Food Alergies Could be Causing Weight Gain

I have already talked about my discovery about my dairy allergy in my previous blog post Could You be Allergic to Dairy and Not Know It?   I was watching an episode of the Doctor Oz show recently and besides the benefits of not feeling congested any more, I didn't even connect the fact that I had lost weight after my allergy discovery and changing what I was eating.  I had never connected the two before, but it made so much sense after hearing the medical explanation.

I found out from this episode that the most common food allergies are to dairy and wheat.  As many as 60% of people have allergies to dairy, and people can lose as much as 30 pounds of weight by just eliminating food allergens from their diets!  That's just crazy!  I didn't lose that much weight, but I'll bet it was close to 15 pounds.  The weight was just falling off without really trying.  I had first contributed it to not eating the fatty cheeses, ice cream, etc., but there may have been additional factors at work which I didn't realize.  Here is a link to the summary of that segment of the show: Doctor Oz's Anti-Allergy Diet  The experts were saying that one common reason why people plateau when loosing weight is that they are carrying around a lot of inflammation from eating foods that their bodies are having subtle negative reactions to and they are not even aware of it. This systemic inflammation is preventing further weight loss and causing bloating and other problems with digestion. 

This segment also discussed many hidden sources of dairy allergens, many which I had discovered through trial and error.  Other ingredients to avoid besides the obvious "milk" are ingredients such as cream, milk protein, casein, whey, lactate, etc.  These hidden dairy items can be found in some crazy places most of us might be really surprised to find them in, such as: deli meats, canned tuna, protein shake mixes, energy bars, baked goods, and bread, and other processed foods.  Read the labels on the foods you are eating or eat more natural foods without labels.  This link above also gives you a 3 week plan for removing the problem foods from your diet, repairing the digestive tract from the damage done by eating the wrong foods, and then slowly trying to add back possible foods after noting the subtle ways your body reacts to them through keeping a journal.

I hope this additional information about dairy allergies might help some of you be more aware of what might be preventing you from losing the weight you want and help you feel better in a long list of ways.

Could you be allergic to dairy and not know it?

I was.  Correction, I still am, but didn't know it until just a few years ago.  I thought I had outgrown my allergies to dairy around age 5.  Instead, my symptoms of my allergies had changed and were making me miserable for years and I didn't know why.  Even the doctors I saw about my symptoms, were more eager to treat my symptoms with a blanket type treatment of allergy medication rather than finding the root of my allergy problems.

When I was a young child, milk, cheese, ice cream, even milk chocolate would give me severe stomach cramps and diarrhea.  I remember my uncle taking me out for a treat of ice cream against my parent's wishes.  I wasn't about to turn it down.  It tasted great!  Unfortunately, I would pay for it later.  Around age 5, it seemed I had begun to outgrow my allergy to dairy.  No more stomach cramps and gastrointestinal issues.

I remember growing up, for as long as I can remember, I used to sneeze shortly after I woke up.  Sometimes uncontrollably for 15 minutes or more.  I tried all kinds of stuff thinking it might work.  I finally just decided it must be the change in temperature from getting out of bed, allergens in the air or something like that which was out of my control.  I would just get up a little earlier, sneeze my head off, and get on with my day.  You adapt and move on.  As I got older it got more difficult to breath through my nose.  Again, I thought it was just pollen, dust, smoke, or other stuff in the air.  I may have had allergies to those things as well.  Little did I know that they were not the root of my problems. 

After college and getting a good job with good insurance, I finally decided that I would get a specialist to see if he could figure out what could help.  By this point, I gradually had almost completely lost the ability to breath through my nose unless I took decongestants, which would make my heart race due to the pseudophedrine.  After surgery to fix a deviated septum (a crooked area of cartilage that goes down the center of the nose between the nostrils), I still was prescribed a regular cocktail of nasal steroid inhalers and systemic allergy pills to keep my symptoms somewhat under control.  Over time I would become immune to one treatment or another and would have to try another combination.  They were very expensive and really didn't resolve everything.  I adapted as best I could, and thought I would be stuck with these problems forever. Even other specialists I consulted could not offer other solutions that would work better.

Of all places to find a solution, several years back I was reading a new book I picked up on exercise.  8 Minutes in the Morning, by Jorge Cruise.  On one of his daily inspirational pages before the exercises of the day, he had a quick little paragraph about dairy allergies and the common symptoms.  It sounded somewhat familiar, so I figured what could it hurt to try cutting out dairy for two weeks? I had been allergic as a child, so it was not completely out of the question.  Low and behold, without altering my medication doses, I started noticing improvement after only a week.  By two weeks, I could breath better than I ever remembered.  One by one, I stopped taking my allergy meds to see if the great luck continued.  Sure enough.  I'm off all allergy meds for several years now and the only time I experience problems is when I have a moment of weakness and eat dairy.  Darn pizza!  Yogurt, for some reason seems to be the exception to the rule.  It doesn't seem to bother me much.  Maybe because it is fermented?  I don't know.  Jorge also mentioned in his article that many cases of asthma are actually a symptom of undiagnosed dairy allergies!  He said, the actual thing in dairy that causes these type of allergies is the protein called Casein.  This milk protein can also be found in many "dairy free" cheese alternatives and whey protein powders found in many protein shake mixes.  Read the labels!

Could you or someone you love also have dairy allergies and not know it?  Why don't you try cutting out all milk, cheese, ice cream, yogurt, butter, coffee creamer, etc. for two weeks and see what happens?  In the beginning it may not be easy, but cutting out the medications and feeling so much better is so worth it.  There are many other alternatives out there now to make this transition easier than it ever has been before.