Is what you’re eating causing your pain, fatigue, or stubborn weight gain? Join Dr. Pinkston and nutritionist Laura LaValle as they dive deep into the Elimination Diet—the gold standard for identifying hidden food sensitivities. In this episode, Dr. Pinkston explores why modern life has triggered a surge in “leaky gut” and how removing common culprits like gluten, dairy, and soy can resolve everything from chronic migraines to seasonal allergies. Learn the exact protocol to reset your system, boost your metabolism, and finally understand your body’s unique needs.
Hello everybody. I’m Dr. Maryanne Kingston and this is the better life with Dr. Kingston. And we’re going to
talk about a great topic today because there’s so many um you know so many myths and misgivings about what to do
when you don’t know if what you are eating is causing you harm, causing you
illness causing you joint pain, stomach upset. You know, we’ve uh talked about leaky gut and many different uh many
different things uh you know, many different times. But today, elimination diet, I think, is is going to get some
great clarification. And I am joined by the great Laura Laval who has joined me
many times before. And I’m so thankful, Laura, that you do this with me because you are a wealth of information. Every
time you come on, I get a lot of great um a lot of great uh you know, comments
and reviews and people are just so excited. So, thank you for joining me again. Good morning.
Me again. Yeah, you know, the wealth of information tends to happen over a period of 30 years of being in a
profession, doesn’t it though? Said it’s useful and it’s helping people. So that that’s awesome.
Oh my gosh. Yeah. And you are teamed with your darling and wonderful husband Jim Lval who you know the two of you
power brain I you know if I could borrow your brains collectively for you know a week I wouldn’t get I wouldn’t get a
tenth of the information that I would know and love to have uh over a lifetime. You guys are fantastic and and
so yes it definitely being in with in practice with my husband Jim Laval who’s
you know been in integrative medicine practice for years and years
uh definitely expanded my view and our topic today was one of the biggies. Yes,
I had really no idea how powerful
um elimination diet process with of course the goal being like you mentioned figuring out if you’re having
some kind of reactivity to some of the foods that you’re eating. Yes. And uh I would have never dreamed that
it could be as powerful as as it is. And that’s why I was real excited that um
that I thought of it for a topic today because it does deserve we’ve mentioned it in passing.
But it deserves uh a show because you can do it fairly easily, but you do
have to know how to do it. And um it only takes about a month, you know, three, four,
well, three months for the elimination period, then a few weeks for the trials. But it’s such a short period of time in the
big scheme of things. And if it can take you out of pain or help you with another health issue,
yeah, it’s well worth the effort. Well, and so why is diet now? I mean, it
the the thing that people ask me all the time is like, you know, 20 years ago, we didn’t have to worry about eliminating
things out of our diet. We could eat what was good for us and we liked and and we didn’t have any issues. And then
it seems like all of a sudden it’s an issue. So, yeah, it was a lot less common than it is now. And
It’s a combination of factors. Um stress is huge and gut, you know, if you’re
immune reactive to foods, it is a gut centric problem. So that is a
disregulated immune system in the gut. Yes. So uh our guts are, you know, impacted
dramatically by um environmental pesticides. Yes.
That’s a big one. They can also be um some influence from
vaccines. So I’ve seen people you know like in a medical profession have to
take flu shots every year and over time they start developing you
know like eczema that they never had before you know and we just start to look at okay well you know sometimes
they’re forced to do these vaccines. I hope that will change. I hope people My sister’s one that has an issue and it’s
a real issue. Um, and
hopefully now they’ll allow a medical exemption. They wouldn’t before, but um anyway, yeah. So vac things like
vaccines, but then there’s just everyday things like, you know, if you have to have a surgery or dental procedure and
say your microbiome’s been kind of teetering on, you know, hanging in there and being viable and you have to go on a
big round of antibiotics for something and it just kind of knocks it. I mean, and there’s
very often it can be stress induced. You know, people might have all of a sudden
something very stressful occur in their life. You get, you know, have to change jobs or lose a loved one or a financial
thing that crops up. Who knows? But, you know, then that can be triggering. Um sometimes um people exercise their way
into this problem really when it’s too much intense exercise with not
um they you don’t think about it but the stress hormones from working out really
hard they upregulate and they break down uh lead to the upregulation of a
compound that will break down your what’s called your tight junction proteins and those are what keep your the
barrier, you know, between your where your immune cells reside and the stuff coming through in your intestinal tract.
And when those open up, uh then you’ll tend to start reacting to allergens because there’s I think I
explained it once that there’s a it’s like a um a case of mistaken identity.
