How to End an Elimination Diet Correctly

 First of all, congratulation to all who were brave and persistent enough to keep the elimination diet based on FoodPrint  intolerance  test (more accurately - IgG allergy test).

Some of you experienced results almost immediately, and it was easier to keep the diet if health improvements were evident. Many needed to combine it with other type of "diets", eliminating both food and non-food personal „kryptonites“. Maybe some had no visible improvement. As a consequence, it is harder to believe that food is connected to a specific health problem. If the latter is the case, please remember that IgG allergy is only one piece of puzzle. It is only one part of complex and highly individual gut-healing Protocol 4R (or 5R).

In all cases, whether improvement has been noticed or not, keeping this test-based elimination diet has had a positive influence on health. Giving a long-needed break to overloaded immunity - by lowering overall inflammation mechanisms - it created more space for healing. Rather than being occupied by daily fights with incoming allergens, the immune system could use the spare energy for regeneration and repair. For many people, this could mean lowering general pain and discomfort.

The recommended time for an elimination diet is 3-4 months but what’s going to happen next - coming off the diet - is no less important.

Many make the crucial mistake of jumping off the diet suddenly and „treating“ themselves to a good portion of „forbidden“ food. Be it a whole slice of (wheat) bread, cake or a pot of ice cream. If this is how you ended the diet, it is possible it was, unfortunately, a waste of time. By the sudden introduction of your „kryptonite“ food, and before making sure the gut is healed and sealed, you’re risking not only a bad reaction to given food but also continuing inflammation and/or leaky gut syndrome.

Please do not waste your time and £££ testing for IgG allergy if you’re not going to do it right. Bad rep to these diets and lab tests often come from people who treat this diet as a simple black&white list. Always try to find practitioners who can take you through the complete functional medicine „Protocol 4R“. This protocol may take several months or even years, depending on your situation and the level of ill health. Be patient. Quick fixes by a straightforward elimination diet may work fine for those reasonably healthy, but symptoms may creep back slowly.

Coming off the diet

 

1. Do not stop the diet abruptly. Do not eat a whole portion of previously eliminated food. Go slowly.

2. Make sure the gut is healed and sealed, ready to take on the allergen. You can test this directly by a special test for gut permeability or indirectly - by repeating the FoodPrint (or another IgG test), to show the level of improvement.

3. Forget the first three foods on the list, which scored the highest, at least for another couple of months. This is often very difficult for many people as it involves wheat and/or gluten, soy, egg and dairy. Unfortunately, 90% of the cheapest and most accessible foods contain one of these four ingredients. Read the labels.

4. Start with the least reactive foods on the list (orange colour and lowest in red). Introduce them in small amounts, no more than 1-2x per week. Do it as if you were introducing new foods to a baby - no more than a small bite or one leveled teaspoon.

5. Rotate. Do not eat any of the listed food daily. For example, if you had oats (porridge, oatcakes etc.) on Monday and Tuesday, avoid them for 3-4 days.

Considering our genetics (how our ancestors lived), eating simple meals, ideally up to 10 ingredients daily and rotating them over time is what a varied diet should look like. Our ancestors did not have a massive variety over a day or week but changed diets with seasons. Possibly the only exception were days of feasts, only a few times per year.

Introducing the most problematic foods

When your health or symptoms improve enough, after a year or even two, you may wish to re-introduce the most common and potent allergens:  gluten, eggs, dairy, nuts and soy.

Think about why they are the worst offenders and if, in your case, it is worth eating them at all. Double check the IgG test, coeliac panel Cyrex Array3 or true IgE allergy.

Moreover, gluten is a thyrotoxin and tissue mimicker, causing problems even if none of these tests show any positives. Too much soy interferes with thyroid function, a well-known goitrogen, and most of it is GMO.

Gluten and grains - make a homemade bone broth soup into which you add some grains as pasta. Do not eat pasta at first when having this soup. Small amounts of gluten protein will be released into the liquid. Bone broth helps to heal your intestinal lining. The effect of re-introduced gluten will hopefully be dampened down. Another way is to start buying porridge oats that are not gluten-free certified and, are usually contaminated with few grains of wheat or barley. Choose organic if you can.

Dairy – a good way to start is with butter (goat or cow) and fermented dairy products. Try organic homemade sour whey, quark (soft cheese) or a teaspoon of coconut-dairy culture mixed yogurt. Hard cheeses only as few strands of grated cheese at first, no more! Probably the best way of introducing dairy protein is in the form of colostrum supplement, which can seal your gut very quickly. It's the original function of colostrum to do just that in newborns!

Egg – split the white and yolk, depending on your needs. If you tested for both, introduce both but in tiny amounts. Start introducing an egg that is not highly denatured (such as happens after baking). Try soft-boiled or a scrambled egg made for another family member. Have only 1-2 teaspoons at first and only once per week.

How to prevent new food sensitivities

Eat a varied diet (see above what I mean by it) by rotating all foods weekly or seasonally, specifically those previously tested positive.

Do not eat the same foods and food ingredients every day, all day.

The biggest concern is the presence of highly reactive and pro-inflammatory gluten, wheat & other grains, denatured powdered egg, dairy and soy. Most of these can be hidden, including „health foods“. This includes vegan or vegetarian meat imitations, some made of pure gluten, some of pure soy, or Fusarium mold. Frightful! Cheap processed meat can also be filled with wheat and soy flour, as well as ready-made meals, cakes, bars, non-dairy replacements and sauces. Another bad example is snacking on a whole bag of nuts at once.

 

Troubleshooting

Remember that your immune-based sensitivity to food (by forming IgG antibodies) is only one type of body reaction to food.

If you test IgG positive, then correctly proceed through the elimination diet, and if nothing improves, you have to dig deeper. There can be several other reasons:

1.True allergy to foods - shows as an increase of IgE (not IgG) antibodies.

2.Environmental reactions. Both IgE and IgG can develop towards chemicals hidden in food, every-day cosmetics, cleaning products or even environmental dust (biotoxins - pollen, mites, molds and their mycotoxins – this is sometimes called the sick building syndrome). 

3.Enzymatic insufficiency-based intolerance to foods (such as lactose or histamine). This deficit of enzymes can be natural, such as losing tolerance to milk sugar lactose in adulthood. Another example is dysbiosis-induced fructose malabsorption (or wider FODMAP malabsorption).

4.Reactions to lectins such as WGA, solanin, salicylates or other plant-protecting phytochemicals.

5.Cross-reactions. Both IgE and IgG-tested foods/items can have several other cross-reacting pals. For example, if you don’t eat buckwheat but tested positive for all other grains, you are likely to react to buckwheat, too (even if test does not show it). Cross-reactions must be taken more seriously when dealing with autoimmunity, and this stricter version of an elimination diet is called AIP = autoimmune protocol.