How long does it take to become allergic to a given food?

[Superfluo]

Hi!

Recently I relying a lot more on legumes as a source of complex carbs, proteins and calories. And I like them so much that I could eat them at every meal. But I'm afraid eating them too often (and too much) and developing an allergy to them, a sensitivity, a bodily reaction.

So, how can I know how much to go for legumes and, as an extension, to other foods? How do I know if I'm eating too much of a given food (given that this food is "healthy") and I'm going towards negative effects?

Thanks!

[Average Investor]

I probably ate those for a few hundred days in a row at least. I had an issue with SIBO that maybe could have came from a lack of diversity. However, I am unsure of the start time of each of those things. Also, to be fair I had a lot of different fruits and veggies in rotation with juicing and smoothies. To this day I eat a lot of the same things with some rotation and I don't really have any issues. I don't think you are going to develop and allergy by eating something consistently. Just make sure you change up your meals a bit with different ingredients to keep your microbiome healthy. 

5 hours ago, Superfluo said:

How do I know if I'm eating too much of a given food (given that this food is "healthy") and I'm going towards negative effects?

It's going to be very personal to yourself. You will need to do a lot of experimentation to see what works well. It's good to try things like an elimination diet anyway to screen out foods that could be giving you issues. So consider experimenting with how you feel with eating them and without. 

Also, if your diet is well balanced in other areas, then I would not worry too much about it. You can use something like  https://cronometer.com/ to get a feel for portions. 

[Michael569]

On 16/09/2021 at 0:54 AM, Superfluo said:

But I'm afraid eating them too often (and too much) and developing an allergy to them, a sensitivity, a bodily reaction.

That sounds very unlikely. If excessive exposure to any given food led to a development of allergy and a risk of subsequent anaphylaxis, human race would have died out by now.

Legumes have been eaten by populations for thousands of years. If you have been ok eating them so far, you won't develop an allergy. Any intolerance that develops would stem more from gut problems (e.g. SIBO, IBD, excessive intestinal permeability, EOE) rather than an actual allergic response. Some intolerances can be corrected with some deep gut work and I've seen that happen on a rare occasion from personal experience. Real allergies are more difficult to cure. 

There are many theories that cause allergies, one of them being insufficient exposure in childhood rather than excessive exposure and insufficient microbiome balance from that. Or when kids are raised to vegan parents and then in their 20s or 30s they decide to start eating dairy or eggs, a theoretical possibility is a massive flareup of allergic symptoms to a point that adrenaline shots for life will need to be carried by the kids. For this reason I am not super pro the idea of raising children through avoidance of many food categories. There needs to be an exposure. Even for parents doing ethical veganism, I would potentially still consider giving kids at least trace amounts of these things especially during first 3 years of life. 

Hygiene theory is also popular that says insufficient exposure to environmental antigens leads to development of allergies such as not having had opportunity to get exposed to dust, mud, bugs and microbes by living in sterile environment - I think we'll have a whole new generations of covid kids who will grow with massive allergies due to their parents desynfecting their hands 50 times a day and forcing them to wear masks which will among other also prevent inhalation of airborne antigens such as pollens and so allergies will develop over time. O

Other theories include an imbalanced immune response between intracellular and extracellular immunity. This is super complex and dependant on million of other factors but generally what can switch this balance are things like inflammation, oxidative stress, toxins, heavy metals, potentially even some medical drugs mainly antibiotic over exposure. I've had this to a degree with my allergies in the past and managed to correct it (to a certain degree). One side of this imbalance is asthma & allergies where the other side is autoimmunity. From my limited experience when this happens, gut health is usually massively involved. It is not yet well known what causes the shift to more pro-allergenic or more pro-autoimmune response. Genetics could be a strong determinant here. 

Other cases can also be genetic such as with coeliac disease when you have the HLADQ8 and HLADQ2 mutations and eat an excessive amount of gluten, over time coeliac can happen. But things like antibiotics can definitely accelerate this process for those genetically predisposed. This is fairly easy to test for and so cure in form of avoidance is possible and quite doable. 

 

[Superfluo]

@Average Investor @Michael569 Thank you very much for your support and help.

Right now my diet is pretty balanced and since legumes are my main choice for proteins I'd be in trouble if I had to stop eating them because I ate too much of them.

 

@Michael569 Michael, I'll share with you one insight about allergies. In the last year I tried bioenergetics exercises, i.e. exercises to release deep seated muscular tension, which is linked to the psyche and the subconscious. And sometimes, when I do some type of exercise which deals with the diaphragm and the throat, my nose start tingling like I have to sneeze and it's exactly the type of sneeze due to allergy to hay. I discovered that I can command this reaction, I can create it with these exercises: activating certain muscles in the throat and the diaphragm I can create an allergic reaction. This led me to the insight that the antigen entering my nose creates a cascade reaction with the muscles and mucoses, which store a tension released by the interaction with that antigen, pretty much like they had a psychological imprint and the antigen reactivates that imprint. And this tension has a psychological nature pretty much of the time. I don't think the same applies to allergies like coeliac disease though.