Canyon Ranch - Lenox
Sneezes, rashes, itchy skin and watery eyes… everyone recognizes these classic allergic reactions. But not all allergies produce such obvious clues. Many food allergies, for instance, are subtle, nonspecific and hard to put your finger on. With some ingenuity we can spot them – then the remedy is usually clear.

People often have chronic symptoms that could come from many sources. That’s what makes the diagnosis tricky. “If you have frequent headaches, anxiety, fatigue or stomach-aches, you might think it’s due to stress or your environment or that you’re just prone to them,” says Kathie Swift, R.D., nutritionist at Canyon Ranch in the Berkshires. “Then again, your symptoms could be caused by something you eat every day – a common ingredient that you’d never suspect. It’s definitely worth looking into.”

Hunting for Food Sensitivities
Investigating food sensitivities is vital to functional medicine, in which the goal is finding the root cause of a problem, rather than just treating the symptom.

“The digestive tract is ‘the highway to health or the pathway to pathology, ’” says Kathie. “Way down on the molecular level, what you eat sends messages to the rest of your body. It lays the roadwork for health or disease.” Food allergies are easy to diagnose when they involve swelling lips or anaphylactic shock, but only about 20 percent of people with food sensitivities show such distinct reactions. So how do you find the allergy source when the symptoms are recurring and vague? By process of elimination, says Kathie. “We prescribe an ‘elimination diet’ to detect a problem food that could be sending disruptive messages,” she says. “For a set number of weeks, the
guest follows a diet that precludes any foods likely to cause a reaction. The original symptoms usually subside during that time. Then we reintroduce foods one at a time, over a few weeks, to assess the reaction. People usually know right away when they eat foods again that they’re sensitive to. Symptoms reappear, they don’t feel right. It can be dramatic.”

Making a Change
Uncovering a food sensitivity doesn’t necessarily mean giving up that food forever. It probably means limiting the quantity and frequency. And if a food simply doesn’t agree with you, listen to your gut. “Guests often say that something doesn’t agree with them – milk, bananas, peanuts or whatever” says Lisa Powell, nutrition director at Canyon Ranch in Tucson. “The obvious question is, why eat them? Your body has an intelligence that goes beyond words – when your gut tells you something, pay attention.”

Lisa says the elimination approach can produce excellent results, but it takes time and patience. You can speed the process by first having blood tests that indicate the foods you’re most likely to be sensitive to – then you can focus on them when you begin the elimination diet. Whichever approach you choose, the results are worth it.

“I saw a guest who had chronic digestive problems,” Lisa says. “He’d been on the elimination diet for weeks and was starting to wonder if it would work. Then I got a phone message from him. All he said was ‘I know!’ It turns out he reintroduced eggs to his diet that morning and felt symptoms return immediately. Mystery solved.”

The Usual Suspects
People may be sensitive to many kinds of foods, but these are the ones most likely to cause symptoms:

• Wheat and other gluten-containing grains (oat, rye, barley)
• Dairy
• Eggs
• Peanuts
• Citrus
• Strawberries