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Food Sensitivities and Pain

Lose the Grain, Lose the Pain

I can honestly tell you that a majority of patients who come to see me in the office are sensitive to gluten, a composite of proteins found in grains.  These grains include barley, bulgur wheat, drum, einkorn, faro, graham, kamut, rye, semolina, spelt, triticale and whole wheat. Sensitivity to gluten causes inflammation in the body that can lead to all sorts of clinical problems including brain and nerve damage, diabetes, heart disease and intestinal leakage to name a few.  Some experts like Dr. William Davies, cardiologist and author of the bestselling book, Wheat Belly, feel that the reasons so many of us are gluten sensitive is that the genetic code of wheat has been manipulated by man so drastically over such a short period of time that our bodies can’t adapt. 

The wheat that your grandparents used to bake their bread is genetically different from the wheat you currently buy at the grocery store.  The gluten-content has increased dramatically over the last fifty years in particular because food manufacturers like the fluffy, elastic nature of high gluten-containing grains.  Ancient species of wheat, such as Einkorn and Emmer, seem to be better tolerated, yet are not used commercially because they produce bread that is rather hard and dense.  Furthermore, these grains are only available from specialty online stores.

Many experts feel that severe gluten intolerance can cause the destruction of the intestinal villi that are responsible for the proper absorption and assimilation of food.  The end result is commonly known as Celiac Disease.  The intestinal damage of Celiac disease may also lead to lactose intolerance and multiple food allergies.  It is estimated that Celiac Disease affects approximately 1 in 133 people in the United States, yet fewer than 5% are diagnosed properly.  In Europe, however, where the pharmaceutical industry doesn’t have as much control over medical education, Celiac Disease is routinely diagnosed at a young age. 

In the United States, most people suffer with various symptoms for well over a decade before being diagnosed, if at all.  I remember that when I was in medical school, we thought of Celiac Disease as only affecting young children with diarrhea, abdominal pain and failure to thrive symptoms (weight loss).  I didn’t realize until recently that people don’t have to have these symptoms in order to be diagnosed with Celiac Disease.  In fact, many adults with Celiac Disease have constipation and weight gain.

Beyond Celiac Disease, there is a greater proportion of the population that is gluten-sensitive.  It is easy to test for Celiac Disease today because we have blood tests that check for anti-bodies to gluten.  Nonetheless, many people whose antibody tests are negative still have significant intolerances to gluten.  More accurate testing for gluten sensitivity can be done via stool and saliva testing, but only two laboratories in the United States offer this testing and it may not be covered by health insurance companies. 

ALCAT blood testing is another way to determine gluten sensitivity by observing the presence of an inflammatory reaction when your white blood cells are exposed to gluten.  According to nutritionist and author, Shari Lieberman, in her book The Gluten Connection, if people used more accurate forms of gluten intolerance testing, such as stool and saliva, an estimated one third of the population would be diagnosed as gluten intolerant.  That’s a lot of people!

Thanks to some friends and colleagues who alerted me a few years ago to the possibility of gluten-intolerance in patients, I’ve begun to see great improvements in many of my chronic pain patients after they start a gluten-free diet.  Now my motto is:  if in doubt, stop gluten for a month and see how the pain responds.  The most difficult aspect for people is that eating wheat is addictive.  In the Wheat Belly book, Dr. Davis explains that once wheat is broken down and absorbed by our gut, a highly addictive component of wheat can attach itself to the opioid receptors in our brain (think morphine receptor).  People can actually “get high” eating wheat, as if it were a drug, and can go through withdrawal once they stop.  This is certainly the case with many people who simply crave wheat.  Luckily the withdrawal symptoms of cravings and crankiness last usually no more than a week.  I’ve found that if I can maintain brain balance in someone, he experiences fewer withdrawal symptoms.  My patient Janice told me that when she eats wheat pasta, she can’t stop eating, but when she eats rice pasta, she gets full very easily.

My significant other, James, was highly addicted to wheat.  We didn’t connect his flare-ups of joint pain and crankiness to wheat ingestion until I started noticing a pattern.  Whenever we’d go out to eat and he’d order a gourmet sandwich, the next day he’d be in pain.  He wasn’t convinced about the gluten connection until he went without gluten for a solid week and then reintroduced it into his diet.  The ensuing reactivation of massive joint and tendon pain convinced him to assiduously avoid eating gluten. 

