Could This Overlooked Cause Be Behind Your Weight Issues?

Interviewer: How do food sensitivities play a role in weight loss or weight gain, and how do you know if you have one?

Tania: Yeah. Yeah, you know, I think... well, first, there are various ways that you can figure out whether you have a sensitivity, and I'll talk about that in a moment, but what we think happens with food sensitivity is if you eat a food that your body is sensitive to or allergic to, your body produces an inflammatory response. Okay? So inflammation is really the hallmark of obesity. It sort of sets off a cascade of events that causes the body to produce more insulin and react with sugar, more insulin, and then leads to fat accumulation and obesity. So I think inflammation is the way to think about it. And there are various ways to figure this out. There are elimination diets that some people will do, which is just eliminating some of the most common foods that people are sensitive to. So it could be eliminating gluten. It could be eliminating dairy products, or soy or corn. So an elimination diet, for a period of time, looking at the response, looking at the weight loss, looking at markers of inflammation, if you see a response, then clearly that was working. And then you reintroduce each food one at a time to see which one may be the culprit. The problem with that is that I think it's very hard for patients to go embark on this type of diet because it's very restrictive. And people like data. They like to know are they really sensitive? Is it really going to make a difference? They don't want to waste their time. So they want to do some testing. So there are some really great labs that do great testing for food sensitivities. ALCAT is one of them, that looks at up to 200 foods. And even looks at herbs and functional foods, and other things. But it gives you a very broad view of what really is going on, and the level of sensitivities that people have.