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There are food intolerances (today defined as delayed food allergies) and immediate food allergies. While they are two different phenomena that create difficulties in the diagnosis of food intolerances, they interact intensively and contribute to increasing in inflammation within the body and stimulating the allergic expressions.
The allergic reaction in which the immunoglobulin E cells are involved occurs by way of the "classic route" of the allergy.
In 2007 an "alternative route" for allergy was identified. This route was characterized by the antibodies' action on the white blood cells which was most of all linked to a cellular type of reaction, more typically associated with food intolerances or delayed food allergies.
What's more, there are also "mixed" forms of food allergies in which both mechanisms come into play as in the case of celiac disease.
Between 2003 and 2005 many researchers, among whom Hugh Simpson, the world's principal authority in the field of food allergies, defined the existence of "delayed food allergies". These phenomena were linked to the repetition of the food stimulus on the intestinal cells for 2-3 consecutive days.
These phenomena are what people refer to as food intolerances. However the diagnosis of this condition is still performed with non-conventional tests, that is, tests that are not generally recognized by the medical world; among these tests, the most well-known and most of all most effective ones are the DRIA test and the ALCAT test, but other tests such as the IgG4 dosage, some cytotoxic tests and several others are worthy of mention, also.
Allergies and food intolerances sometimes blend together and influence each other in turn, but certain specific characteristics make them differ from each other.
An allergy is usually an immediate response. It appears within a few minutes, more rarely within a few hours, after contact with the "guilty" substance and generates the intervention of the Immunoglobulin E (IgE) and mast cells. Food intolerances, on the other hand, are for the most part a slow reaction, caused by the intervention of cells or antibodies that are different from the IgE (intestinal TH cells, as Sampson demonstrated). The reaction develops hours or days after the repeated ingestion of the food substance (or contact with the external agent that is not necessarily a food substance) to which we are sensitive: there are control mechanisms within the body that - more in the case of intolerance than in allergy - are able to inhibit the triggering of the reaction. This mechanism causes an overstepping of the "threshold level".
The intolerance reaction is easily overlooked because, under certain aspects, it resembles a slow poisoning. Practically speaking, the body identifies the "enemy", keeps an eye on it while trying to limit the damage and "explodes" only if the introduction of the food continues up to the point of exceeding an individual's control capacity. If we look back at simple practices and rites of the past such the abstention from certain foods once a week (for example the Christian tradition of omitting meat on Friday or the Hebrew tradition of kosher on Saturday) these rituals could have sufficed to interrupt the continuous stimulus on the immune system and help regulate reactivity. If there is a loss of control, the normal defense mechanisms- that generally appear in the form of a controlled inflammatory reaction- can become intense enough to cause damage to the entire body.
Food intolerance (or hypersensitivity) phenomena are therefore caused by a sort of accumulation phenomenon, as if it were a progressive poisoning, and are as such different from food allergies in which the pathologic response occurs within minutes of the ingestion of the incriminated food.
It's very important to be aware of the existence of this phenomenon because the effects of intolerances on the body are of a sub-clinical character, that is, they aren't immediately identifiable, but day after day they lead to the increase in inflammatory actions that give rise to serious illnesses.
The human body reacts to foods and chemical products in different ways. The allergic reaction in which the immunoglobulin E cells are activated occurs by way of the "classic route" of allergy.
Doctor Attilio Speciani
Clinical Allergist and Immunologist
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