Gut Instincts: Diets That Reduce Sensitivity

Do some foods leave you with a horrible tummy ache? Or does it seem that some foods just aren’t sitting well in your tummy? Chances are your gut isn’t at its optimal level. While good sleep and exercise will help, much of what you eat will make a huge difference. You don’t have to be stuck with these discomforts and pains forever. There are ways to manage your diet and care for your gut without having to completely give up your favourite foods forever.

If you have any clinical symptoms, known allergies, immune issues or any suspected diabetes, high cholesterol, hypertension, high blood pressure or a history of cancer, then it’s best to get some medical check-ups and blood work done. You want to be checking the count of your red blood cells, white blood cells, liver enzymes, triglycerides, cholesterols, uric acid, thyroid hormones, vitamin D, and do a urine and stool analysis for a start before tweaking your diet according to those results.

However, if you don’t have such clinical symptoms and are instead looking to enhance your gut health day to day, there are many things you can consider doing. I’ll outline all the types of habits you can start with in the subsequent chapter. For now, I wantto walk you through how you can test for any allergies, sensitivities, or intolerancesyou may have towards specific food items.

Just because you’re allergic or intolerant now doesn’t mean you’ll have this reaction forever, so don’t worry if you can’t have your favourite omeletteanymore. You can start testing your sensitivity bydoing the food elimination test to reset your body andreduce your allergic reactions.

The food elimination test is simple. Cut out certain foods that are known to trigger allergic reactions. Thefoods to cut out aredairy, shellfish, eggs, corn, peanuts, fish, wheat,gluten, soy and tree nutssuch as almonds, cashews, and walnuts. Take these ingredientsout of your diet for about 3 weeks. In place of them, you can have a diet rich in leafy greens, broccoli, and cauliflower, with some plain and unprocessed foods, such as beans, chicken, and fruits. It’s a boring diet, but it will help your body to reset. By eliminating these items, you’re also helping your gut to calm down so that it doesn’t have an alert response to some allergens.

After 3 weeks, re-introduce one of the food items while continuing your plain diet. For instance, you can re-introduce dairy back into your diet for 3 to 4 days. But as you do so, you need to besure that youcontinue having your greens and eating the diet you have been having for the past 3 weeks. You’re not switching to a new diet but rather adding on to it.

If your body reacts well to this re-introduction of dairy, you can slowly add another potential allergen like corn for a few days. If that goes well, you can add another food item like eggs for a few days. It’s vital that you re-introduce each food item step by step to see how your body is responding. If it doesn’t react well then take a break from that food item and try it again in a few weeks. You’ll find that some foods may need to be cut out for a year and get slowly re-introduced in this manner.