Hi I'm Dr.Kimberley O'Brien. I'm a naturopathic doctor, the founder of Healthy Life Redesign and creator of the Elimination Diet Meal Plan.

This video is video number four in a video series where I'm teaching you everything you need to know about food sensitivities. So far we've already covered what exactly is a food sensitivity, what are the symptoms of food sensitivities and how does a food sensitivity differ from a food allergy or a food intolerance.

In today's video I'm going to be teaching you how people develop food sensitivities and how you can help to prevent yourself from developing food sensitivities as well. So how most people actually develop food sensitivities is through something called leaky gut syndrome. To explain this concisely, leaky gut syndrome is what occurs when the barrier of the digestive system is not adequately filtering undigested food from entering into the bloodstream. In the small intestine there's only one cell that separates our digestive contents from the rest of our body! This is important because it's that feature of our digestive tract that allows us to absorb all of our nutrients. However, it's very important that those cells stay knit very tightly together so undigested food particles cannot cross into our bloodstream.

Various stressors, which I'm about to describe, can cause damage to the wall of the small intestine where most food is observed. Think of my hands as two different cells in the small intestine.  These cells should be knit very closely together through something called tight junctions.   These junctions can become damaged and we then end up with larger gaps in between the cells.  These gaps allow undigested food to cross into the bloodstream and trigger our immune system (aka "leaky gut syndrome").

Food contains protein, and all proteins consist of many small pieces strung together called amino acids.  I like to illustrate this by showing you a beaded necklace.  I want you to think of this entire beaded necklace as a full protein and each of the beads as individual amino acids. All foods contain protein although some foods have higher protein content than others.  It's the protein in our food that our immune system tends to react to and therefore it's the protein that's at the root of the food sensitivities.

What needs to happen in our digestive tract is that this beaded necklace needs to be broken down into individual beads before being absorbed. These individual beads represent amino acids. What happens when there's any damage to the wall of the small intestine is that more beads can pass through without having being broken down to each individual bead. Its when these beads are absorbed into the bloodstream in larger clumps (for example, 3 or 4 beads at a time), that the immune system is triggered, food sensitivities develop and all the associated symptoms I talked about in video two start to develop.

So what causes leaky gut syndrome? In our modern day and age a lot of things can trigger damage to the small intestine. This can be things like pharmaceutical medications and antibiotic drugs that are disrupting the normal flora in our small intestine causing inflammation and hampering the natural microflora immune bearer that we have in the digestive tract. It can also be things like stress. When we're stressed we're not getting enough release of digestive enzymes to break down our food and we're not getting enough circulation to our digestive tract for it to function properly. This can lead to leaky gut syndrome. So for those of you that are eating on the run, that's a great reason why you need to slow down and take time time to sit and enjoy your meal.

There are other stressors that can also have an impact on the digestive tract. This can be things like too much caffeine or alcohol intake.  Additionally, smokers naturally have a higher level of inflammation in their body and this can also affect the digestive tract.

All of these risk factors can lead to you developing food sensitivities through leaky gut syndromes and your immune system being triggered by otherwise healthy foods that are part of your everyday diet.

In the next video I'm going to be teaching you how you can identify your food sensitivities through a simple dietary procedure. If you want to get more information right away and start taking action to transform your health, I encourage you to head over to my blog HealthyLifeRedesign.com where you can sign up for my free e-book series. In my eBook series I go into great detail on everything I've been talking about in this video series and you can get a jump start on transforming your your health through food. I look forward to seeing you next video!