Allergy food elimination method

The Allergic Food Elimination Method is the most efficient at-home identification tool for non-IgE-mediated delayed adverse food reactions (including food intolerance and chronic food allergy). The clinical compliance rate is about 75%. It has a higher actual reference value than the food IgG test costing thousands of dollars in ordinary medical examination institutions. However, the operating threshold is much higher than the public imagination, and the misjudgment rate of non-standard operations can exceed 60%.

Last week, a friend came to me to complain, saying that he had been suffering from migraines all year round. He had a brain CT scan and a cervical vertebra check, but there were no problems. The doctor asked him to do a food elimination method. He stopped eating milk, eggs, and seafood for three weeks. His head did not hurt anymore, but now he dare not eat anything. He asked me if I would eat like this in the future. In fact, this is also the misunderstanding that many people have about this method: it is just a diagnostic tool, not a basis for you to avoid foods for a lifetime.

It seems that doctors in different fields have quite different attitudes towards this method. Many doctors in the traditional gastroenterology department do not recommend that ordinary people do it at home. The reason is very real: 90% of people cannot strictly control the variables. In the end, they either work in vain for half a month and find nothing, or they overly restrict food and cause malnutrition and eating anxiety. However, doctors who practice functional medicine and clinical nutrition regard it as one of the gold standards for diagnosing chronic adverse food reactions. After all, the symptoms of delayed allergies are too scattered. They may be headaches, bloating, eczema, insomnia, or even unreasonable irritability. They cannot be directly linked to specific foods. Apart from the elimination method, there are almost no cheaper, accurate and sufficient methods.

I have helped 20 or 30 users with troubleshooting guidance, and the pitfalls are really varied. Some people took lactose in the multivitamin they drank during the period of elimination. They didn’t read the ingredient list, and they still had diarrhea after trying it for a month. ； When someone was adding samples, he thought, "I'm suspicious of mangoes and shrimps anyway, so why not eat them together today to save time?" As a result, he broke out in hives after eating them. To this day, he still doesn't know which one is the problem. ； Some people only ruled out the disease for three days and then said they had no reaction. Little did they know that delayed reactions may take up to 72 hours to appear, and there is not enough time to detect them at all. You may not believe it, but I have encountered an even more outrageous case before. He was diagnosed with gluten intolerance and did not eat noodles or bread for two consecutive weeks. Most of his symptoms were improved. However, one day he was greedy and ate some braised chicken, and he started to have gas again. He thought he was allergic to chicken. After checking for a long time, it was found that wheat flour was added to the sauce of the braised chicken. Do you think it was wrong or not?

In fact, there is no need to follow the textbook standards. Just stop all seven or eight highly sensitive foods. It would be difficult for a normal person to carry it for a week, let alone six weeks. If you are only suspicious of a certain two foods, for example, you get gas every time you drink milk, then you should completely stop milk (including milk-containing cakes, milk tea, and toffee) for two weeks. If the symptoms are better, try drinking pure milk for three days. If there is no problem, you can drink normally. If you still have gas, it is basically lactose intolerance or milk protein allergy. It is very simple and does not need to be complicated. If you usually eat takeout every day at work and have no control over the ingredients, then it is better to keep a food diary for a week and list what you ate in the 24 hours before each time you felt uncomfortable. Stop and try the two or three items that overlap most. It is better than doing nothing at all.

Of course, many people now question the placebo effect of this method. For example, if you have a preconception that milk is not good, and your symptoms are relieved after you stop it, it is probably due to psychological effects and not a true allergy. This situation does exist, so there is now an improved double-blind elimination method in clinical practice, which is to make the tested food into capsules with the same appearance. The subjects themselves do not know what they are eating, so the accuracy will be higher, but ordinary people cannot operate it at all. For daily inspections, as long as you don't preset the results too much, the accuracy is basically enough to adjust the diet.

Finally, a reminder, this method is only suitable for troubleshooting chronic minor problems for which the cause cannot be found. If you have a history of acute allergies, such as getting a rash or difficulty breathing within half an hour of eating something, don’t do any troubleshooting methods. Go directly to the hospital for an IgE allergen test. You should avoid food and drink, and prepare epinephrine. If you use it in the wrong place, you may be in danger. In the final analysis, it is just a tool for finding problems, just like when you find tripped electrical appliances at home, you just try them one by one. There is no need to deify it, and there is no need to think it is useless. The most important thing is to find a rhythm that suits you.