What makes something allergenic is this series uh sequence of amino acids in a
protein that is similar to the amino acids in bacteria. So it thinks it’s something you know
like pathogenic bacteria coming through and it’s really just a dairy protein or
or they can be environmental as well you know the proteins and dusts and pollins
and things. So, but that can get triggered by um a lot
of intense exercise. You know, I I say this and I heard this at one point
through A4M, the um the group that you know that I’ve been well educated from where Jim Loval and you and everybody
participate in and uh the the thought was that if you take say a Zpack or a
round of you know amoxicylin or some of these you know um uh different antibiotics that it can knock out a
round of good bacteria growing in your intestine, your microbiome for up to two years. It could take two years for that
good growth and balance of bacteria to come back. And that is one round. And some strains, the studies really
actually show some strains never come back. Never come back. And that’s why the uh probiotic
supplements, I believe, will eventually be shown to be invaluable on that. Um,
yes, you know, the microbiome’s tricky and now that we have more testing for microbiome, um, and that would probably
be another good topic for another time is to get into all that. Um, but there
is better testing now and they are pretty good uh, at making food
recommendations based on your imbalances. Um, yes. Yeah. Yeah.
One called Jonah. And did you have them on? No, not yet. But that would be a great show.
Super interesting. Yeah, that’s just the one that we use. But um yeah, but yeah, I mean, so I really think and
the other thing is I think people don’t realize all the different conditions and
problems that can be impacted by this. So, I always like to kind of review it because it’s like, look,
having, first of all, seasonal allergies is a big sign that you’ve got that breakdown.
Yes. And most the time when we have people do the elimination diet process, they find
that when they get off of food allergens, it dramatically improves
their seasonal allergies. That post-nasal drip that, you know, or that
Yeah. all all of the horrible runny nose during allergy season and watery eyes,
all of that. Um, asthma, yes, it can improve any kind of irritable bowel type
symptoms. Uh, and constipation just on its own. Sometimes people have that really severe
constipation that just seems like doesn’t matter what they take, what they
drink, what they do, they just can’t keep. that’s that can be influenced by this because little I mean this was the
revelation that came way after I first became a dietician was the finding out
that the one of the missing or one of the
the mechanism of action of that is your serotonin production because interesting
serotonin and brain but serotonin is made the vast majority of it is made in your gut and Um, serotonin is needed in
the gut for motility. Yeah. And um, your cells that make the serotonin can get disregulated when the
microbiome is off. And so you can either make too little serotonin. So what’s
that mean? Low motility. Yes. You’re not going to be going to the bathroom. Yes.
Or diarrhea. Yes. You know, like chronic loose stool. Yes. From too much serotonin all the time.
Yeah. So, um you know, I mean all but the just the chronic sinus itself,
uh chronic congestion, uh post-nasal drip, runny nose. Um I used to before I
did this process, I used to just my nose would start running out of
nowhere. And a lot of times it seemed to happen like when I’d start exercising my nose would start running. Drove me
crazy. I don’t have that problem anymore. And I I did this process it and
I did food allergy testing as well. But why I like the elimination diet process
is because it doesn’t rely on accurate testing. Exactly.
Is very hard to do. Yes. And I know I’ve mentioned this. these companies that do it are thank God for
them because there are a couple of companies in particular that are really trying hard to make sure their tests are
reliable and accurate. Yes. But they only have testing for maybe
three, four, five, six components of the immune system. uh IG,
one or two different types of IGG and then the complement proteins and then the um C3B and D.
Well, that’s there’s 12 different amunoglobulins and we’re testing for
three, right? So that’s and you can get IgA tested.
Yeah. So, uh but anyway, runny nose, snoring, uh skin rashes, hist, you know,
histaminic skin. Yes. Histaminic flares can be related to, you know, food reactivities. Um, a
lot of people just do get off of all the supposedly high histamine foods, but we
really find that that won’t do very much good if there’s a major allergen that you’re reactive to and you didn’t know
it. Absolutely. Because I that’s one of the big inflammatory
substances that it makes is histamine. Yes. So if it’s an reactivity, you’re
going to get you can get that redness. Um but pain pain is huge.
Any kind of you know muscle uh joint pain. Yes. Uh I’m trying to think what else I
mentioned. Oh, autoimmunity. So if somebody Shoggrins, you know how
people go around having to do those drops all the times and it can really be helped by a low allergen diet.
Wow. Um, Hashimoto’s a lot of people think don’t tend to, you
know, they either go too far like I’ve seen uh elimination diets that take
everything under the sun out of the diet. Yeah. Like forever, right? And it’s really not in our view
necessary at all. You just need to find what you’re reactive to. And there have been
several pretty decent trials on the impact of
gluten in particular being important in Hashimoto’s. So I wouldn’t even mess around with what
we call an elimination diet process necessarily. In fact, what we recommend for our patients is if you have
Hashimoto’s, that has to be a baseline thing. Yes. because such strong studies showing that gluten-free diet takes down
the thyroid peroxidase antibodies, takes down the thyrolobuline antibodies.
And um actually there was a uh the the I think it’s the TPO that was uh
correlated with suppressing vitamin D somehow. So when on the gluten-free
diet, the thyroid peroxidase came down and vitamin D went up.
