January 18th, 2010
A Look at Food Intolerances and Their Effect on Your Training
By Heather Morgan
Around “the office” I’m known as the one to freely chat about poop, gas, and other things most consider inappropriate in mixed company. And I’ll do it over lunch. What can I say? If it’s a normal body process, I’m cool with it whether I have a meal in front of me or not. I’d stop (maybe) but for the fact that I find my earthiness (my mother’s term: “Oh Heather, you’re just so earrrrrthy!”) to be a handy tool in putting my patients and trainees at ease with themselves. That and it opens the door for dialogue about health issues they are experiencing that they might have been too embarrassed to ask. I’m from New Jersey, but I live in the South now, and there’s a definite tendency for those born South of the Mason-Dixon to keep their personal hygiene problems personal. So I consider it my professional duty to bring all things internal into the light.
While there will no doubt be more blog posts to come regarding our innards and how they affect our aging, performance, and overall quality of life, right now I’d like to address food intolerances. Most of us are familiar with the term “food allergy”. By now you’ve undoubtedly come across someone with one or more of them, such as the kid in elementary school who couldn’t sit next to you if you were eating a peanut butter sandwich, or a current friend who makes sure the pesto in the meal s/he’s ordering is pine nut-free. Sort of annoying at first until you realize that a dietary slip-up can mean a trip to the emergency room for your buddy. Another reason not to be all judgy and impatient with it? You could very well be a sufferer of a similar ailment, albeit a milder and harder to detect form of it. All the same, food intolerances can affect your health, sometimes to a devastating point. Read on.
You’re probably wondering what the difference is between a food allergy and a food intolerance, so let’s clear that up before moving on to how it can mess up your next workout. An allergy, food or otherwise, causes an IgE antibody mediated reaction. This is the immune response that causes anaphylaxis, a life-threatening situation characterized by a sudden or fairly sudden (usually within 15-30 minutes at the most) flushing of the skin, swelling of the tongue, sneezing, itching, rapid and erratic pulse, vomiting, diarrhea, stomach cramps, difficulty breathing or swallowing, and sometimes drops in blood pressure leading to lightheadedness or even fainting. Later on signs can also develop, such as eczema. As you can see, if you have a food allergy, you most likely know by now and have the Epipen to prove it. Food intolerances, on the other hand, are IgG antibody mediated reactions. They don’t involve histamine, so the signs and symptoms are usually milder with less specific complaints along with a delayed onset. All of this makes them more difficult to pinpoint, not to mention harder to connect with the intake of a certain food. The common ground food allergies and intolerances share is that they are an immune system over-reaction to a food protein recognized as foreign. So while an intolerance to something in last night’s dinner is tough to diagnose, it is a possibility worth investigating further if you regularly suffer from some of the following without any other explanation:
Most food intolerance sufferers have “their thing”, meaning their tendency to experience one or two of the above fairly chronically, and they have accepted them as their lot in life. And it’s obvious just scanning the list that any of these are attributable to a myriad of reasons, stress and poor diet being just two very common ones. Many, many folks are so used to feeling crappy all of the time, it’s not a stretch to imagine that more food intolerances go undetected than detected. That’s one advantage to being an athlete: You are more connected to your body—how it feels and performs—and you are much less apt to put up with it functioning suboptimally. Likewise, you are even more motivated than a couch jockey to get to the root of a problem. Ever had to cut a run short because you haven’t had a good poop in days? Find yourself timing your training schedule to avoid crowds at the gym because of your gas? Miss your cycling group’s workout because you were doubled over with stomach cramps after eating your pre-ride sport bar? Your body is telling you something and it’s time to listen.
First you need to find out if you indeed have a food intolerance. While there are probably dozens of at-home tests you can buy online by now, we strongly recommend that you consult with a health care practitioner for testing and analysis. They can choose the right testing protocol as some tests only detect allergies, not intolerances, and so forth. That said and emphasized, if you decided to go rogue and order a test (see resources below), at least take your results to a professional for review. [Heads up!: Most of these require mailing a sample of your poop to a lab. Suck it up, it’s worth it.] Also, a health care professional who specializes in gastrointestinal disorders can determine if your problem stems from other, often related, issues, such as Increased Intestinal Permeability (aka. “Leaky Gut Syndrome”), Candida (yeast) Overgrowth, Dysbiosis, or something even more serious. Better safe than sorry. No matter what, be prepared for an elimination diet where the most likely culprits will be taken from your diet for a period of time and then introduced to see if you react or not. As an athlete, you should already be tracking your nutrition. In fact, if you are noting the timing and content of your meals, a lot of your detective work has already been done. Start including notes about when you have adverse reactions—even if you’ve never previously tied them to something you ate or drank.
