How Controlling Your Food Sensitivities Affects Productivity

The following article is excerpted from Ben Angel‘s Unstoppable 2nd Edition, out now on Entrepreneur Press. Purchase it via Amazon | Barnes Noble | IndieBound | Bookshop.

Unlike a food allergy, in which a peanut can be a healthy snack for some people but life-threatening for others, food sensitivities are harder to detect because the reaction is triggered You may also switch out one problem food for another without realizing it. Antacids may help your stomach feel better, but that just allows you to keep eating foods you shouldn’t be eating in the first place. I knew I felt better when I didn’t eat anything containing gluten, but I didn’t know why. All the gluten sensitivity tests came back negative. I also suspected I had adrenal fatigue; I was constantly exhausted. But when I suggested this to my doctor, I was quickly dismissed. He said that was just a way for health practitioners to sell expensive supplements that we simply pee out in the toilet bowl.

I decided I was going to find out for myself. During my 90-day mission, I came across a food sensitivity blood test Since I had attempted to eliminate different foods I intuitively felt were troublesome, but I still wasn’t feeling my best, I chose to throw caution to the wind and try the EverlyWell Food Sensitivity Test despite the controversy surrounding it. Not sure what to expect, I did the pinprick and sent off for my results. When I received them, I was surprised. The test confirmed what I already knew, and told me some things I didn’t. I knew coffee and sunflower seeds weren’t my friends, but I wasn’t expecting coconut. Thinking it was supremely healthy, I had introduced coconut oil to my diet around the time I became ill. I decided to investigate further I was also surprised to discover I had a mild sensitivity to baker’s yeast, a common agent used in baking. Differing from gluten, which is a wheat protein, it is a strain of saccharomyces, a fungus. A positive result for baker’s yeast could indicate a yeast imbalance in the gut. Because it is present in almost everything that contains gluten, I had immediately thought gluten was the problem. This explained why sometimes I could eat certain products containing wheat and feel fine, while other times I would be hit with fatigue the following day. While my experience with a food sensitivity test helped me weed out specific trigger foods, it is admittedly purely anecdotal, but you may find it worthy of further investigation and research.

Related: How to Diagnose Failure to Achieve Success

Take Control Of Your Destiny

My successful experiment drove me to reach out to EveryWell’s founder and CEO Julia Cheek and and its executive medical director, Dr. Marra Francis, to find out more. It turned out that Julia’s experience was very similar to mine. She started the company after suffering from chronic fatigue and unexplainable aches and pains. “I had a lot of anxiety, and ultimately these were basic hormone imbalances and adrenal gland imbalances,” she says. “But I spent this period — this odyssey — of six months going to tons of different doctors to try to get testing done and complete the issues. The doctors themselves were all excellent, but the problem was that they ordered a bunch of tests, and I was never given access to the results. I didn’t even know what tests were run. I didn’t have explanations. Then I started getting these bills coming in from requested lab work every few months, because I was on a high-deductible plan. I started figuring out that the high-deductible, noncoverage situation for Americans was just growing dramatically. The majority of Americans are having to pay so much more for these basic services, and the services actually don’t always relate to them. So I really wanted to say, how can we use technology and digital health to disrupt the traditional experience for consumers and help them get access to this testing in an easier way? Access to tests consumers want, access to a more convenient process, or access to actually one price, a transparent price, is what was needed. You know exactly what you’re going to pay, and we won’t charge you again. That message has resonated with thousands and thousands of people.”

I asked her how she felt being dismissed On her mission to biohack her way back to health, and fighting to finally get her lab results, she took them to a functional medicine doctor and an acupuncturist. “They found all these areas, and it was certainly my cortisol that had completely gone just off-the-radar wacky,” she says. “But my vitamin D was dangerously low, my magnesium, my vitamin B6, my vitamin B12, my iron. I was low on all of those, but nobody had put the picture together. I was not low enough, but it was this comprehensive set of things. I almost had very, very bad treatment as a result of not pinpointing the right issues. Looking back, it seems so ridiculous that I almost underwent a procedure when what I really needed to do was just make some lifestyle changes. I think that perfectly reflects this drastic gap in care.”

Under the Radar

Just like in Julia’s case, my doctors had failed to identify a severe vitamin D deficiency; they had also overlooked my food sensitivities. When I asked Dr. Francis how the reference ranges are set for vitamins, minerals, hormones, etc., that doctors use to tell us if our results are normal or abnormal, she replied, “It’s based on population studies. We have population studies for everything: for mineral levels, for vitamin levels, for what normal cholesterol should be. When you look at cholesterol, the population studies are based upon who developed heart disease vs. who didn’t. So at what ranges is that considered normal vs. elevated risk for heart disease?

These normal ranges are really set Dr. Francis adds that other conditions that have been cleared up as a result of the food-sensitivity test include bloating, migraines, and the e standard guinea pig in medicine has always been the 154-pound man, which was originally set Dr. Francis emphasizes that she isn’t saying that food sensitivities cause depression, but “when someone is being evaluated for symptoms of depression, we fail to look at their diet traditionally as a medical doctor. Which sort of confuses me, and it sounds silly, but we have that old saying: ‘You are what you eat.’ Why don’t we look at diet as part of the puzzle when we’re trying to figure out why someone has the symptoms that they do? I think it really does a disservice to our patients. Between all of the additives and chemicals in our food system right now, I think food is probably one of the biggest causes of people being unhealthy.”

Related: Could a Journal Be The Next Productivity Game-Changer?

What Dr. Francis said made sense to me on a personal level, considering my experience with depression. All I could think after my doctors suggested antidepressants was: How many people are put on medication when the cause of their problem is really a food sensitivity? This research has yet to be done. EverlyWell will be undertaking an opt-in study of its customers that will be one of the largest of its kind on food sensitivities. Currently, studies are limited and opinions divided; however, with fields like nutritional psychology gaining traction, I’m optimistic that future testing protocols will help people find answers. For the time being, a simple food-elimination diet may be your best bet.