When I was trying to heal myself, I had a very clean lifestyle, but my health still did not improve. That’s because I had multiple hidden food sensitivities.

Food allergies are uncommon, but it has been estimated that 75% of the population has hidden food sensitivities.

A food allergy produces an immediate, sometimes life threatening reaction, such as anaphylactic shock, which suddenly cuts off the wind pipe when an allergic food is ingested. Doctors seem to know all about these and what to do about them, but they know little about food sensitivities. That is because food sensitivities are not life-threatening, can be subtle and have no immediate effect for up to five days after the offending food is eaten. Most of my symptoms of food sensitivity do not show up for at least twenty-four hours after I’ve eaten the offensive food. Since I eat dozens of different foods in a day, this can make it very difficult to figure out what food is causing the problem.

Instead of being life-threatening, most symptoms of food sensitivity are just plain annoying, causing endless pain and suffering over the long haul, especially if one ingests the offending food on a daily basis.

Food sensitivity can also masquerade as almost any other common problem, as well as some very serious and/or life threatening problems, such as lupus, arthritis, or autism.

In fact, the symptoms are so varied as to be easily misdiagnosed as a common illness that we are told has no known cause. A great example of this are migraine headaches. Although there can be multiple causes for migraines, I've read that they are caused by food intolerance 80% of the time. With migraines, the link is often with the gut, which must be healed before the problem will be completely erradicated. The toxic conditions most commonly associated with food sensitivity are skin rashes and hives, bad breath, constipation, sinus congestion, runny nose, itchy eyes and ears, chronic cough, stiff neck, joint pain, sore throat, headache, back ache, atherosclerosis, asthma, and angina pectoris.