Tag Archives: food sensitivities

Let’s Talk About Poop

This article has been updated. It was originally posted August 2014.

Do you talk about poop at the dinner table? We did when I was growing up. My Mom, being a Naturopathic Doctor, asked each one of us if we had a good bowel movement that day.

I continued the tradition in my family.

Your poop can tell you a lot about your body. How often you go, how long it takes you, and what it looks like in the toilet are all clues. If your bowel movements are off, you are more likely to get sick – becoming more susceptible to germs and other more chronic conditions. Your stools are also a good indication if you are eating appropriately.

Continue reading →

Food Symptoms: Do the Foods You Eat Affect Your Health?

I know first hand that the foods we eat affect our health. I learned this early, when I was sixteen, after being on penicillin daily for 6 years. I had rheumatic fever and I was told that I would need to be on antibiotics indefinitely, or until my monthly throat cultures started coming back negative. The cultures never did, until I changed my eating habits. In fact, within one month of changing my diet my cultures started coming back negative and stayed that way for a whole year, at which time I was officially done with rheumatic fever.

And it was not just me. My whole family started eating better and there were four of us that could stop taking penicillin daily. This was back in the 1970s when Pringles, Kraft Singles, Kool-Aid, and Tang were all the rage. We stopped eating and drinking those. We also stopped eating Special K cereal for breakfast and Hostess HoHo’s as our lunch desert.

In addition to removing the processed foods, we also started eating more whole foods like oatmeal and seeds for breakfast, fruit for snacks, and a green side salad with every evening meal. We cleaned up our diet and it healed us.

Not only did improving my diet as a teenager heal my rheumatic fever, I also stopped getting chronic swimmers ear, my dyslexia started improving, I no longer got car sick, and I started getting better grades in school.

The State of Our Food Today

Fast forward to 2017. Unfortunately, we live in a different world where it is not as simple as Continue reading →

Early Signs of a Leaky Gut and 8 Things You Can Do to Turn It Around

beautiful-blur-063Did you know that a leaky gut is typically the precursor to an autoimmune condition? And, that your body often presents you with early warning signs before a leaky gut actually occurs? It is important for you to recognize these signs in order to maintain optimal health.

A leaky gut, also known as intestinal permeability, causes your immune system to work overtime and can result in your body becoming nutrient deficient. Insufficiencies such as maldigestion and malabsorption then start to occur, which can result in inflammation.

Your gut is a great indicator. When you start to see changes for the worse, take notice. If you can make the necessary changes before your gut becomes truly leaky, you can often prevent other illnesses from occurring.

Some early warning signs of a leaky gut include: Continue reading →

Egg Substitutes – Leavening and Binding Options

20160430_151405Egg sensitivities are on the rise. Chicken eggs might be hard to digest or even cause an allergic reaction when eaten. A number of factors might be involved. For example, some believe that children become sensitive to eggs after their bodies are exposed to the egg proteins found in certain vaccines. Conventional store-bought eggs are another possible culprit since many are produced by chickens given antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals and fed genetically modified (GM) feed, which may ultimately alter the egg itself.

If you are sensitive and/or allergic to eggs, there are several alternatives. Continue reading →

Leaky Gut – Do You Have It?

Escherichia coli (public domain)

Hippocrates, the physician known as the father of western medicine, knew it years ago when he said, “All disease begins in the gut.” Today, having a “leaky gut” is more common than you think. Also known as intestinal permeability, leaky gut occurs when the lining of your intestinal track is compromised and allows toxic food particles, environmental chemicals, and bacterial waste to leak through the gut lining, causing problems in other parts of your body. Below we will look at the common triggers of a leaky gut as well as the many health issues that can result, including autoimmune disease which is closely linked to having a leaky gut. The good news it that a leaky gut can typically be corrected if you are willing to make the necessary changes. Included below are some steps you can start taking today. Continue reading →

MSG and Food Sensitivities – What Can Happen When You Let Your Guard Down

MSG photo 469640170_0b86c910c0 - cropped

Photo Credit: The Other Dan via Compfight cc

I did not expect my first blog to be about MSG (monosodium  glutamate) but it hit close to home last weekend. This story is also a good lesson in food sensitivities.

We had a lovely dinner with some friends on Friday night – we have been wanting to expose our six-year-old son to new foods so we tried a Thai restaurant. It had been a while since we have ventured outside our usual few hangouts. . . . and I forgot to ask for “no MSG.”

The food tasted great. But within an hour of eating, I started to get a headache. A classic sign of MSG exposure. Continue reading →