That’s great. It was slight, but it did go up. And it decreases the incidence of
nodules and developing cancer over time staying off. So super important for
Hashimoto’s just as a baseline thing. Absolutely. You know, like
uh IGA nephropathy. Okay. Not super common, but not rare, you
know. Yeah. No. Uh, and if you have it, you know what it is, but it’s an autoimmune
attack on your kidneys, and it could cystic kidneys and be very painful,
extremely painful. Yep. Yep. And um there was a study done at the University of North Carolina that
found that IGA they took people with IGA nephropathy, a
group of them, and compared to healthy controls and they tested them for um antibodies
and what they found was elevated IgA1 and IGG
in the nefopathy group, not in the controls. And one of the things that they were
surprised about is that they I mean they were significantly higher than in controls.
Nobody not in either group had IG. Now why is that significant?
Yeah. Interesting. Okay? Because still we’re in a world with conventional
medicine teaching that really the only recognized food
immune reactivity is like as if if it’s not an allergy, there’s no other
possibility for any other immune immunogloabbulin to react to food, which
doesn’t even make common sense when you think, okay, all those immunog globbulins reside in there together.
Yeah, that’s your required immune system in your gut. Absolutely. So, it only makes sense that some of
these other ones uh could be overproducing and there’s still kind of
a common line in conventional practice that IGG is just means you ate the food
and that that this study proved okay, that’s not true. Helpful. Yes. Great. and that they took
the people off of the allergens and their pain improved significantly. That’s amazing.
So, and uh yeah, so that’s huge. Yes. So, and that’s the other thing we have
to and I that’s I’ve mentioned Dr. Fano before who’s one of the big researchers
on gluten and what I liked about it was finally a hu huge trials which showed
that um sometimes when people do an elimination diet and then I guess we
better start talking about how you should how you’re supposed to do
this is good though kind of leading up but the elimination
will oh another one is unexplained headaches that’s a huge symptom. You know, you go, you get these terrible
headaches, you go to the doctor, they can’t find a tumor or anything else going on, right?
Yes. Unexplained headaches are huge for this. Yes, they are. Um, so Dr. Pano conducted large trials,
a couple of them on gluten intake and blinded.
So people always want to say, “Oh, that gluten reactivity is just in people’s
head.” You know, because why would why would people get this idea? Because there are all kinds of people quoted in
articles all over the place saying, “Oh, only a very small percentage have celiac.”
Well, that’s true. But what isn’t true is that celiac is not the only gluten
sensitivity you can have. Absolutely. Absolutely. There’s intolerance. What it’s come to
be called now is intolerance. So what that means is that the in these blinded
trials they found that people after eating gluten unbeknownst to them what
the food contained or not. Yeah. Uh because it was blinded and they would get report symptoms. So that means
there’s no way it can be in your head because you either eat a food and you get a symptom or you don’t. And I know
that was the way it was for me who I was in the irritable bowel category.
Uh which when I was young, I was all through my younger years had struggled
with constipation. As I got older, it switched to more of diarrhea type. Well,
you’re not um it’s not in, you know, I’m not imagining that my stools got loose,
right? you know, and you you wish that you it was in your head, you know, but
it’s not. Yes. But it’s not. But Dr. found the development of symptoms. And what they looked at was
they did look at immune markers. And there were a number of people that got symptoms, tons, that they couldn’t
identify any immune immunoglobulin even that was
what was causing the symptom. Right? what they called it was non-immune mediated intolerance.
So and sort of unidentified but definitely people get the symptom whatever it is headache upregulation of
pain you know con severe or significant noticeable congestion whatever it might
be skin flare of skin rashes so um anyway that’s the and then weight
loss um I don’t want to skip on to how to do it until I mention I mean there
there aren’t the massive trials on elimination diets for for weight loss
like there are say low carb diet studies you know there’s been tons of them
but the ones that have been done are incredible on the results there was one
done in Turkey in particular and it was us you know one like somewhere close to
100 people in the 80s I think and this uh what they did was they compare comp
compared an elimination diet to uh just a calorierest restricted diet.
Yeah. Macros were the same on in both groups. So it couldn’t be macro nutrient, you
know. Yeah. And the it was they put them on elimination diet. So they tested them
for foods that they had that they were reactive to. They had regulation of one
or more immunoglobulins and they took them off the foods that they were reactive to and that was in
the elimination diet group. And then they had some people that were just doing a calorie control diet over the
six months. The elimination diet group lost uh almost 20 pounds. It was just
shy of 19 pounds. Wow. In six months. And that’s why I when we
talked at the beginning of this I said how powerful this can be. Yes. Not only for other symptoms you know
pain and things like that um different conditions it helps control autoimmune
everything we’ve mentioned but weight loss. Yeah. So, anytime I have cut clients
that come in that their weight has just been so stubborn for so many years and
it doesn’t matter if they did, you know, um,
Weight Watchers or low carb or keto or fill in the blank, right? Any myriad of
different types of diets and they might lose a little bit of weight, but it all comes right back on.
Absolutely. And um but almost 19 20 pounds in six months on you want to know
how much the calorie restrictor group lost in that six months.
