IF THE REACTION TO FOOD IS NOT FOOD ALLERGIES THEN WHAT IS IT?

FOOD ALLERGY IS NOT THE SAME AS DELAYED HYPERSENSITIVITY SO ALLERGY TESTS ARE NO VALUE

As it turns out, most of these hidden inflammatory reactions to foods or chemicals in foods that cause IBS symptoms are in a way similar and yet very different from food allergies. Both make you sick, of course, but allergies happened fast and severe with just a little of the food, and these reactions are delayed and may take a larger amount of the food before you get sick from it. Also, the chemicals and cells involved are different so they cannot be seen with allergy tests or simply by tracking what you eat and trying to match it to your symptoms like with allergies. It does not work- here’s why.

Food allergies are actually quite uncommon. Maybe 2% of all people suffer actual food allergies. IBS patients suffer food allergies at about the same rate as NON IBS patients so while these might be present, they are so easy to find and so infrequent you normally know them, or can easily find them from monitoring what you eat and your symptoms.
Food allergies are regulated by certain immune system structures called antibodies (there are several different ones). In food allergy, the IgE antibodies are the culprits. If these form in response to a simple food, like peanuts, then every time you eat the slightest amount of the food (antigen) you will get very sick very fast. The antigen and antibodies match up and provoke a fast severe reaction mostly from histamine-releasing cells called mast cells. Every time. Even if just a little exposure occurs. Mast cells are located mostly in the places where the body takes in things, like air (the respiratory tract) or food and water (the whole digestive tract). That’s why allergies are felt most in those locations (nose, throat, lungs, intestines, sometimes skin).

If you have an actual allergy, every time you eat or inhale the thing you are allergic to you get the same symptoms fast. So they are easy to spot and then you can avoid the food, the pollen, the grass, or whatever. The type of food or food additive problem we now see is related to the symptoms of IBS and many other hard to understand and hard to treat conditions is an immune reaction which does not involve the allergy mechanisms. It involves a second or third line of normal defense going awry. That line of defense includes the white blood cells (the ones that “are increased or changed” in infection). Red blood cells carry oxygen so we don’t include them in the discussion.

A CASE OF MISTAKEN IDENTITY!

From birth, your immune system starts to learn the difference between “pathogens” (disease causing bacteria, viruses, and parasites) and non-pathogens (normal bacteria that live in the body and harmless foods). Allergy is one way the immune system show it has goofed and mislearned a lesson. However, sometimes people with no food allergies develop a different kind of hypersensivity to some foods or food additives. As we grow older sometimes something happens that causes our second line of defense to not tolerate foods, or chemicals in or on food, as well as we should. This can be an infection which leaves this new problem behind after it resolves. Many IBS patients have an intestinal infection in their history prior to developing IBS.

Sometimes the problem seems to be linked to over-consuming certain foods with naturally-occurring chemicals that are hard to detoxify if we take in too much. Some scientists link it to the huge consumption of food additive chemicals, especially in the Americanized fast-food diet.

For whatever reason, in the end a big problem for IBS patients is that the immune system may misidentify food as a “pathogen” and mount an attack against it. This is done by specific white blood cells, or several different types of white cells and the reaction is not controlled by the allergy antibodies. So testing for them is not helpful. You have to find out what it is the white blood cells do in response to the foods or chemicals (mediator release), not whether some antibody is present since often it plays no role in this type of inflammation. Worse, they react very slowly and may only react noticeably after a relatively large amount of the guilty food or chemical has accumulated from eating it over and over. This can take days, so you can never match what you just ate against the symptoms you have and get an accurate guess at what caused the symptoms. It could have been something from days ago. SO that method never works well.

When these delayed-type hypersensitivity reactions (DTH) happen the same chemicals (“mediators”) of inflammation, our defense system against pathogens, are released into the blood stream. These chemicals mediate (control) a very complex series of events between immune cells and other body systems (nerves, organs, even hormonal systems) . These events are intended to isolate, attack, prevent growth and invasion, then destroy and remove pathogens. In fact, our immune system mounts a form of internal chemical warfare. You know chemotherapy not only kills cancer cells but has side effects that make you very sick too. In the same way, the chemical mediators used in this defense against pathogens also make us feel sick. Sometimes in a minor way, barely noticeable, and other times in a severe way which is not only noticeable but intolerable.

Studies also show the white cells moving into the gut tissue, accumulating, and releasing chemicals that can even damage the nerves. The inflammatory reactions affect everything. Local nerves in the gut are irritated where the foods are first misidentified and warfare begins. When these mediators are released into the blood, they affect blood vessels, glands, nerves, and some can even enter the fluid around the brain and altering the responses of the entire nervous system. In a nutshell this is a big reason we experience symptoms of all kinds, well beyond just our intestinal tract malfunction.