Why Elimination Diets Have Failed You (and what to do about it)

We’re in a day and age where elimination diets are common. Gluten free, dairy free, and egg free items are popping up in most restaurants and marketing revolves around the removal of these ingredients.

Many of us have friends who have tried the GAPS, auto-immune paleo, blood type, or the specific carbohydrate diet (SCD) as a means for alleviating symptoms that have spiraled into chronic conditions. I myself have fallen victim to jumping back and forth between these diets, seeing results, and then being crushed by the emotions that hit me when my symptoms return despite how strict I’ve been on my diet. I’ve also felt the fear of enjoying food, only to regret deviating from the diet hours later when the symptoms kick in.

Why is this? Why do these diets work for a period of time, but don’t provide the long term healing we are all seeking? Is it really necessary and healthy to live on such a restrictive diet for optimal health?

The answer is no, you don’t have to live on a mega restrictive diet for the rest of your life. Most of the time the food you’re eating is only a small part of what is causing your symptoms. Why is that? 

In short, your unhealed leaky gut is the cause. Most of the time our bodies become sensitive to the foods we’re eating when we have leaky gut. When our gut doesn’t have the proper integrity, it becomes “leaky”. Think of your gut as the colander you use to strain steamed vegetables. A colander serves the purpose of allowing us to separate our steamed broccoli from the cooking water. We want all the water to drain out, not the broccoli, right? However, let’s say your colander got dropped on the floor causing it to bend out of shape, and it now allows some of the broccoli to pass through. Would you just stop using broccoli in it? Is that going to fix the problem? The answer is no, the colander needs to be repaired. This is why many elimination diets fail. We think of food as the problem, when the reality is our guts need to be repaired.

In reality, our guts are a lot more complex than a colander.

This is why these diets work for a period of time. When a food is consumed frequently, your body is more likely to have a stronger immune response to it when it leaks through your gut. In short, eliminating foods will give you a sense of relief, but over time new foods will become irritants if your gut is not healed. This is because our immune systems become more and more sensitive to foods that we consume regularly when we have a leaky gut. Dairy is a perfect example of this- and often one of those foods that provides immediate relief once removed. Dairy is used in so many products- as Cheeses, milk and butter are used as staples in many dishes. But for most of us Dairy isn’t our enemy, our leaky gut is the cause of our distress.

This gets interesting when we eat a lot of the same foods over and over again, as our bodies become more reactive to those foods.  This is why elimination diets give us short term results. You follow the strict list of foods to cut out, change your diet immensely, and then weeks later your symptoms return because your gut is still “leaky”. 

This makes the topic of food sensitivity tests one for debate. Are they truly necessary? The answer here is, it depends on what your goal is behind getting the test. If your goal is to heal your chronic condition- taking a food sensitivity test alone is going to give you short term results- as again you are cutting out the foods that are currently leaking through your gut and causing a reaction in your body. However, without addressing the root cause of these sensitivities, your sensitivities will only shift to the foods you are eating, creating a vicious cycle of sensitivities to yet different foods. So in this instance, you are only shooting the messenger. 

So what can you do about it? You can identify and address the root cause of your leaky gut. There are many causes of leaky gut- ranging from poor digestive capacity (for example, less than optimal acidity in the stomach), pathogens (think yeast, fungi, viruses, bacteria, parasites), dysbiotic bacterial flora, and the list goes on. Most of the time, there is more than one cause of leaky gut, which makes comprehensive lab testing necessary to identify the root causes. This is what makes The Functional Approach so successful in identifying and addressing the root cause of lingering health issues. 

What have you done to address your leaky gut? What has and hasn’t worked for you?