causing inflammation there. That’s causing your blood sugar to go up and down. That’s causing stress hormones to go up and down. That’s causing inflammatory, what are called cytokines, to attack. Just a diet, alone, is causing a lot of things.
Most of you who have autoimmune thyroid disease out there have Hashimoto’s. You’re going to tell me, or I’m going to ask you and you’re going to tell me, “If I don’t eat, I feel better.” Yeah, because you probably have food sensitivities that are annihilating your intestines and causing inflammation, blood sugar fluctuate every day, and here’s the problem. You eat the food on a Monday, but the way that a food sensitivity is caused, without getting into the weeds too much is, you have a broken down digestive system, undigested food particles get into your intestines. The intestine doesn’t like that. So, that starts creating a response. The vast majority of them go out to the toilet, but some of them get through that leaky gut that we’ve been talking about for 20 some years now, that leaky gut, and then that gets in your bloodstream and goes to the liver. Believe it or not, the liver is where all those food sensitivities are formed.
My point in telling you that is, that takes time. It doesn’t just go into your system and you go, “Oh my God. I don’t feel so good.” No. That could take up the three days for that to create a migraine, for that to set off an anxiety response, for that to cause your blood sugar to… Well, now it immediately sets off your blood sugar, so that was going to, but the point is, it takes three days before your liver tags it and goes, “I don’t know what the hell this thing is doing here. It’s an undigested food particle. It doesn’t belong here. It belongs in a toilet, and I’m not here to clear out your undigested food particles.” So, it tags it and creates an antibody, just like it would create for a bacteria virus or something like that, to try to let you know the next time you eat it and you feel this reaction, don’t eat it again, except the reaction can be two or three days later, and so that becomes a real issue.
Here’s why all of that’s really important. I go back to saying, the gut’s a good place to start. A better place to start is the diet because you’re not getting the gut under control. If you have an autoimmune problem, the gut’s a good place to start if you don’t know what I’m telling you, and then you go on a fast, or maybe you go on the autoimmune paleo diet and 25% of you are going to do great, 30%. But frankly, 70% of you are going to have reactions to that diet, and I can get into that in our time as to why that is, but this is why food sensitivities are important because you have to figure them out right away, and you have to have a diet that you’re going to get on where you’re not going to blow up. You’re not going to have negative responses and calms everything down, but you’re still eating while you’re trying to figure everything else out because the diet is a place to start. It is the place to start.
But the problem is, as you read on online, you think you got a CIBO issue. You take the diet.. You do the CIBO diet. You feel good for two weeks. You get off the diet. It comes back. There’s reasons for that that can be handled. Okay? So, you need to figure out the right diet, and it usually starts with this oral tolerance problem. In other words, you’re eating foods orally and your intestines aren’t tolerating, right, because they haven’t been broken down. You are going nowhere with any treatment for…
I don’t care if it’s brain. I don’t care if it’s anxiety. I don’t care if it’s your blood sugar. I don’t care what it is. You’re eating a food every day that you put into your mouth, goes down through your system, puts a strain on your stomach, puts a strain on your gallbladder and your pancreas, inflames the inside of your intestines, causes inflammation go up, damages the inside of your intestines. In the meantime, causes your blood sugar to go up, and then it causes your blood sugar to drop. You’re not getting anywhere with anything you’re doing. You’re going to be the person who’s coming here, and if you haven’t gotten anywhere, it’s because you’re going to walk in here with 20 supplements going, “Well, I feel really pretty good because I’m taking this one for my stomach problem, and I’m taking this for my digestive enzymes, and I’m taking this for my leaky gut, and I’m taking this for the constipation that will come back if I don’t stop taking this,” and on and on and on and on and on, truly.
So, the idea is, you need to figure out your food sensitivities first, and believe me, this is an evolving understanding. So, no test is perfect, but my favorite test, I’ll just go with my favorite test are the Cyrex test, the vibrant test, this Everly Well test seems to be a decent one. I’m not sure about the Thrive test yet. Don’t throw things at me, Thrive. Okay? I think your test seems to be okay, but I just haven’t seen enough of it in my experience to say, but that one seems to be okay, but you’re looking for a test that tests antibodies. Let me tell you something. If you have Hashimoto’s and you do a test and it comes back with like one or two food sensitivity, that’s wrong. I have never seen that. It’s impossible. It’s impossible. If you have a bad gut, you’re broken down, it’s impossible for you to not have food sensitivity tests. So, when people come in here and they show me, “Well, I don’t have to do a food sensitivity test, because here’s my test, and I only have three food sensitivities.”
Then, I do the test and they come back with like 30 food sensitivities. So, it’s an evolving understanding. That’s the problem. Okay. So, these tests are getting better and better, and they’ll continue to get better, better, and more companies will just say, “I got to do the antibody testing.” But if you’re doing hair testing or anything else like that, forget it. Don’t do that. Sorry, I’m saying that with very definitiveness, because I think I figured out the other day, we’ve probably seen over 5,000 patients since we started doing functional medicine, and so we’ve got a pretty good track clinical ability to observe these things and see what works and what doesn’t work, and so I’m trying to give you the best practical clinical data that a doctor should depend on if he wants to get, or she wants to get, the right data so that they can start to execute a case properly.
That’s kind of the nitty gritty on food sensitivity tests, and trust me, we can go on for hours on food sensitivity tests. It’s the nuances, and how accurate are they? And should I remove all the foods? And should I just remove… That’s a whole nother thing, but the first thing you got to do is get a good test and get good, raw data and then find somebody who know how to translate that test for you because the test translation is okay that they give you, but it’s okay. They cannot possibly give you a test translation for you. Why? Because everybody’s stress responses, which will change your food sensitivities, is different. Everybody’s microbiome is different. Everybody’s immune system has different, what’s called, plasticity.
In other words, some are more reactive than others. Some are more resistant to foods than others and so on and so forth, and they cannot take that into account. It’s impossible. So, that’s where you need somebody in your world to be able to… Sometimes, you’ll find a company that will do it for you, but until that person has your history and they really have a good idea of you, it’s hard to evaluate the food sensitive to that degree, and I’d say that true. I’m not trying to get you some business or anything. I’m just trying to tell you, if you’re going to get all these food sensitivities and then you’re confused, you do exactly what it says, and you’re still having problems, it’s because there are other things going on or some of the nuances of that particular test have not been explained to you, or you used the interpretation rules that they said, and they weren’t enough for you to really interpret it right.
So I mean, I know that’s not a great thing to tell you, but I’m just trying to tell you what I run into every day here at the office and give you that data, so you know where you’re at. I’m not discouraging you from getting them. Get them. See what they say. Take out the food sensitivity. See how you feel. That’s first step, first step. If you have an autoimmune thyroid disease, if you have any autoimmune disease, first step, of many, but nevertheless, the first step. Okay? So, that’s what I know about food sensitivities to date. Okay.
