Leaky Gut, Intolerances And Allergies

[seraphim]

Various posts I've seen for a while have implicated that leaky gut can cause allergies. Can that really happen or is everyone just accidentally referring to intolerance as allergies? Can leaky gut actually lead to an ige reaction?Curious as I have allergies I never use to.

[GottaSki]

For me...I have many intolerances that can result in anaphylaxis -- I always refer to my long list of intolerances rather than allergies.  I have been tested many times for allergies...both blood and scratch -- the only true "allergies" I have are environmental.

[Laura Wesson]

Various posts I've seen for a while have implicated that leaky gut can cause allergies. Can that really happen or is everyone just accidentally referring to intolerance as allergies? Can leaky gut actually lead to an ige reaction?Curious as I have allergies I never use to.

The mast cells in the gut are under a layer of epithelial cells. 

It's easy to believe that when there is an autoimmune attack, the mast cells become exposed to food antigens so they can become sensitized. 

Yes, you can get allergies because of this.  They don't necessarily have the same symptoms as classical food allergies.  And they aren't necessarily IgE-mediated.

I wrote about all this in the posts on cromolyn and on immunoglobulin free light chains. 

[stri8ed]

It most definitely can happen, as it has happened to me. And by allergy I am referring to an immune reaction 20 minutes or so after consuming the food. Knocks me out for a good week.

 

That said, these allergies do not show up in a standard IGE blood-test. Why this is, I do not know. Perhaps they are mediated by IGG antibodies.

 

When you think about it, developing an allergy is actually a healthy response by the immune system. When your blood is being flooded by foreign antigen proteins, as in the case of a leaky gut, the immune system sees these proteins as foreign invaders, and in addition to eliminating them, the adaptive immune system will remember the proteins (foods), so upon subsequent exposures it can initiate a much stronger and faster reaction against them.

 

A rotation diet is very effective for preventing further allergies while the leaky gut heals. Reason being, by limiting the amount of a given antigen in your blood, the immune system will never develop a reaction against it. It appears there is a certain threshold of how much of a foreign antigen the immune system will tolerate, before it initiates a response against it.

 

The difference between allergies and intolerance's is, an allergy is mediated by the immune system against the protein in a food, while an intolerance is an issue digesting the food. For this reason, allergies tend to develop against high protein foods, while intolerance often develop against high-carb low-protein foods like fruit. Typically an allergic reaction will last a few days, while an intolerance reaction lasts no longer than a few hours. 

 

Also, an allergy does not necessarily go away once the gut heals. So when you read people here posting how they can now eat eggs after a few months of gut healing, odds are they did not have an allergy to it.

[seraphim]

Interesting. I wonder how long I've had a milk allergy now. It's a moderate level allergy apparently.

[stri8ed]

Interesting. I wonder how long I've had a milk allergy now. It's a moderate level allergy apparently.

 

If you do believe you have an allergy to milk, you definitely want to avoid eating it for a while. Its Open Original Shared Link that when you have an allergic reaction to a food, the gut becomes more leaky. This can perpetuate the cycle leading to further allergies.

[seraphim]

Oh I just found out I do have milk allergy through blood test. I cut dairy last September...tried reintroducing a small amount of butter about two months ago and a short time after eating it had pains. Next two days my bowel movements looked weird. I just thought it was intolerance and didn't keep eating it.

[foam]

You normally get high _total_ IgE levels with a leaky gut because you make antibodies to everything that leaks through, but they do not show up on allergy testing, at least not skin testing. The allergist I went to said you can't generally pick up gut problems with skin testing. Non gut absorbed substances tend to be the ones that induce life threatening reactions. Air/skin etc.

 

I guess the reason is you probably only have a very small amount of antibodies to a ton of different substances (I've read antibodies to 30 foods is quite normal with severe leaky gut). Lactose intolerance is the first sign you will ever get that you have celiac disease, years before you see any symptoms from eating wheat itself so it's important to know that