You want to take a guess? I would say maybe you know 5 to seven pounds or something one. Oh my goodness.
Wow. And my guess as to why because I noticed on the macronutrient breakdown
that they did, it was almost 60% carb. Wow. And that will block if you have insulin
any kind of insulin resistance issue at all, which a lot of people with weight gain do have.
Absolutely. Yes. They only lost uh or it was one kilogram, 2.2 pounds.
Right. Wow. And none of it was fat. Yeah, that’s the other thing. Exactly.
You remember Maryanne at my medical lectures when we were at the A4M, one of the big things I point out is that
calorierestricted diets, you will lose as much lean as fat.
Absolutely. And there are some studies showing calorierestricted diets people lost
weight but no body fat percent. That means every pound they lost was
lean mass. That is horrendous. It is horrendous. That is a horrible thing to do to
somebody. Absolutely. That’s why for years and years now when these revelations when these things
started being found in studies, we just were like, look, it I can’t even
We used to kind of say, oh, if you must go back to Weight Watchers or, you know, quick or whatever it is.
Now, we just don’t recommend it. I mean, it’s just not the way to go. But that’s
how powerful the elimination diet can be for even weight loss. Absolutely. Well, and so when people are
eliminating, what are they eliminating? Roll in there. Elim this. There’s some key things. So,
you eliminate I recommend eliminate eliminating at at least both wheat and
dairy. Okay? Because those are the two most common allergens. allergens that and they’re
the strongest food allergens. Soy is also pretty uh strongly allergenic.
Soybeans as are eggs. Yes. But any
any food that you want to test out. And what I recommend is if you eat a good
many eggs, eliminate them because you do tend to become reactive to the foods
that you eat the most fairly often, fairly regularly, you know. Um, for example, I had a woman who
was vegetarian. Um, she was eating wheat. Of course, she wasn’t eating dairy because she had
eliminated that already, but she ate was eating a lot of soy protein, you know, soy patties and different things to get
her protein. Yeah. And so, it was really tough to convince her to get off of that soy. Yeah.
But boy was she glad that she did because she was uh had decided to become
vegetarian after um having found that she had breast cancer and they did a
massctomy on her and um on her right side and she decided I’m I’ve got to get
healthy. So she decided I’m going to go vegetarian and she started running, you know, jogging.
Sure. And um but with the massctomy you know and they take the lymph glands and
everything she was getting the you know uh what’s it called with the fluid the edema the
just yeah term but yeah the edem real bad and her arm would swell up
but it would also be very painful. Yeah. And do you know when she reintroduced
the soy her arm swelled all up and just throbbed. Wow. So she was having uh immune
reactivity to that soy. Interesting. So um but you and so it’s any allergen
that you want to test out. So if people suspect corn, you know, you can get corn
out of there. Yep. Y um but wheat and dairy are the absolute minimum,
right? But most highly allergenic foods and then you generally do at least these top
seven. This is a real thorough. You’ll see longer lists. You’ll see people that recommend getting off of beef
as one of them. Beef is not honestly considered an allergenic food.
Correct. Uh wheat and any gluten source, dairy.
Okay. Now, what people have to remember with dairy, all the different forms,
even yogurt, a lot of times people think yogurt is safe. Yeah. because it’s fermented with the,
you know, probiotics, the lactobacillus acidophilus. Yeah. Well, that all that does is that takes
the lactose down. That those organisms eat, for lack of a better word, they
ferment. They use the sugars in the milk as their food source,
right? And that’s the lactose. So the lactose is reduced, but the allergenic proteins
aren’t, right? You know, allergenic dairy proteins are still in there. So it’s still all
allergenic. So great, great point because many times people will think, you know, I’ll get
lactosefree milk and that and my symptoms go away and what you what people don’t understand is that there’s
a sugar inside of dairy called lactose, but there’s the milk or the cow protein.
Yes. And those are the case and the whey. Yes. And whey is a big one that people need
to watch as well. So people use whey protein for protein shakes. Um
there’s whey protein in a lot of protein bars. Yes. Um so you have to watch out for sources
of whey and um make sure you get all the if if you eat you know cheese, if you drink
milk, if you eat ice cream, yogurt, all of it has to be taken out. Yes.
Okay. Um wheat and gluten, dairy, eggs, um peanuts or and all other
sources of tree nuts. So, uh recommend getting off of any nut that you consume
fairly regularly. A lot of people use almond milk now as a replacement. So, they we might want to get off of almonds
as an example. Sure. If you’ve been using almond milk every day for years. Yes. Um, I have an interesting story on
that. We had a woman with vitiligo once and she got a hold of our metabolic code
book and she did an elimination diet and she got a lot better. She lost weight,
she felt better, she started to see some improvement, but then she started to go backwards on her skin.
