An Introduction to Food Chemical Intolerance

[Guest guest]

There is a lot of info on this website. And just like artificial food

chemicals such as aspartame can cause MS and Parkinson's, so can some natural

food chemicals cause what seems to be many illnesses and symptoms. Sounds like

a rotation diet is a good thing for most people to try.

blessings

Shan

An Introduction to Food Chemical Intolerance

http://www.plantpoisonsandrottenstuff.info/content/introduction.aspx

 

Human beings do not have an infinite capacity to consume and safely eliminate

the artificial chemicals found in processed foods, or the natural toxins

found in plant and animal wholefoods.

 

When our capacity to eliminate toxins is exceeded, we start to suffer from

health problems. Just as consuming alcohol produces a hangover the following

day, so a variety of artificial and natural chemicals found in foods can have a

similar effect on the body. Because food chemicals are so widespread in our

diet and can build up very slowly in the body, you may never realise that the

cause of your health problems is related to food. If you are lucky enough to

spot

a connection to food, you may not be able to figure out which foods bother

you, because you appear to react to so many. You may feel that you are

" allergic " to everything.

 

Imagine having a chronic hangover because you drink all of the time. You

might suffer from constant headaches, back ache, aching joints and muscles,

hypoglycaemia, allergies, brain fog, and be quite irritable, stressed, or easily

annoyed. Imagine that some people experience the same symptoms - and many more

diverse health problems - from consuming more food chemicals every day than

their body can detoxify. These individuals may even crave the foods that are

causing them problems. Chocolate, cheese, and fruit or sugary food cravings are

very common.

 

Everyone has a different capacity to be affected by food chemicals. Some

people may only experience feeling a bit " off " after they eat too much strong

cheese or chocolate, drink too much tea, take aspirin, eat a tasty curry, drink

red wine, or eat too many artificially coloured sweets. Other people may find

they suffer chronically even when eating an apparently pure and healthy diet of

natural wholefoods. In fact, when these people perform an elimination diet,

they may find they cannot eat apparently harmless foods like broccoli or apples

without experiencing symptoms of ill health. If you are one of these people,

because you eat fruit, vegetables, cheese, or drink tea or coffee every day,

you may never realise that your problem is associated with food.

 

How can it be that some people are so sensitive to chemicals in food? At

first, an assertion like this sounds ludicrous. But there is now ample medical

evidence - some dating right back to the 1960's - that such a condition exists,

and that it is treatable. In the 1970's it was discovered that a group of

people who seemed to be chronically ill with asthma, eczema, urticaria and GI

symptoms were actually experiencing the side effects or symptoms of aspirin

overdose, yet these individuals were not consuming aspirin. It was realised that

natural plant foods like vegetables and fruits contain small amounts of aspirin,

and that these individuals were actually reacting to these small amounts

because they could not detoxify the aspirin from their bodies properly.

 

Food chemical intolerances exist because of the natural variation in our

population to deal with chemicals. To extend the metaphor, whilst one person may

only be able to drink one glass of wine without feeling hung over the next day,

another can get away with three or four glasses, whilst someone else can

drink only a few sips without getting a headache and feeling ill. The same

effect

is true of some of the chemicals found in food like salicylates (aspirin

compounds), and neurotransmitters like free glutamate (MSG) and biogenic amines

(such as histamine, serotonin, dopamine, phenylethylamine, tyramine).

 

This is because we all have different levels of enzymes in our stomachs and

livers. Enzymes are required to break down toxins or attach elements to them

that help to draw them from the body. The production of these detoxification

enzymes varies by something like 10-15 fold in the population. For example,

tyramine is a stimulant pseudo-neurotransmitter found in some fermented and aged

foods, like cheese or pickled fish. Tyramine is notorious for causing heart

palpatations, insomnia, brain " noise " or " chatter " , sweating, and is the reason

that cheese and chocolate have a reputation for causing nightmares. If you give

a group of people some tyramine, 90% of them will react to a dose greater than

125mg, but many will react to much less. Depending on the capacity of an

enzyme known as monoamine oxidase (MAO), some people can detoxify as little as

6mg

of this substance without reacting to it. Quantities of tyramine vary in

cheese from zero up to 100-200mg per 100 grams, depending on how the cheese has

been made. Most people have probably had a tyramine reaction at some point in

their life, without ever realising what it was. Because it is common to eat

strong foods like this at restaurants along with alcohol, many people may have

blamed a reaction like this on the alcohol they were drinking, or even on

caffeine or MSG.

 

Food chemicals like salicylates and amines produce many more diverse symptoms

than drinking alcohol or caffeine. The different symptoms that individuals

suffer vary widely depending on apparently inherited tendencies. For example, a

study found that 66% of asthmatic children reacted to the preservative

metabisulphite, and 21% reacted to acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin). What's more,

individuals who suffer from chronic asthma have found that just by avoiding the

chemicals they react to, they no longer suffer from asthma. This is a table of

the different amounts of food chemicals that are required to produce bronchial

constriction in patients that arrived at an asthma clinic. As you can see there

is a great deal of variation:

 

Food Chemical Most Sensitive (5% of population) Median Sensitivity (50%

of population) Least Sensitive (95% of population)

 

Metabisulphite 4.6 mg 34.4 mg

255.8 mg

Tartrazine 3.4 mg 55.0 mg

885.6 mg

Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) 0.8 mg 16.5 mg

332.3 mg

Salicylate 2.6 mg 15.3 mg

89.9 mg

 

Rather than being a majority of people who have high tolerance, and a small

distinct group of people with a low tolerance, the Gaussian distribution for

graphs of this kind is fairly smooth indicating the variation is fairly normal,

not as a result of a distinct disorder.

 

As you can see, reactions to food chemicals are pharmacological and dose

dependent rather than immune-system related like allergies. However, the

symptoms

of food chemical intolerances are often mistaken for allergies, and they can

cause autoimmune conditions like eczema, asthma, arthritis and chronic back

pain, and have been implicated in a number of other autoimmune disorders

including coeliac (celiac) disease, fibromyalgia, and multiple sclerosis. They

may

even contribute to heart disease and cancer.

 

If you are interested in learning more about the symptoms of food chemical

intolerances and how to do a food chemical elimination diet, please click the

links on the left.