The IgG Allergy Test - Sugar Cane Allergy

Oh No!!!!!!!!!!!  I’m allergic to SUGAR!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 

Okay, I just needed to get that out.  I feel better now.  Actually, it really isn’t that much of a surprise.  It’s something I should have figured out 25 years ago.  I have to say, I’m actually quite glad to have  an answer, something concrete and tangible after so many years of questions.  To that, I owe Dr. Steve Nenninger and his persuasive lecture on IgG testing.  (www.stevenenninger.com)

It all started twenty five years ago, when I was 20, I began suffering from extreme fatigue.  In addition, my body temperature was too low, I was always cold, had weekly headaches and difficulty focusing.  I always had that just woke up in the middle of the night feeling.   I went to the doctor and had a series of tests done.  He checked me for mononucleosis, hypoglycemia and anemia, among other things.  Every single test came back negative.  The diagnosis was that there was nothing wrong with me.  But….why was I so incredibly tired?  The doctor told me to carry around some sugar so whenever I felt tired, I could have a “pick-up.”  Hence began my Starburst stage.  They were ALWAYS in my pocketbook.  I would just pop a few in my mouth whenever I felt tired, which was just about every day.  Of course, we all know what happens when you have a sugar rush,….you have a quick up then a fast down.  Well, my downs were bad.  Driving a car was really scary.  I can recall so many times while driving a car that I had to repeat over and over again to “KEEP MY EYES OPEN.”  After I got home I remember falling on the floor and the room would just spin.

 I had the same symptoms during my 30’s too, except I picked up a few more.  You can add candida, vaginal yeast infections, fibromyalgia and numerous dental cavities to my previous list.  I remember crawling into bed before my kids got home from school, not because I was sleepy because sleep usually eluded me, but just to rest and shut my eyes.  You see, I learned to plug on despite the foggy brain because I had to.  Because as a wife and mother,  things just had to get done.  I learned not to complain or go to the doctors because there were never any answers. 

When I turned 39, I read a book “The 5 Principles of Ageless Living” by Dayle Haddon.  In the book, the author recommends cutting out all refined sugar.  Since I enjoyed the book so much, I decided to give it a try.  I’m sorry to say, it lasted only eight weeks.  The first few weeks, it was really hard and my body felt like it needed hours upon hours of sleep, like up to 10 hours each night.  It was as if my body was sleeping soundly for the first time in a while.  All those symptoms that I wrote about above, were slowly fading away.  I was even more alert during the day and my brain felt less foggy.   However, I found it too hard and didn’t have enough motivation and determination to stay away from sugar so after two months, I went back to eating it. Until this week,  I never connected the dots and figured out that maybe I was allergic to sugar. 

Now all this brings us to three years ago, my husband got sick and had to give up sugar, I decided to join him.  I was 42 years old then.  My new policy would be to cut out all white sugar and white flour except during a birthday or holiday.  There was only one exception to this:  a piece of dark chocolate every day.  Since it was still a dramatic cutback in sugar, I experienced the same detox effects which gave way to a lessening of symptoms and increased energy as I had before.  Whenever I ate sugar, I felt great while eating it, but the very next day there was a return of my symptoms.  Just recently, I made chocolate chip cookies.  Even though I used cane sugar, I still had a reaction after eating only two cookies.  Again, I felt extreme fatigue .  Even after all that, I still never made the connection that I had a sugar allergy.  Was I dense??  Maybe not.  Usually when I think of allergies I think of an immediate cause and effect like a reaction someone has to eating peanuts.  Not the symptoms I was displaying. 

I recently went to a lecture by Dr. Steve Nenninger.  He highly recommends and advocates food allergy testing (IgG test).  I honestly thought that I wouldn’t find anything but, for the sake of it, I decided to take the test.  My results showed I was highly allergic to bananas, asparagus, sesame, egg whites, almonds and very highly allergic to cane sugar.  In fact, I was off the charts!  Again, I cannot say it was a real surprise.  I just feel like hitting myself on the head 100 times.  Boy I am glad I took that test!

The IgG test measures the IgG (Immunoglobulin G) response to 96 specific foods including wheat and dairy.  An allergy is caused when the body mistakenly identifies certain proteins as harmful then reacts to it, resulting in various allergic symptoms, such as mine.  There are studies that show that most of the population can have toxic reactions to common foods that you eat every day.  However, what may produce a reaction in one person, may not produce a reaction in another person.  In other words, the phrase “one man’s food is another man’s poison” is totally applicable in this instance.  Everyone’s systems are different so it is imperative that you find out which ones may be affecting yours.   Testing is easy, it is a simple pin prick in the finger and a few drops of blood are drawn.  The lab will analyze the results and they will be sent back to you via your doctor. 

Dr. Steve Nenninger says this about the IgG testing  as it pertains to a high sugar cane reading , “How can a person be allergic to sugar?  All of the cells of our bodies use sugar as their primary energy source.  So if we were allergic to something so essential to our health then wouldn’t our function be so severely affected that we would be basically dead or dying?  A person needs to restrict sugar when their IgG food allergen panel shows a sugar allergy.  The true reaction to sugar cane has to be proteins or glycoproteins.  In other words, to be allergic to sugar it must be a protein or a sugar connected to a protein.  The most likely culprit for the allergy is a sugar-protein combination that is part of a cell wall.”

For more reading and understanding about IgG testing:  Follow this link to Dr. Nenninger’s blog:  http://drstevenenningerdailyblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/understanding-your-igg-food-allergies.html

What’s the bottom line for me?  No more cane sugar, and the rest of the foods I tested highly for.   Instead, I will sweeten with honey…or as I like to joke…put my birthday candles in a cucumber.  I am excited because I know this will take my health to a new plateau, and I cannot wait to see what I will be able to accomplish as a result of it.   I will write another blog post in a few months and let you know how I feel after eliminating these foods from my diet.