IGA Allergies, was -- kombucha

[Guest guest]

BTW I forgot one important thing ... IgA reactions

are not immediate. It goes something like this

(glossing over details) ...

1. Say you are reactive to casein. You have a nice

big glass of milk for breakfast at 8:00.

2. At 9:00 the milk is going into the small intestine,

and the villi react by laying down and going on strike.

However, this causes no symptoms, so you feel fine

and assume milk is ok for you.

3. At 12:00 you have lunch, a baked potato and chicken.

But your villi are on strike, so this doesn't get

absorbed well. You feel a little nauseated.

4. By 2:00 you are a little bloated and gurgly. You

assume you react to either baked potato or chicken.

5. For dinner at 6:00 you have rice and steak. By this

time the undigested potato has instigated a pretty

good bacterial/yeast overgrowth, and the rice and steak

doesn't go down well at all.

Anyway, you get the point. Once you react to one food, it can

take hours or days before the villi are ready to do their

food-absorption thing again. And the villi reaction isn't

terribly dose-dependent ... most gluten-reactive people

can react to the fact that a knife used for bread contaminated

the butter.

Now if you follow the same schedule as above, but take

enzymes with lunch and dinner, you may feel fine all day,

because the villi that are still functioning can work if the

food is well broken down. And probiotics may work too, because

most of the symptoms really come about because of the bacterial

overgrowth. The villi reaction itself *doesn't feel like anything*,

though some people notice they get " cold " or itchy or some such.

That's what makes this stuff so darn hard to track

down ... and why people wish for a really good cheap test.

However, if you are LACTOSE intolerant, the reaction is

very much dose dependant and happens a set time after you

ingest the lactose (and lactaid will probably help, or kefir).

-- Heidi Jean