The other challenge with eating gluten-free is that the majority of processed food in America contains wheat or gluten, so unless you are on a strict whole food diet, which most of us aren’t, you are at high risk of consuming some form of gluten.  The obvious choices of crackers, cookies, cakes, bread, cereals and pasta are easily avoided.  But things like ketchup, spices, sauces, cold cuts, soups, oatmeal and gravies often contain gluten or are processed in factories that also process gluten-containing products.  The good news is that corporate America is realizing that many people are choosing to go gluten-free; so many companies are making an effort to sell products that do not contain gluten, such as gluten-free crackers, cake mixes, cereals, and snacks. 

Please keep in mind that just because it says gluten-free on the package doesn’t mean it is healthy for you.  Processed food (food that comes in boxes, bags, cans, bottles, and jars etc.) are often devoid of nutrients and may have a lot of sugar, which can also contribute to inflammation in the long run.  According to Dr. Davis, many commercial gluten free foods are made by replacing the wheat with cornstarch, rice starch, potato starch or tapioca starch which are gluten free but have a very high glycemic index and can cause weight gain and sugar dysregulation.  Moreover, the cornstarch will often be made with genetically modified corn. 

Taking wheat products out of a person’s diet can be emotionally traumatic since eating wheat is seemingly culturally ingrained.  I have to admit that it is a hard-sell in my office to convince my patients to cut out gluten.  Many people naturally feel that as humans we’ve always eaten bread, so why should it be unhealthy?  What they don’t realize is that before the agricultural revolution, humans were actually taller and healthier and that eating grains is a relatively recent phenomenon in human history!  Did you know that today’s wheat has been mutated so much that it cannot survive in the wild?   Wheat of today no longer resembles those tall golden stalks seen on cereal boxes.  In fact, the stalks are much shorter (for better yield) and require plenty of fertilizers and pesticides in order to survive.  The bottom line is that it is unnatural for our bodies to eat a lot of wheat.

 

Going Gluten-Free

Despite the growing body of evidence proving that eating grains like wheat is detrimental to our health, America’s addiction to wheat is not going to end any time soon.  There are wonderful books available on how to become gluten-free.  Often people can tell a difference in their pain levels within one to four weeks of eliminating their gluten consumption.  Not only that, it is common to lose between five and fifteen pounds in a month if you’re overweight!  Some people lose even more.  I’m always amazed at how toxicity can cause unnatural weight gain in people. 

If going gluten-free seems overwhelming, you can always start slowly by increasing your meat, fat, and vegetable intake and decreasing your grains.  For example, you can forgo the morning toast and instead eat free-range organic eggs for breakfast.  Your blood sugar levels won’t yo-yo up and down as much, and you won’t be consuming gluten.  Unless you have an egg allergy, consuming pastured eggs for most people does not contribute to high cholesterol.  Inflammation causes high cholesterol, not eggs or eating cholesterol alone.  Toxic foods like wheat and sugar can cause inflammation which in turn causes high cholesterol.  Don’t be surprised if your cholesterol levels improve if you remove toxic food from your diet and replace it with whole foods.   I’ll discuss more about how nutrition can help your body heal in a later chapter. 

 

Other Food Sensitivities

If you’ve gone gluten-free and nothing has changed with respect to your pain level, you may have other food intolerances or sensitivities.  Food intolerances differ from food allergies in that the reaction is often not immediate.  It can be delayed.  It also does not cause hives, difficulty breathing or death, as would a true peanut allergy.  The proteins in coffee tend to cross-react with gluten so many people who are gluten-free still have symptoms because they drink regular or decaf coffee.  I’m not a big fan of coffee, so if in doubt, drink organic tea instead.

There are many reasons we often develop food intolerances, but some of the most common have to do with stress and inflammation of the gut (see Chapter on Healing the Gut).  There are two ways I test for food sensitivities in my office.  One is applied kinesiology.  I can muscle test my patients with various foods and see if their energy system responds by blocking energy flow.  When energy flow is blocked, the test muscle goes weak and it means the patient is intolerant to that food. 

The other method is the ALCAT test.  It is an objective blood test that quantifies the reaction of your white blood cells, the cells that are part of your immune system.  Even if there is no allergic response, the white blood cells will respond with an inflammatory reaction when exposed to a food substance that you’re intolerant to.  By avoiding these foods and desensitizing yourself from them, and using a rotation diet, where you eat the same foods only one out of every four days, you can heal your inflammation and thus the underlying cause of your pain. 

With the ALCAT test, you can check for intolerance to over 200 foods, molds, food additives and colorings, environmental chemicals, functional foods and even medicines.  Gluten and wheat sensitivities are also tested in ALCAT and luckily, this test is available worldwide.  Many health insurance companies cover this test, so it may be well worth doing if you’re not getting better.  For more information, go to www.ALCAT.com.  Listen to the radio show interview I did with a functional medicine specialist who uses the ALCAT test in his practice to help people with chronic conditions.

