Food allergies and diabetes

Food Allergies and Diabetes

Food allergies and diabetes are really not a great combination. Although food sensitivity can have a variety of symptoms results they very often leave you feeling tired and jaded. Managing diabetes is hard enough without the added complication of food sensitivities. Type 2 diabetes is a metabolic condition and food intolerances can trigger inflammation, destruction of cells in the form of an autoimmune disease and insulin resistance can be triggered by food intolerances. What that means in plain English is if you have a food intolerance or a combination food intolerances it may be far harder for you if not impossible to cure your diabetes.

Fortunately, food allergies are very rare they affect less than 1% of the population. Food intolerance of food sensitivity is a milder form of allergy and these effect about 20% of the population. Food intolerance tends also to be to specific groups of products. The main culprits are

Wheat-based bread and cereals and wheat bran products.
Processed bread cakes pastries biscuits and cookies
Dairy products, especially cow’s milk and cow’s milk cheese
Any food containing processed sugar.

Food additives such as monosodium glutinate and tartrazine and yellow additives

Because these intolerances are so common to this types of foods you often get an immediate improvement. The first step is to eliminate the first five group for two weeks. If there is an immediate improvement there is no need to go any further but if you feel better after three weeks it is worth eliminating the next five culprits and they are: –
Tomatoes, peppers and aubergines, and potatoes
Coffee tea chocolate and Coca-Cola
Soybean products
Food allergies and diabetes
If you feel better after two weeks it is worth staying off the first big five group and reintroduce each week one food from the second group. When you reintroduce a food keep a diary and eat that food each day for the next seven days. Make a careful note in the Journal of how they make you feel. It should be fairly clear which food group causes the problem. You have two choices when you find the food group that is problematical for your digestive system. You can eat it in digestible portions for a while and see if that makes a difference, you can cut it out of your diet completely or you can eat it only rarely. Only your system can make that decision because it does depend on how you feel.

Food sensitivities are not always a very simple matter. Leo had an allergy to crab, it was violent and immediate he threw up several times until he had removed all the crab from the system and anything else he had this reaction even if you only had half a teaspoonful of crab. Incredibly when he ate cheese he is fine he can eat crab. Some people report that they can eat eggs on their own or with salad but when served with toast then they cause a problem. So it is important to spend some time and play around with your food intolerances.

A food diary is very important and you should be very diligent about writing down every food and symptoms. This may seem like a waste of time, but eventually you will be able to find a common factor. Remember to check back over the day before as well when consulting your food diary because not all reactions are immediate.

Also, a point to be aware of is the fact that you can have a craving for food that you are allergic to. A classic example here is sugar. You may feel better when you have eaten because it gives your system a temporary high this lift makes you feel better until you crash down and feel exhausted. Sometimes you may even have eaten more sugar in the interim period so you have another high and you’re not aware initially of the lows because your symptoms are being masked by reintroducing the food into your system again. The only thing you can do with this is to avoid the food for seven days and then reintroduce it. Try eating smaller quantities of the food if the body finds it can digest smaller amount it may not cause you any further and aggravation and you can eat small amounts of it rather than cutting it out.

Never be tempted to cut out too many foods at once. There are several reasons for this the more varied diet you eat the less you will be bothered by food intolerance if you have a restricted diet you are more likely to have more symptoms. One of the reasons that this is the if you restrict your diet you will find that you may become intolerant of foods you could previously take

Research conducted at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine found that saturated fats cause immune cells to be active
and then they excrete an inflammatory protein called interleukin-1 Beta. This protein interacts with organs and tissues causing them to resist insulin.

Dr. Philpott noted that certain food allergies caused the body cells to swell (edema) leading to insulin resistance. Edema is a response to inflammation which contributed to diabetic type responses in the body. He and his team observed blood sugar levels of patients before and after meals. When the offending food was removed, the diabetic response vanished in conjunction with the inflammation.The foods that caused the most inflammation were corn, wheat, and dairy products.

food allergies and diabetes Auto-Immune Destruction
In some Type 1 diabetics, auto-immune responses can play a key role in their diabetes. About three-quarters of Type 1 diabetics are allergic to their own pancreatic cells, and these are the cells which are responsible for insulin production. Research conducted in Australia and Italy has found a correlation between cow’s milk and Type 1 diabetes in children. Bovine Serum Albumin is a protein to which some individuals are sensitive to, and the body attacks it. Unfortunately the pancreatic cells responsible for producing insulin look very much like Bovine Serum Albumin leading to both the protein and the pancreatic cells being attacked which limits the amounts of cells and, therefore, the amount of insulin produced. Italian research concluded that children given cow’s milk formula during the first three years of life are 52% more likely to develop Type 1 diabetes.

Insulin resistance can stem from many causes, including food allergies and intolerances. In today’s highly processed, highly chemicalized food systems, the ingesting of certain foods can cause chronic inflammation. This chronic inflammation disrupts normal body processes like insulin production and encourages continued sensitivities creating a vicious cycle.

So in conclusion if you want to cure your diabetes then consider looking at food intolerances first, you may think that diabetes is more life threatening and you are correct. but it is making things hard to do it that way around – deal with the food intolerances and then diabetes.

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