To motivate you beyond wanting to feel better and rock your training harder, there’s some good news to being slapped with a diagnosis of food intolerance. A) The cause of your issues may no longer be a mystery; B) The intestinal tract is home to some of the quickest healing tissue in the body. (Over-achievers rejoice!) While your healthcare professional will undoubtedly set a dietary course of action for you, here are some supplements that they may recommend to help speed up the pace of gut repair: glutamine; quercitin; zinc; omega-3 fatty acids; probiotics. We recommend seeking out whole food sources of these nutrients (see below), but higher concentrations may very well be prescribed by your healthcare practitioner via appropriate supplement dosages taken at specific times. Nothing says you can’t get a head start on healthy guts by regularly including many of these nutrient-dense foods below, assuming they agree with you, of course!
So, was it the gluten-rich pasta you were banging down the night before that caused you to frequent the Port-o-lets during your 10K? Or was it the soy in your pre-race sport bar? But doesn’t that happen after ice cream too? Oh, and there was that course of antibiotics you took last month for yet-another sinus infection. Come to think of it though, wasn’t it just last week you had nothing but headaches, itchy arms, and a jammed up colon? Stop guessing! Athletic endeavors aside, your long-term health and successful aging depend on it.
References:
Doyle, Marek. The basics of food intolerance. http://www.ei-resource.org/articles/allergy-articles/the-basics-of-food-intolerance/
Melina, Vesanto, MS, RD, Stepaniak, Jo, MSEd & Aronson, Dina, MS, RD. (2004). Food allergy survival guide: Delicious recipes & complete nutrition. Summertown, TN: Healthy Living Publications.
Resources (testing and practitioner location):
https://www.enterolab.com/Home.htm
Tags: eating for per4mance, food intolerances, gastrointestinal stuff, Health
Good stuff Sis!!!
Ok, you must have been listening in on a convo that Jodi, Mara, and I had last night. We were all having tummy troubles for three different reasons.
I’m trying to reintroduce some animal proteins into my diet and it’s been…interesting. My face has broken out, and now, about three weeks later, my stomach is a hot mess. Probiotics and digestive enzymes have become my best friends!
Will-Thanks for stopping by!
Joanna-LOL! on the convo. What happens when I hang up the phone after a meeting? Hmmm… So I take it you were veg for a very long time, yes? I was vegan for a LONG time. All of my 8 comps were done as a vegan. For many reasons (health ones, esp) I am omni again, but I had zero trouble reintroducing those foods. I was all set with enzymes, but no need. Kudos to you for listening to your body. We can spout science all day long, but it comes down to knowing your own bod best.
Every time I have dairy (not the small amount I put in my coffee, but a serving of ice cream, cottage cheese, or a full glass of milk) I break out the next day. It is like clock-work. I’ve learned that if I am going to have the dairy (b/c I LOVE icecream on occation) to expect a small patch of acne.
Kas! OMG, yes with the dairy. (And nice segue to an upcoming post “Truth or Dairy”, thanks! LOL) My hubs had bad backne off and on when we met, and felt like he was digesting glass when he’d have dairy. I got him largely off of it and now he has clear skin on his back and way fewer digestive issues. Most notably: no pain. He’s found a definite link to quantity, but also that he can have cheese here and there if it’s organic and raw/unpasteurized (=enzymes still present).
Did someone say cheese? OY!hehe
Nothing is worse than tummy issues and especially when they are food induced (as opposed to stress induced). Elimination diets can take a long time and frustrations can shoot through the roof when that happens making it harder to find the cause. Thanks for pointing this stuff out b/c I don’t think people attribute too much to their food choices when it is typically ALL about the diet.
Oh Heather, you so earrrrrrrthy! hahaha! Gotta love moms, they tell it like it is!
well hello lovely lady.. Haven’t talked in a while.. I loved your article, humerous as always but wanted to say that I have two clients currently working with a nutritionist locally to check out their food issues.. they are doing wonderful and for one with ulcerative colitis.. a God send.. Thanks for the info and will link your blog to our FB page as well.. Good info.. Don’t think I will ever get to this level of training, no time but love to have professionals like you to give my clients a wonderful contact
Delicious Deidre! Thank you for stopping by! Absolutely check in for info here and there–we all have different blog roles, so there will be daily variety that will relate to clients for sure! And feel free to refer your female athlete clients. {wink-wink, nudge-nudge) We don’t train them for their sport, per se–they have a coach for that. We cross-train them to SUPPORT their sport, while honoring the existing sport-specific training, and FEED them for their sport, PLUS looking hot and aging well. Why choose? LOL Miss you, you’re awesome.
*Any athlete reading this needing a fab sport massage in Atlanta, shoot me (Heather) an email and I’ll give you Deidre’s info. She’s the bomb-diggedy!
[...] the problem), headaches, rashes, yadda yadda. I did a post on that sort of thing if you want to check here. The point? Clean it out, re-line it with good healing fats and good bacteria (good fats like [...]