Of the many possible foods a person can be sensitive to, the most common are wheat, dairy, eggs, soy, tree nuts, peanuts, shellfish and fish.  I have found in my testing, that many people are developing sensitivity to corn.  Jeffrey Smith, author of Seeds of Deception feels that this increasing sensitivity is due to the introduction of genetically modified corn into our diets which causes inflammation.

When it comes to pain, many Chinese medicine practitioners will ask their patients to eliminate dairy because it causes a condition of “dampness” in the joints.  If you ask people suffering from arthritis whether the barometric pressure affects their joint pain, most will say yes.  This is the manifestation of the Traditional Chinese diagnosis of excessive “dampness” in the body.  Removing cow’s milk and milk products such as cheese, ice cream, and yoghurt will often significantly reduce joint pain, as does removing sugary foods, which also cause “dampness”.

If you’re not willing to do testing to determine your food intolerances, it may be worth your while to remove at least sugar, wheat, dairy, and GMO foods (anything made with non-organic soy, corn, canola, sugar beets and cottonseed oil) from your diet for a month to see if your pain resolves.  Alternatively, you can perform a desensitizing procedure for all possible intolerances to see if that helps.  It’s never a great idea to eat lots of wheat, sugar or dairy anyway, but at least if you are no longer intolerant to them, consuming them won’t contribute to chronic pain. 

 

Methods to Desensitize Yourself

If you’re convinced you may have gluten intolerance or you’ve tested positive on the stool test, saliva test or ALCAT test, then you may wish to desensitize yourself.  Although still considered obscure to mainstream medicine, NAET (Nambudripad’s Allergy Elimination Technique) www.naet.com  is a well-known method of desensitizing allergies and intolerances.  This method was developed by an acupuncturist and it uses a blend of selective energy balancing, testing and treatment procedures from acupuncture/acupressure, allopathy, chiropractic, nutritional, and kinesiological disciplines of medicine. 

According to the NAET website, it is recommended to desensitize one allergen at a time although I know of colleagues who do more than one allergen at a time.  Nevertheless, it can take upwards of twenty or more visits to desensitize someone from multiple allergens.  The nice thing about the NAET procedure is that there aren’t any fancy blood tests or stool tests to be undertaken to prove or disprove an allergy.  The practitioner uses applied kinesiology (muscle testing) to determine intolerance and to confirm clearing of the same intolerance after the procedure is completed.

A business colleague of mine, Gretchen Uhe, learned the NAET process to clear her children of multiple allergens.  She recently discovered, however, that she can accomplish the same desensitizing effect using acupuncture patches.  When she told me about her discovery, I was intrigued because of my own issues with chronic constipation due to multiple food sensitivities.  The procedure with the patches is simpler and easier than NAET and seems to be just as effective.  With NAET the clearance of allergies lasts a lifetime for most people.  Although this method pioneered by Gretchen Uhe is relatively new, it seems to also produce long lasting results. 

As of this writing, we are currently using the Uhe Method on as many people as possible, and I’m impressed by the results.  My own personal results have been spectacular.  I have successfully desensitized myself from gluten, corn, dairy, and soy.  I’m finally having great bowel movements without having to take a slew of herbal and homeopathic remedies.  A few days after doing the Uhe Method, I went to the movie theater and ate popcorn, which normally constipates me for days.  I was delighted that there were no negative effects from it and I have continued to perform the Uhe Method on any new foods that I discover I’m sensitive to.  The Uhe Desensitizing Method has made travelling and eating out easier for me and I’m very grateful for it.

To learn the Uhe Method you can take a one hour class.  It is available online at www.UheMethod.com.  If you think you’re gluten intolerant or you’d like to desensitize yourself to possible gluten intolerance, I recommend you take the time to learn this method.  You may need someone at home to test you “before” you do the Uhe Method so you can verify what you’re sensitive to, and then “after” so you can make sure you’re clear of the sensitivity.  If you have any known allergies besides gluten or dairy, this technique can really help.  For a more detailed sensitivity analysis, invest in an ALCAT test.  It can give you a fairly accurate assessment of the substances you may be reacting to.  The list can be surprisingly long for those of us who have had intestinal issues.  In the chapter on healing the gut, it will make sense why some people stay in a chronic state of inflammation and why taking anti-inflammatory medications (NSAIDs) can make matters worse in the long run.

