How undiagnosed food intolerances could be compromising your fitness goals:
Food intolerances you aren’t aware of, even to healthy foods, could be sabotaging your fitness. Many people wonder why they plateau or hit a wall with their fitness or weight loss goals, but fail to consider the role of chronic low grade inflammation caused by food proteins.
Inflammation is a natural response of the immune system to injury, infection, or other harmful stimuli. It is characterized by redness, swelling, warmth, and pain in the affected area. While acute inflammation is an important part of the body’s response to injury or infection, chronic inflammation has been linked to a variety of health problems, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and fatigue. Below are 3 ways that food intolerances and inflammation can affect sports performance and recovery:
Chronic inflammation caused by food intolerances lowers fitness by:
- Reduced access to oxygen, due to clumping of red blood cells.
- Oxygen transfer is impaired increasing the anaerobic phase faster.
- Reduced availability of sugar in the muscle cells.
- TNF-α, a strong inflammatory mediator blocks the insulin receptor, so then your muscle can’t produce enough energy.
- Formation of AGE products (Advanced Glycation End products).
- They lead to stiffness of the tendons and muscle fibers, thus increasing the risk of injuries.
How food intolerances develop:
When poorly digested food proteins pass into the blood stream, the immune system perceives them as foreign proteins and produces specific IgG antibodies against them. This can cause local or systemic inflammatory reactions with negative side effects on your health and performance. The intestine may have local ischemia, due to red blood cell mobilization in the muscles. This can lead to an increase in gut permeability and may put you at a higher risk of more adverse food reactions. IgG food allergy reactions are delayed by several hours or even days. Sometimes they are often silent. It is literally impossible to identify them without testing. It is very difficult to associate a food you have eaten two days ago with symptoms appearing today.
This is especially important to consider if you are on a strenuous exercise regime. Under permanent high performance with maximum oxygen consumption taking place in the muscles, the intestine can become undersupplied with oxygen. This results in the intestinal cells (enterocytes) becoming damaged and more permeable (a process which is worsened by pain killers) which is the main cause of developing IgG food intolerances.
Effect of ImuPro guided elimination diet on fitness outcomes:
- In a double blind crossover study with swimmers over 45 days, we could demonstrate that with an ImuPro guided diet (excluding personal trigger foods)
- showed an average increase of 10% of the VO2 max (44% in one case)
- lowered the lactic level by 50%
- reduced the body fat by 4,5% (even 24% in one case)
- reduced the body weight by 2,5% (6,3% in one case) compared to a sham diet (included personal trigger foods)
- enabled faster recovery, documented by a reduced heart rate of -16%
After changing back to the sham diet all athletes returned back to their initial value, proofing the efficacy of the ImuPro guided change of diet.
Mind your protein intake
Have you ever been told that you need to eat more protein, and are then confronted with the option of which protein supplement to buy, or how to get adequate protein in your meals? While it’s easy to say “Eat more protein”, what you really need to ask is “Am I digesting well enough to break down proteins?” and “Which proteins does my body react to?”.
We are frequently approached by personal trainers, body builders and gym goers who had no idea that their why or casein protein powder was triggering inflammation and holding them back. Likewise, we often see people who were eating 3 eggs a day as their protein source who develop very high readings of IgG antibodies to egg white and yolk. Following the removal of this completely unsuspected food, their symptoms eventually disappeared. ImuPro will help you find the foods that are good for you and to pinpoint your individual “trigger foods”. By avoiding your trigger foods, inflammatory processes can be reduced or even stopped and your body can recover.To identify the foods that are causing problems, a specialised laboratory analyses your blood serum and determines the presence of specific IgG antibodies to a broad variety of foods.
Identify your personal trigger foods before adopting generalized and fashionable dietary advice – it may help you to increase your power, endurance and performance. Let your Personal Trainer or Practitioner know your food intolerances so they can tailor your fitness program accordingly.
ImuPro may help you to:
- increase your VO2 max
- improve your recovery
- facilitate your fat burning
- optimize your body composition
- decrease your lactate
NOTE: An IgG food allergy should not to be mistaken for a classical food allergy (type I). If you have a type I allergy, your immune system produces IgE antibodies. These antibodies lead to an immediate allergic reaction. ImuPro does not detect IgE food allergies.
References:
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(3) Hotamisligil,G. S.; Arner, P.; Caro, J. F.; Atkinson, R. L.; Spiegelman, B. M.: Increase adipose tissue expression of tumor necrosis factor-alpha in human obesity and insulin resistance. In: J Clin Invest 1995: 95: 2409-2415. |
(4) Hotamisligil, G. S.; Shargill, N. S.; Spiegelman, B. M.: Adipose expression of tumor necrosis
factor-α: direct role in obesity-linked insulin resistance. In: Science 1993: 259: 87-91.|
(5) Bäumler, H.; Neu, B.; Donath, E.; Kiesewetter, H.: Basic phenomena of red blood cell rouleaux formation. | In: Biorheology 1999: Vol 36: Numbers 5-6:439-442