Yeah. and she had switched to almond milk and she had been on it a long time and she hadn’t done enough work as we’ve
talked about you know restoring the gut microbiome restoring you know balance to
gut immunity right um so that you try to prevent those problems you know where the new foods
that you eat you just become allergic to them so it’s important to note this elimination diet process will be
invaluable yes but there’s I really recommend seeking an integrative medicine practitioner to
work with that can work on your gut your gut immune balance.
Yes. So that in the future you don’t just become allergic to whatever the new
foods are that you’re eating, you know. So wheat, gluten, all the sources of dairy,
peanuts, tree nuts. So that’s pretty much every other kind of nut. Yeah.
And um eggs and soy. And then the other big allergen is shrimp and uh fish is
fairly allergenic. Yeah. Um usually if people are, you know, had
an anaphylactic to shrimp, you’re never going to reintroduce that. That’s just how that’s different. Yeah. Yeah.
Absolutely. But I would say if um
if you want to test it out, if you let’s say you eat shrimp fairly often and you just want to know, then then just
eliminate it with along with these other foods. Anything you want to test, like I said, corn, a lot of people are curious
about corn. Um, and I I find it to be
sometimes people are reactive. But they when they eliminate though, they eliminate maybe for a couple of
days or a week or what’s their problem. That’s exactly it. So that’s the thing. You can’t just go off of
something like here’s what I find people doing an awful lot of the time is, oh, it might be gluten. So they just get off
of gluten and they don’t eliminate any of the other allergens. very often uh
they’re also or only pretty much solely reactive to dairy. So if you go off the gluten and you still have the dairy,
you know, but a lot of people are somewhat reactive to both. I was reactive to both. I was strongest with
gluten, but I was reactive to both. Yeah. Uh gluten and wheat, gluten, and dairy.
So yeah, that’s a you cannot just go off of it for a week,
right? you really need to be off of it for a good three weeks. I really tried
to hunt this down because you’d see elimination diets online.
Everybody and their brother has a version of it. And so some people say like just go off of these foods for a
week and then start reintroducing which you can you can you can do just a week.
But the longer you can do what will happen is your body what I I found a
resource somewhere that said it’s thought that it takes a good three weeks
for all those inflammatory compounds that get made by the immunoglobulins
to clear out of your system. Yes. Now, I’ve had people
I think I shared the story about the type one person with type 1 diabetes and eggs
and it was a young man and he only eliminated them for like a week 10 days
and he did go off of the other allergens. But when eggs were like a favorite food,
he loved them. And I said, “If you could at least just go off of the eggs for like a week or 10 days,
I don’t know if he made it to the 10 days, but he I for a good week he was off when he ate eggs again.” And he’s
saying there’s no way I’m reactive to eggs because, you know, I don’t have anything wrong
now. Well, he did have something wrong. He wasn’t managing his diabetes well. He
wasn’t feeling the greatest a lot of the time. Correct. So your body can adapt to this
buildup of all these inflammatory cytoines over time. Yes. And so you and when you’re eating a food all the time,
you have no way of knowing if it’s would cause a symptom or not. The only way to know is to go off of it.
Yes. He ate the eggs again. He got severe nausea
and nausea. And he was thinking, I’m not reacting to these eggs.
You’re crazy. Right. Right. So that and that’s how everybody is. We
all feel that way, you know. Um but so go off of them preferably if
you can last a a good three weeks. Um if you want to break down and have
something before that, I would recommend not before 10 days to two weeks, but if
you do, you do. you know, just make sure you only eat that one allergen and watch yourself for
symptoms, right? So, don’t eat anything else funky or weird in your diet. Like, I had a person
that react going through Costco, ate a sample
of starf fruit. Wow. And at the same time, she had done a
food allergen reintroduction. I can’t remember which which it was, but say it was wheat. Yeah.
And um so she had like an oral allergy response.
Have you heard of like itchiness and stuff, the lips swell and all that? That’s not typical for wheat. That’s
really strange. So I said, “Let’s kind of go through that day.” And then she remembered, “Oh, I ate that fruit at
Costco.” So, it takes a little bit of remember.
Okay, this is not willy-nilly. You do have to try to keep some focus here, right? Journal. Just journal what you’re
doing. Introduction process. You know, you’re careful to eliminate everything.
For example, okay, another common thing if people love sushi,
okay, they think of, oh, I can have sushi, right? Except soy sauce is
fermented wheat and soy, right? So soy, regular soy sauce is not gluten-free.
So you can have sushi, but if you’re also eliminating soy
Yes. Um you can’t have the soy sauce at all. Yeah. And um but at home you can get it and
take it home. And there’s a product that we’ve recommended for years, coconut aminos. It’s made from coconut sap.
And it’s excellent. It tastes very good. Tastes almost exactly like soy.
Wow. Okay. And so that’s a little trick you can Okay. Is, you know, and don’t get the edamame
because that’s soy. That’s right. Yeah. But the rice is gluten-free,
you know. Yeah. So, um, yeah. So, really look at your
labels on any sauces and things like that. Like I had a woman that
blew elimination diet because she was using a ranch seasoning packet in
burgers and it had dairy in it. Yeah. So it’s not a big deal. You just get off
of that. You go for another, you know, 10 days or whatever, two weeks and then you’re good to go.
