Food Intolerance
Last week we looked at how our emotional state impacts directly on our digestion. The link between stress and ulcers is well known.
It’s worth looking at the field of neurology and how our understanding of the brain has radically changed over the last 10 years.
It was once believed that the brain was unchanging after early childhood. Well it turns out not only were we wrong but spectacularly wrong. Our brain is always and constantly changing. The concept of Neuralplasticity says that everything we do and think lays down new nerves in our brain. If one area of our brain is damaged we can train other areas to take up the missing function.
Another mantra of neurologists is ‘What fires together wires together”. For those that remember the Russian scientist Pavlov, his experiments with dogs and bells, was neurologicall conditioning . The sound of the bells became linked with food. So when one fired, the other fired. It’s a radical concept. That a bell could influence an animals digestive system!
When 2 things are happening simultaneously the brain makes a neurological link. Even if there is no actual link.
Now how is this linked to intolerances? If someone is undergoing stress then there is the potential for the brain to link that stress to whatever is happening at the same time. The longer the occurance of stress the greater the potential of a link. Remember – What fires together wires together.
From the brain’s point of view it is in ‘danger’ mode and detects gluten/grass seeds/lactose – things that are normally common and harmless. But a link is made. It then has been conditioned to respond to to the ‘danger’. Avoidance behaviours further reinforce the danger – which has now moved from perceived to real.
The the body has learnt (incorrectly) that something harmless is harmful. So it can be re-educated and you can be trained out of food intolerances. It takes a bit of work but far easier than a lifetime of avoiding foods and missing out on social activities because of a limited diet.
Next week we will look at the impact of computer games and TV in our childrens’s health….but as a sneak preview. If your child is playing war games for hours on end, they are in fight or flight not rest or digest.