We’ve also discovered that many people can be desensitized to their environments including their bedroom, their cars, electromagnetic fields, and volatile organic chemicals (VOC’s).  Any of these sensitivities can contribute to chronic pain.  My partner James went to work one day when pipes were being installed into the plumbing system of a new house.  He said the smell was so awful that he felt nauseated and had to leave the room after just ten seconds of exposure.  That night, we used the Uhe Method to desensitize him to the VOC’s.  The next day, he was able to work several hours in the same room without feeling bad.  In fact, he took a huge whiff of the stuff just to test his tolerance.  It must’ve been a funny sight to his co-worker!  James was tickled pink that he was no longer sensitive to the chemical smell. 

When allergies or intolerances are connected to past trapped emotions, they can be more challenging to clear.  I’ve used the Emotion Code to assess whether there are any trapped emotions that need clearing in order to clear the allergic reaction.  Often there is.  If you have difficulty clearing your sensitivities using NAET or the Uhe Method, you may wish to try the Emotion Code as well.  Often sugar and gluten sensitivities are associated with trapped emotions.

 

Determine Your Sensitivities

Before you do the Uhe Method, you’ll want to determine what sensitivities you actually have.  There are three ways you can determine your sensitivities.   The first two don’t cost anything.  The first way is to do an elimination diet.  In an elimination diet, you eliminate the common allergens from your diet and eat strictly whole foods for a few weeks to clean your system.  Then you slowly reintroduce the potential “allergens” one at a time, every four days or so, to determine whether or not you have reactions to them.  Reactions can be varied so you have to pay attention to how your body feels.  Upset stomach, diarrhea and constipation are pretty easy symptoms to spot, but skin rashes, brain fog, insomnia, pain, anxiety, or emotional irritability may also be sensitivity symptoms. 

The second way you can determine what you’re sensitive to is to learn basic muscle testing.  Gretchen Uhe teaches this in her online class.  It isn’t hard but takes a bit of practice.  I use it in the office almost daily because it is a quick way to tap into the body’s own intuitive guidance system.  When your body’s energy field comes in contact with a substance that you’re sensitive to, your energy flow becomes blocked and your muscle test will become weak.  Alternatively, when your body’s energy field comes into contact with a substance that you’re not sensitive to, your muscle test will remain strong. 

I’ve done this sort of testing with my patients to demonstrate the harmfulness of cell phones.  First I do the muscle test when they are not holding the cell phone.  I push down on their outstretched arm, and in a healthy individual, the arm tests strong.  In muscle-testing vernacular, this muscle is now locked (strong).  Then I have them hold the cell phone in one hand and repeat the muscle testing.  Suddenly, their muscle weakens and their outstretched arm “unlocks”.  Some people are so surprised that they actually gasp.  Try as they might to keep their outstretched arm strong, they cannot withstand the relatively light pressure I exert when I tell them to resist.  Why?  Because cell phone radiation is weakening their energy field.  I love doing this demonstration on children and teenagers because it shows them that without a shadow of a doubt, cell phone radiation is harmful.

You can have some fun with this once you get some practice with muscle testing your friends and family members.  Here’s a caveat though.  Both of you need to be well hydrated.  Ideally, being brain balanced improves the accuracy of the muscle testing as well.  If in doubt, place a LifeWave Y-Age Aeon patch behind the right ear on the mastoid bone (Triple Burner 17) on yourself and on the person you’re testing. 

Here is a simple guide of how you can use muscle testing to determine if someone is allergic or sensitive to something.  If you are not sensitive to it, your arm will remain strong.  If you are sensitive to it, your arm will go weak.

1.        Hydrate yourself and the person you are testing
2.       Ask the subject to pick an arm he wishes to use for the testing.  Ask if there are any shoulder injuries and avoid using the side that is injured.
3.       Have the subject stretch out his arm in front of himself and lock the elbow.  I find that people are stronger if they make a first with the thumb facing up towards the sky.
4.      Stand to the side of the person being tested rather than in front of him or behind him.  Place your fingertips gently over the person’s outstretched wrist above the wrist bone.  If the subject is young, weak or fragile, you can place your fingertips closer to the elbow, thereby decreasing the fulcrum.
5.       Tell him that when you say “Resist”, he is to resist your downward pressure, matching your pressure so that his arm remains locked in one position.
6.       Gradually press down on the arm slowly increasing the pressure over the count of three.  If the arm is strong, or locked, there will not be any “give”.  If the arm weakens or becomes unlocked, that means that his energy field is weakened or blocked.  A normal response for everyone is that the arm remains locked when you’re testing him in the clear, that is, without the test substance touching his body.
7.       Once you’ve determined that the person you’re testing has a normal locked muscle in the clear, have him hold the test substance next to his chest.  Alternatively, you can ask him to say the allergen out loud, such as “wheat”.  Immediately retest.  If he becomes unlocked, that means that he is sensitive to that substance.  NOTE: do not use the actual test substance on someone with known severe life-threatening reactions to things like peanuts.
8.      If you’re not sure of the result, you can retest the person with and without the test substance.  If he consistently unlocks when this allergen is within his energy field, then that means he is sensitive to it.
9.       You can repeat this testing with several different potential foods or environmental substances.