Sure. Um but that woman was very reactive to way. we found very reactive and she had
significant weight issue and when she went off of wei she was she started losing weight. So so that’s the process
is you know make your list the the foods that you’re going to go off of and look
at look at labels of any packaged foods make sure there’s no
added of one of the allergens y and then you’re good to go. Then you set your uh diet around usually it’s try to
eat real clean with like clean proteins, vegetables, you know, non-starchy
vegetables, salads, watch salad dressings. Yeah. Big. Yes. People are cream drinkers in their
coffee. You have to get a nondairy cream. Yep. I recommend it not being almond milk.
Yep. But you know, you there there are plenty of alternative um
different nut pods and things like that. Many will do oat maybe oat. Oat um you know oat. Yes. Um
careful there too. Well, the only reason oats ever have gluten is from crosscontamination. It’s
the tiniest little amount. Yeah. Um, normally I don’t even
recommend people having to go to the extent of like if they like having some oats here and there, a gluten-free oat
that is certified gluten-free that’s needed for people with celiac, you know.
Yes. And some autistic, you know, autism spectrum disorder are that sensitive.
Um, that brings up butter, you know, there are nondairy uh butter products
now. Uh, Mkos is a brand. Um, you can go that route or I don’t mind a little bit
of butter because the amount of protein in butter is from the solids in the, you
know, in the cream is very very low. Um, a way to take take that down even
further is instead of butter, use ghee. That’s what’s clarified out of the
butter. Yep. Um, so you can go that route. Yeah. But a little bit of butter usually
won’t be a problem for the vast majority of people. So you don’t want to overdo butter. You don’t want to have a ton of
it. You don’t, you know, like back in the bulletproof coffee days when people were putting a lot of you know like two
tablespoons of butter in their coffee or something. That’s a little much, you know, but a normal amount of butter to
flavor a vegetable, you know, a teaspoon or whatever is fine. Good. Okay. So after 3 weeks, then you start
trying your your allergens, allergenic foods again, one by one.
And I really recommend just jotting it down somewhere, keeping a note in your phone so you know what date you did it.
Good journal. Yep. And eat a normal portion. You know, don’t just nibble it. Eat a normal
amount. So if you want a yogurt again, have you know have some yogurt and have
the normal amount you know. Yeah. Um but then watch yourself for symptoms
and sometimes when the reactivity is really strong
there will be absolutely no question. People will feel immediately bad. Mhm.
But jot down the symptom, whether it was, “Oh my gosh, I got a headache.” Or,
“Oh, I got so fatigued. I had to go lay down. Terrible.” You know?
Yeah. Um, but sometimes you won’t have the symptom until like that night, you’ll
notice you congest up in bed, whereas you had your sinuses had been cleared, you know, and then you’re you’re waking
up and you’re like, “Oh my gosh, where did this congestion from come from?” Well, I ate that whatever cheese or fill
in the blank, right? Yes. Um achiness. Uh sometimes they’ll flare up
fairly quick. A lot of times, uh skin rashes will flare up pretty quickly.
Yeah. Sometimes things won’t happen until more like that night or the next
day, you know, like um I’ve had it where people were like, I didn’t feel the
greatest, but then the next day I woke up and my hips hurt or, you know,
whatever it is, pain, you know, flared up and it t that might take a little longer to come on.
Yep. Um the gut symptoms, if it’s constipation,
that won’t happen again usually like right now. It’ll take a little bit for that to come back. But um diarrhea a lot
of times will be almost immediate. But by the same token, it clears up quickly too. Typically it’s right,
you know, going off the allergens 2, three days, people are amazed how much more solid their stools will be
in just that short of time. Then it’s just a matter of figuring out which of the foods is contributing to it. It
could be more than one, you know, right? But you just do it one at a time. So
let’s say you decide to try eggs first and you um you didn’t seem to have any
symptom. What I recommend is that’s fine. You know it. Um, sometimes if it’s
borderline, I wasn’t sure, maybe I had a slight headache, wait a couple days, have another serving
and see if it kicks it in. Right? But once you test it and you find out,
yes, I had a symptom or no, I didn’t, go back off the food,
so that it’s real clean to test the next food, right? Then you can test out some peanut
butter or some almonds or whatever, you know, fill in the blank and then go
through that process till you’ve tested all of them. And then you look at the the total picture and you go, “Well,
man, did I ever have symptoms with gluten,
moderate with dairy, and um maybe slight with eggs.” So, what do you do with
that? Well, depending on if you’re trying to lose weight, it’s best to, you know, just
even if it’s slight because sometimes I’ll tell you one that is a weird one.
People that have throat clearing, you know, chronic like they’re always
Y because it’s like a scratchiness in the throat. Yep. And they tend to think like, well,
that’s just a little throat scratch. Mhm. But that little throat scratch means you
have inflammatory compounds getting made in your body all the time to whatever it is that’s causing that.
