Elizabeth Yarnell, Author, Innovator, Naturopath, Speaker
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Tag: food sensitivities

Nausea, Vertigo Symptoms of Food Sensitivities

My son awoke on Monday morning complaining of vertigo and nausea. It was a clear food sensitivity reaction.

These symptoms have happened before and I’m learning that, if I do a little detective work, I can directly correlate the episode with something he ate. I’ve also learned from past experience that if I insist he goes to school during these episodes, I should expect a call from the school nurse after he eventually vomits. He stayed home and on the couch for most of the day. By dinnertime, he was feeling much recovered.

If you are not living in a constantly inflamed state, then your reaction to an inflammatory trigger will be noticeable. If you are following a customized anti-inflammatory diet, or LEAP, then you can recover from any inadvertent reactions

This time the culprit was a pineapple popsicle he had enjoyed for dessert the night before. We have known he was sensitive to pineapple since he submitted his blood for the Mediator Release Test (MRT), but it had been more than four years since he had eaten pineapple and he begged to have it. At this point in our food sensitivities journey, the best way to tell if his oral tolerance has risen for a food is to challenge it on a day when it is the only new variable.

He wanted to try it. Sometimes you have to suffer through a hypersensitivity reaction to convince yourself that you are truly better off without that food in your life.

Of course, its best to avoid the hypersensitivity reaction in the first place. That’s the goal of the customized anti-inflammatory diet that I design for my clients in my naturopathic food sensitivities clinic. I work with clients nationwide; feel free to contact me for a free initial consultation if you suspect food sensitivities may play a role in your ailments.

I Was Infected with Listeria When I Was Pregnant

camel riding with my son who survived listeria in the womb
Here is my son today, a healthy survivor of listeria infection in the womb.

About eleven years ago, when I was nine months pregnant with my first child, I accidentally became infected with listeria, a bacteria that spreads through unhygienic food handling practices. Since listeriosis (listeria infection) can cause stillbirth, I was treated with massive doses of i.v. antibiotics over several days. Thankfully, my baby was born alive, but we have been dealing with the consequences ever since.

You can ready the whole story here as it has been posted on the Stop Foodborne Illness wall.

Listeria is the same bacteria that killed a bunch of people who ate unwashed cantaloupe a few summers ago. Here are some tips on how you can stay safe from foodborne illness.

Those life-saving antibiotics given to a developing fetus killed the listeria in the placenta but also destroyed my son’s digestive system before he even emerged from the womb. No one had mentioned the long-term effects this treatment might have on the baby that survived it.

The quest to heal his body led me on a direct path to the dietary management therapies I employ today as a naturopathic doctor (ND) and Certified LEAP Therapist. It’s fair to say that getting listeria irrevocably changed my life, my career, and my passions.

I’m thankful to have found a way to heal my son and turn him from a failure-to-thrive baby into a healthy and robust almost-11-year-old, and to be able to use the knowledge gained from my journey to help others heal and recover their health.

I could not have foreseen the path my life has taken, and I thank you all for reading and taking me along on your own journey toward health.

Namaste.

What Causes Headaches? It Could Be A Food Sensitivity.

Last month I noticed that I began to get headaches regularly every afternoon. I didn’t immediately suspect that it was a food sensitivity reaction, but once I realized what was causing it, I was able to make the headaches disappear.

I’m not a person prone to headaches and after the third day in a row of having dull pain above my right eye I began to suspect something was wrong. Of course, I jumped to all sorts of rational conclusions first: it was a tumor that was causing the pain, what if it were a parasite behind my eye, or maybe I had brain-eating amoebas!

Then I gave it some thought and asked myself to remember when the headaches had started and what had changed at that time. I realized that my headaches had begun after we had arrived back home from our east coast vacation. I had been suffering from a cold that week so hadn’t thought of a headache as notable since my sinus cavities were full, etc. But then the cold ran its course and I still had the headache every day more than a week later.

I wondered if the problem could be caused by the agave syrup I used to sweeten my cup of decaf coffee at home. On vacation I was using cane sugar in my coffee, but at home I usually use agave. Food sensitivities can be delayed by up to four days, so a headache beginning around 3 pm could very well result from a drink at 7 or 8 am.

