BodyTechnician.com → Food Allergies
Hi Jordan
I just wanted to let you know that I did as you suggested, dropped dairy from my diet: lo and behold! My pain stopped! I also have been doing lots of exercises to correct my posture, but really the pain went away when I stopped eating dairy. I have studied nutrition and just didn't imagine that dairy was a problem for me, but I was at my wit's end with the pain so decided to try your suggestion.
Thank you
Shobhan
Why are some people's bodies full of tension and pain, even though they haven't been injured? Why do some people suffer much more after injury than others? Sometimes it's because of what they eat, drink, or inhale. Food allergies cause muscle tension & pain in many people.
A massage client has been getting better. They call saying that their back pain suddenly returned, full force. They need massage therapy, right away. When they come in, I ask them what they ate, and note it in their file. The next time they suddenly get worse, I ask them the same question. They ate the same food. And the next time.
I suggest to someone with chronic pain that they stop eating one of the common pain-causing foods. They try it, and find that they don't hurt as much. When I'm doing massage therapy on them, their body feels different. Muscles that were tense and hardened, start to relax deeply. The client starts to get out of pain.
In their view, food allergies are only the extreme cases: When people go into anaphylactic shock if they eat a tiny amount of something. In those instances, blood tests show an immune system response. In most of the cases we're talking about, nothing shows up on the blood tests. Something is obviously going on here, even if the tests don't show it; you can call it food intolerance, or food sensitivity if you prefer.
They may tell you it's all in your head. Consider this: Someone who has been avoiding dairy, and having less pain, suddenly gets an attack of severe pain. They find out that something they ate contained small amounts of dairy. They didn't know it had dairy when they ate it, and it caused them pain. It was not in their head.
Dairy is the most common pain-causing food. Dairy is also the most common food allergen. Some people think that dairy damages the gut lining, creating leaky gut syndrome, causing other food allergies.
People who get pain from dairy products react to casein and/or whey, two proteins in dairy. Cheese is a concentrated source of casein. Soy cheeses, non-dairy
creamers, and other imitation-dairy foods may contain casein. Read labels. Butter is mostly fat, but has enough milk protein to cause pain in sensitive people. Baked goods may contain dairy. Read labels.
Allergy to milk is different from lactose intolerance. People with lactose intolerance can't digest lactose, a sugar in milk. Undigested lactose in the gut causes bloating, cramps, diarrhea, gas, and nausea.
The symptoms are not a reaction to lactose. Since the lactose is undigested, it's not assimilated: it stays in the gut. Bacteria in the gut use the lactose, and create gas and lactic acid. Lactic acid is a good thing, but too much causes diarrhea.
All of the animal-derived foods are common food allergens, especially dairy and eggs. Beef and chicken cause severe pain in some people.
Citrus, corn, peanuts, soy, and wheat cause pain in some people. Migraines can be caused by sunflower seed, walnut, cashew, coconut, or pineapple. A lot of people have bad reactions to soy.
Eggplant, peppers (bell peppers, cayenne, chili peppers, paprika), potatoes (not sweet potatoes nor yams), tomatoes.
Not actually an allergic reaction. Solanine, a slightly toxic substance found in nightshades, doesn't harm most people. It isn't detoxified properly by some people; this is a genetic difference. Those folks get joint pain that may be diagnosed as arthritis, and muscular pain from nightshades. They may need to stay off of these foods for a few weeks or months to clear the solanine from their system.
Tobacco is in the nightshade family, it causes pain in the same way.
People sometimes turn out to be very allergic to their favorite food; a food they eat 3 times a day, every day. A food they absolutely insist on having at frequent intervals. They're addicted. If they don't eat it for a while, they start to detox, and feel bad. They say that eating their favorite food makes them feel better. If they eliminate that food for a week, to detox more thoroughly, and then eat some of it, they will have a strong reaction.
Don't get overwhelmed! You don't have to stop eating everything. The point is to get accurate information about your own body, so you can make informed choices.
There's a simple, free, safe & accurate method:
Stop eating one food entirely for one week. That's the 'elimination diet'. Then have a 'challenge meal' consisting entirely of that one food. By having only one food, if you do have a reaction, it's very clear what you're reacting to. Any reaction will probably occur within a few hours. If you're not sure whether you had a reaction, repeat the challenge meal.
Start with dairy products, the most common pain-causing food.
You can apply the same method to see whether you have problems with other foods.
They're not accurate. Lab tests are interpreted differently by different labs. Allergy lab tests often miss foods that people are very reactive to, and warn them away from foods that are safe for them.
Muscle testing can produce ludicrous results. A muscle testing practitioner told me that the mercury battery in my wristwatch was making my left arm weak. I was wearing a wind-up watch. They found what they expected to find, not what was actually there.
Not necessarily. I used to be highly allergic to wheat; eczema, with terrible itching. I couldn't stop from scratching, damaging my skin. After eating raw foods for a few months, I lost the allergy to wheat; now I can eat it either raw (muesli) or cooked. Still can't tolerate soy, though; sore and achy all over, and fatigued. Many people have gotten over food allergies after fasting.
You don't like being in pain; neither do the animals who suffer to produce foods. Go veg!
Massage Therapy for Pain Relief · Berkeley · © Jordan Rothstein CMT