So don’t underestimate that slight symptom seemingly slight. True.
Um stay off that food that creates that issue. And um now here’s what for
maintenance what people will typically want to do is they’ll like for me um
I’ve prepared my gut to the point now that I can go to a nice restaurant and they bring those lovely breads and I can
have a small piece of bread and it it’s doesn’t wreck me. Whereas earlier in my
process until my gut healed up, one of the big things that I would
notice is a big mood shift. That’s another thing I forgot to mention. True.
I would kind of get like in a bad mood pretty quickly, like feel irritable or
Yeah. Like, you know, edgy. Yep. Uh, and
so that’s, you know, I’m glad I brought that up because the edgginess, but the
point being, um, also overnight weight gain.
I weigh my that’s another thing I recommend. Weigh yourself every single day while you’re off the foods.
Then when you try a food, overnight weight gain, it’s typically about two pounds. Sometimes it can be more. That’s
fluid. That is fluid inflammatory cytoica. They create this you know fluid uh
retention. Yes. And um so that’s another big symptom. So fluid retention itself is a symptom.
Correct. Um a lot of times when people are losing weight on low allergen diets, a lot of
it is excess fluid that they’ve their bodies have been holding on to. Yes. Yes. They wake up the next day and
see a, you know, three to five pound shift and think, “Oh, I gained all that weight back just because I had
something.” It’s just not not weight. It’s not fat. It’s it’s fluid inflammatory. But what I was starting to tell is that
I c it took a long time. Now, I could do this much sooner with dairy.
Dairy tended to just boom, my nose would run. That was really my main symptom. Nothing
else. no pain, no, you know, and over time that went away. So, I can have
regular cow’s milk, dairy. What I tend to do, um, Jim, my husband is very was
had a horrible childhood health issue and was on antibiotics like practically
his whole childhood. Sometimes when people have that kind of a significant
health scenario in childhood, there’s only so much you’re going to be able to rehab that immune system, he just has
never gotten to where he’s gotten into good tolerance of dairy. He’ll congest so bad. He just won’t be able to sleep
at night because he’ll congest up so badly. Oh, snoring. That’s another thing that
can be alleviated with um low allergen diets.
Um, but anyway, my dairy issue went away over time. I I can have it. I don’t have
it all the time. I will notice some congestion coming back if I eat it too regularly.
Yeah. But I’m fine if I have it out at a meal. Gotcha.
We go slow and eat hardly any. That’s me. And that’s what people will figure out.
It’s like, hey, if I go on that week and my pain is crazy. Yeah.
Naturally, you’re not going to want to eat that weed anymore, right? Yes. Yes.
Um, so that’s it’s you just feel your way into what you can tolerate or being
able to have a little bit here and there. Yeah. As you tolerate. Some foods you may not
really tolerate at all. Correct. You know, it may take some I mean, my wheat being able to eat the small piece
without flaring took like years. Wow. So, it wasn’t quick.
So, patience is the key. Well, patience and having a respect for your body, but I just find that most
people don’t want to get headaches. Yes. They don’t want they don’t want to have
severe all seasonal allergies every year. They want to be better with these things. So, it’s worth it. And I will
have to say certain foods you do tend, especially wheat. I mean, you just like
there’s nothing better than baked bread or real pizza. Oh, that’s another thing.
Double O Italian flour is very it’s higher starch, low protein.
Oh, okay. And a lot of people will be able to eat a pizza made with double O Italian
flour. It’s called it’s a soft, fluffy, starchier. And I I’ll never forget a few years ago,
I was like, “Okay, I’m going to go in. And I’m going to eat a double O pizza. And so it’s a pizza made with
interesting crust with that double O flour. And I did not get symptomatic. I
didn’t get the diarrhea from it. Check that out. All right. That is interesting. You find ways to do
live. Yes. And but um I just encourage people don’t
push it. You know, like if you get that scratch, why do you want to, you know,
they have found that these uh inflammatory cytoines are one of the biggest sources of
inflammation in people’s bodies. Yes. That’s from,
you know, the gut. Yes. Yes. So, working on your gut microbiome, knowing your reactive foods,
and I’m I’ve never, you know, I say this all the time, but and I’m not bragging,
and I’m not looking for a compliment, but I’m 65. [Music] My weight, I’m slender still. My weight
is well managed. You see me, you go, that’s kept yourself in shape. Now, yes,
I exercise, but I don’t exercise like a fiend. You don’t have to, right? Right.
I should exercise more. I mean, you know, I exercise to stay toned and fit,
you know. Yes. Yes. But the point being, it’s so nice to be 65 and I don’t struggle with my weight
and pain. People at this age starting to really hobble around and you know, I’m
painfree. Yes. You know, I don’t have to be on a lot of medication. I don’t have plaque in my
arteries. Yes, that one I was very happy about because strong genetics for that in my family.