I stopped using agave syrup the very next day and had only a faint headache that afternoon. Two days after ceasing using the agave I was completely headache-free. It has now been four days without a headache and I am convinced it was the agave.

I feel lucky to have been able to identify the culprit and find relief so easily! Many of my clients complete MRT food sensitivity testing and find they are sensitive to as many as thirty or forty foods. After they complete a washout and some healing time, they often find that there were one or two big offenders that were tipping the scales for everything else.

I worked with a 29-year old attorney who had suffered from migraines almost daily since she was twelve years old. With MRT testing and the LEAP Immunocalm Diet, she was able to identify her biggest sensitivity as being from the additive fructose. As in High Fructose Corn Syrup. She realized that everything she used to eat as a busy career woman contained fructose and she had been unwittingly keeping herself in pain.

The first two weeks after removing all fructose from her life she went through a washout period and experienced about a dozen migraines. Then they stopped for good. Now she lives a migraine-free life as long as she avoids her fructose trigger. She feels like a new person. She received a raise and a promotion and is happily living migraine-free.

Sometimes you just don’t know until you know.

Problems Sleeping? It Could Be What You’re Eating!

Do you have problems sleeping? If so, you’re not alone. Almost 9 million Americans take prescription sleeping pills. What’s eating everyone… literally?

Believe it or not, sometimes the foods you are eating during the day are keeping you awake at night.

It’s well-recognized that caffeine can keep us awake and that some people are more sensitive to caffeine than others. I used to be a caffeine-aholic, not able to start my day without a cup or two of coffee and often drinking coffee late into the night. Funnily enough, I had terrible insomnia many nights, not falling asleep until the wee hours of the morning.

Then I gave up both coffee and caffeine because I was trying to stop the hives (that’s another story). The funny thing was that I started sleeping better and I realized that I didn’t need the caffeine to feel awake in the morning anymore. After a couple of years, I reintroduced decaf coffee and seemed to be fine, but the moment I had a sip of a caffeinated drink, my teeth would clench, my jaw would ache, my legs would tremble, I wouldn’t sleep well and I would feel hungover the next day. All that from a sip or two of regular coffee.

I’m happier without the caffeine, and I feel lucky to have figured out a secret to sleeping better. More than ten years later, I’m still falling asleep easily and waking up without any craving for caffeine.

Food sensitivities may be delayed by as long as four days after ingestion, making it very difficult to identify the culprits that may be keeping you awake at night. In my nutritional therapy practice I hear over and over how much better people sleep once they identify their inflammatory triggers and change their diet accordingly.

Whether it’s caffeine or another food or chemical that is triggering reactions in your body, what you are eating can make a huge difference in how well you are sleeping. Food sensitivity testing can point you in the right direction.

Can Allergens Be Absorbed Through Your Skin?

Allergens can absolutely be absorbed through the skin. Beyond the obvious topical dermatitis you might get from touching poison ivy, for example, irritants that come into contact with your skin can give you effects that are more than skin deep. Pain, inflammation, fatigue, migraines, nervous system issues… These are all examples of how our bodies may be affected by what we put on our skin.

Don’t forget that our skin is our largest organ and provides a semipermeable barrier between us and everything else. If you are sensitive to something ingested, you’ll want to avoid touching it or smelling it, too. After all, aromas are literally molecules with mass and weight, and even something this small can cause some people to react.

I always discuss personal care and cleaning products with my food sensitivity clients. I had one client with persistent, unexplained shoulder pain who swore by a certain blue topical salve that she thought was giving her relief. She used it 4-5x/day. She finally switched brands after blue dye showed up reactive on her Mediator Release Test (MRT) and the pain went away.

Another example is a client who tested sensitive to citrus fruits on the MRT. When she uses cosmetics or cleansers that contain citric acid, her skin will flare up and react for several days.

I talk to my clients about avoiding aloe in skin care products if they are sensitive to the Lily family and coconut derivatives like sodium lauryl sulfate  if they are sensitive to coconut. We look at scents like vanilla and lemon in soaps, etc., and chemical preservatives like sorbates in shampoos and cleansers. When items like these foods or chemicals turn up high in the MRT, I encourage them to avoid the allergen in every way.

Beyond that, we talk in general about using clean, non-toxic products to lower their overall toxic load.

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