Nutrition: Elimination Diet - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. An elimination diet is a really good way to look at, something you can do at home, if you have a suspicion you might have sensitivity or an allergy to a certain food. This is something that I recommend for parents in particular when they are dealing with a child who might have some kind of behavioral problem or they might have some kind of fuzzy thinking problem around school work, or you find that the child is falling asleep in the middle of the day. There are a lot of things to watch for. You can do this yourself, of course, and it is really helpful with adults, as well, but this is a good place to start when you have a suspicion. The basics are this: You take that sensitive food, or the food that you think you are sensitive to, and you pull it out of the diet for about two weeks. Give it at least 10 days. And you want to really, if it is something like wheat, you have to be really careful because you will find it hidden in a lot of things. So, you need to read those food labels and really look for anything that might be related to wheat. If you have something that is like an egg, same thing. It is not just the egg that you find in your refrigerator or hard boiled, you are going to have to look at the ingredients lists on foods to make sure there are not eggs, or egg protein, or egg whites in something. So, once you can do that, you make sure that you take that out for two weeks, pay attention to how you feel. You might want to keep a journal or write on your calendar, “Feeling great today. Wow! Had no bad dreams. Oh my goodness, you know, 3:00 in the afternoon came and it went, and I did not even notice.” So, really important to understand that you have to pay attention, because otherwise you would not know if there is a difference by the time you get to the other end. The end of that 10 days or two weeks, the challenge portion of the elimination diet, is that you take that food that you thought you were sensitive to and you add it back, and you add it back a bunch. So, if you are looking at wheat, then you have French toast for breakfast, you have the Dagwood sandwich for lunch, you have pasta for dinner, and you really pay attention to how you feel. You pay attention to, “Does my tummy feel bloated? Do I feel sluggish? Have I run out of energy? Can I not put a whole sentence together? Is my poo really sticky?” There are lots of ways that your body will change and will give you a signal other than just like gut-wrenching diarrhea or vomiting or hives; that is a full-blown allergic reaction. But there are a lot of people that are a lot of people that are in that middle range of sensitivity, and that elimination challenge diet, which you can do at home, is a way that you can do the experiment yourself. Then take those results to your nutritionist or your primary care physician and say, “I have this suspicion, and I have done this, and this was the result. Can you help me get the test to actually confirm this?” An elimination diet is a really great place to start.