 

Tips for Muscle Testing

When first learning muscle testing, it is best to see if the person is testable.  Ask him to say his name.  For example, “My name is John”.  The muscle test should be locked.  Then ask him to say a false name, such as, “My name is Bob”.  The muscle test should then become unlocked.  Once you’ve determined that this works, then you can go ahead to muscle test various test substances.

The basic substances you’ll want to test first are the ones listed below. 

         Gluten or Wheat
         Salt
         Legumes/Peanuts/Soy
         Sugar
         Tree Nuts
         Nightshade vegetables (eggplant, potatoes, peppers)
         Corn (test genetically modified and non GMO)
         Dairy (yogurt, ice cream, butter, milk, cheese)
         Artificial sweeteners (aspartame, neotame, sucralose, saccharin)
         Monosodium glutamate (autolyzed yeast extract, torula yeast)
         Food coloring
         Food preservatives
         Nitrites (found in processed food)
         Mushrooms
         Eggs
         Fish
         Shellfish
         Alcohol: red wine, white wine, hard liquor, beer
         Caffeine
         Coffee (decaf and regular)
         Cinnamon

 

Sometimes a person will have intolerance to conventionally grown corn, for example, but not have intolerance to organic corn.  Because of this, feel free to experiment whether the organic or non-organic varieties make a difference to your body.  Keep in mind that just because you might not have intolerance to MSG, it doesn’t mean that it is healthy for you.  It just means that your body doesn’t react negatively to it. 

Please note that if you don’t have a sample of the substance with you, you can always try muscle testing using an energetic representation of the substance.  For example, you can write the name of the substance down on a small card and have the subject hold the card next to his chest while muscle testing.  Alternatively, you can have the subject say the name of the substance, such as “eggs”. 

Lastly, you can even have the subject say an entire sentence before muscle testing him, such as “Eating wheat is for my highest and greatest good”.  Please note that if you’re using this sentence, the person will muscle test weak if he is sensitive to wheat.  Once you’ve determined what you’re sensitive to, you can use the Uhe Method to desensitize yourself.  To learn this method, please go to www.UheMethod.com.

We’ve had several anecdotal stories from doctors who have used the Uhe Method to desensitize themselves from life-threatening allergic reactions.  I do not recommend that anyone do this method with the offending allergen present and certainly not without the participation of a licensed medical doctor (with access to epinephrine) because of the risk of death.

 

How to Make the Desensitizing Last

After doing NAET or the Uhe Method, most people will become permanently desensitized if they do the following:

         Avoid eating too much sugary food and/or junk food
         Keep their bodies more alkaline and less acidic (see Nutrition chapter)
         Eat a whole food diet and decrease or eliminate processed foods
         Stay brain balanced

Having the actual substance next to your body when you do the Uhe Method is the most effective, especially when the substance comes in many different frequencies, such as gluten.  There are hundreds of different types of gluten-containing flours.  If you can’t stand avoiding gluten entirely, at least you can desensitize yourself from the gluten-containing foods you absolutely love.  If you don’t love it, just forget about it.  Gluten-containing carbohydrates aren’t required for optimal nutrition.

 

Chapter Summary

         Wheat and wheat products are not easily tolerated by up to a third of Americans most likely due to the shifts in the genetic composition of the wheat over the last 50 years
         Wheat can cause significant inflammation in the body leading to pain and other problems like high cholesterol
         Dairy is the other common food that many people in chronic pain are sensitive to
         Removing gluten/wheat products, as well as sugar and dairy, from your diet may resolve the underlying cause of pain
         Stool, saliva and ALCAT testing may be helpful in determining specific food sensitivities such as gluten and dairy
         Muscle testing is an inexpensive way you can determine food and other sensitivities.  Although it takes practice, it is well worth learning
         NAET, Uhe Method and Emotion Code are techniques to diminish or eliminate your symptoms of food sensitivity