Yes. And I did the the scan on my heart and no plaque. Wonderful. So, you know, to be this age, but I was
fortunate to learn about all this when I was younger. Yes. But you know what? It doesn’t matter if
you’re 65 and you’re just starting and you’re just now hearing this messaging. Well, you can improve the quality of
your life from here on out. And that’s why, you know, my husband has kind of coined this little phrase. You deserve
vitality at every stage of life, no matter what what your circumstances have
been, no matter how old you are. I mean, we have people that we turn around at age 80, you know, that turn around with
starting a health program. So, I really uh I can’t encourage people enough to
try this and especially if you have any of these symptoms that we’ve mentioned or it’s just stubborn weight or just
scratchy throat, right? I mean, yeah, you fit on all the things that people are concerned about, you know,
and and it’s a simple, you know, it no, it isn’t simple, but it it does boil
down to a a more simple answer of what I was working on a a pretty good case of
fibro when I first started out with all of my exploration.
Lot of muscle, held on to lactic acid, you know, got sore really quickly after
exercise, very fatigued. Yes. And so that, you know, I’d go get a massage and I’d just be right back tight
again. And that, you know, to have that turn around, I mean, that’s huge. And I
was gaining weight, obviously. So, I mean, it’s a it’s be
it’s quality of life, people. You don’t have to live with this. And very often it can come from food. And you know, I
remember years ago, years ago, when I just started into school for diietetics,
seeing a video of people with MS walking normally, and there was a
doctor, and I can’t remember the the doc, the practitioner’s name, but then he’d give them an allergen and they all
of a sudden have that unsteady gate and can hardly walk again.
Amazing, right? And I thought it was a scam, right? It’s not a scam. It’s not.
It’s not. It really is not a scam. Wow. And that’s what um that’s what I think
people need to remember on all this. Um this is still got to trickle down into
more conventional medical education. Absolutely. But there are, you know,
these are qualified licensed health professionals like me that are scouring
the literature, finding the studies and applying them. Yes. And um you know it’s
it’s invaluable to have the expanded you know
you have to remember conventional medical like I saw Peter or TSA
you know when somebody says this is bunk or you know about something he’s saying
about V2 max or whatever right and getting a lot of criticism and he’s
like well ask your physician how many hours in exercise physiology they had in
medical school and postmed school. Absolutely. I’m studying it incessantly.
Yes. You know, Yes. And that’s the same with these nutritional um
absolutely tools that we can apply for people for their health. Yes. And it’s just not taught. And you know,
I I gave a Rotary Club lunch and talk and there was one of the physicians that
worked at our the hospital where I worked at the time and it was like a half an hour, really 20 minutes because
I allowed time for questions and he came up and he said, “Do you know I learned more in that half hour than I did on
nutrition time in medical school?” Exactly. Isn’t that something? Wow.
Wow. Well, I you know, like, okay, yes, not that many
people have celiac, but there are so many health problems that can flare up as a result of this immune
reactivity to food. It is well worth it. And in the beginning, I mourned my bread.
Yeah. You know, but it isn’t worth it. It isn’t worth it to
have fibromyalg.
These are all fantastic ways of getting at that. I am so thankful for you. We’ve hit our hour if you can believe that, Laura. I love this. This is such
wonderful information. Thank you. I Where can people find more about this and you and metabolic code and all these
wonderful Well, we are um keep your eyes open. Um
we’re working on the next edition of our cracking the metabolic code book. And I say hours because I not listed author,
but I did all the edits on that book years ago. I did all the factchecking with the editor at the publisher back
when you had to have a publisher. Yes. Um and this year we want to uh we’re
planning to come out with the the revised version and I want to come out with a diet book as well. So
great. Hopefully we will have a diet book soon. Yeah. And we will have that
Facebook pages. uh Laura Laval, nutritionist. Very good.
Very, very good. Yes, that you want to pick up the cracking the metabolic code book. Um there’s some
discussion of allergies and diet and all that in that book as well. Absolutely. Stay tuned. I’m going to
have that advertised all over the place. I’m so excited. Jim mentioned that too last time we had it on. We will have
that uh actually actively working on. Of course, it’s in spurts
like when we have time, but yes. Well, and we will you can go to drp
betterlife.com and see our previous shows and much of what we’ve talked about uh you know in
in gut and and uh uh all nutrition issues and and you’ve been great. So drp
betterlap.com and catch our previous shows and I’ll have all of this listed as well on the website. And so I
appreciate you Laura so much as always for being on and uh and we’ll do it again. I know we’ve got plenty of topics
as long as my leg I think uh that we could go over on. We did. So, we will be
we’ll have you back and do and everybody I appreciate you joining in uh and with
the drp better.com. Check it out. Uh subscribe and listen to us on Spotify
and iTunes as well as catching us uh visually on YouTube and the YouTube
network where I have so many people listed uh so many channels listed uh for
likeminded uh thought work. And so please join us next time and everybody
take great care of yourself out there. We’ll catch you next time. [Music]
