Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w Huggy Bear Bryant, and Jerry's over there. So this is the mod squad. What I'm just mixing metaphors. I can't remember who said it this way, but ever since I was researching this, I've been saying in my head, elimination. What is that? From? Oh me? And uh? It sounds like a mad doctor. Maybe a little bit of German and latka from taxi. I have no idea. Well, when I think elimination, I think that, you know, the term for pooping something out. So it makes me think that it's like the diet where you just poop everything out and you get skinny that way. Oh yeah, I know that's not what it is, but that's what I think about. Man. I feel bad for people with poop problems too. It's a tough thing me too, whether you can't or you do too much, or it's just unpleasant one way or another. Yeah, for sure, it's bad stuff. Yeah, and that has to do with this, because IBS is certainly one condition where one might want and we should do a show on that. But where one might want to propose an elimination diet, you can say it like that whole time. No that I was hoping you were. I'll do one more rule of threes. I'll do one more at some point, but just out of out of nowhere. Huh, you're not gonna know what's coming. You know, there's a chance that you'll forget to do it again. Probably. Okay, that's the stuff you should know. Why under deliver, So, Chuck, we're talking about elimination diets, Yes we are. And um, that doesn't really mean that you poop your your pounds away. It doesn't really have anything to do with losing weight, actually, to tell you the truth. And yet it is one of the hottest trends right now in America at least, if not the Western general. Where you you cut out a bunch of foods and then you add them back to see if there's something behind whatever is bothering you, whether it's irritable bowel syndrome, whether you get headaches, whether you get tired at three pm, whatever it is, you change your lifestyle temporarily, slowly add back all of the components that made up your lifestyle and try to identify the thing that was messing with you, and that's an elimination diet. And it's all the rage right now. Yeah, and this is uh, I mean, I don't know if controversies starry word. Sure, let's say it. It can be controversial in that. Uh. Sometimes someone goes through a doctor, orange nutritionist or some kind of health professional too for an assistance with something like this, But many times these days people will just do it themselves. Yeah mostly I would say, yeah, which isn't inherently bad. Um, if you if you do it the right way, you can learn a lot about your body and what foods work best for you. But it can also go wrong in a lot of ways. Uh, so let's let's get into it. That's my little caveat. I guess well, we're gonna talk more about that later, right, yeah for sure. Okay, alright, So, um, you kind of hit upon how some people go to see like a nutritionist or a doctor to do an elimination diet, and that's originally where the whole thing started. This is an outgrowth of basically a medical procedure where if you say, I don't really feel very good, I my poops are all over the place. Um, I fall as equhile I'm talking to people, I get headaches. I'm feeling kind of anxious. There's a whole suite of of things that I'm not sure what's wrong with me, but there's a lot of stuff that I feel like is wrong with me, and I'm starting to suspect that it might have something to do with my diet. So I'm here to see you doctor nutritionist m D. And the nutritionists will say, what, chuck, I don't know what. What will they say? Maybe they'll say elimination diet. Yeah, they'll say, I propose an elimination diet. And uh that is the sort of middle of the road, legit way to do this. Again, most people do this uh d I Y style, and that's it's not necessarily a bad way to do it. But we're here to tell you how you should go about that. We're not doctors or nutritionists. A good point, but there are some pretty brainless steps that if you don't follow, you could end up you could end up making things work right, which is again why why this is originally a medical procedure that was kind of hijacked and done not that great all the time, But In addition to UM this elimination diet, which we'll go through in a second steps of it. UM, you you UM are probably also going to get a skin prick test where they will UM, well, they prick your skin to see if they get an allergic reaction from you or UM and or a blood test. But here's part of the problem, and I suspect that this is why some people do this on their own. The skin prick test is not an infallible test, and even a blood test for things like food sensitivities and food allergies are UM. I saw it. They give false positives around like sevent of the time, which that's not a test that's worse than chance. It sounds like, I mean, that's terrible. It's a terrible track record, if you'll remember back from our extreme really confusing false positives episode. So I think that's probably why some people do it on their own, is there's like, I don't need the blood test or the skiin prick tests. I can do this myself. That leads me into this statu you know of Americans think they have a food allergy when only three and four do. But just because you don't have a food allergy, and we're going to talk about allergy, sensitivities and intolerances. Uh, it doesn't mean that like if you quit drinking and eating sugar and loading down with carbs, you're you might feel a lot better. Yes, And some people suspect that this is what's really behind an elimination diet because just just from the the attention that you pay to what you're eating or not eating and to your health in general, that it forces you to to to adopt that's um. I mean, that's gonna have probably a positive beneficial effect right that in and of itself, But that's not to say that it doesn't actually do something more than that. Um, And it has to do a lot with food allergies and sensitivities and stuff. And let's take a break and then we'll talk about all that. How about that great h so before we get going with allergies. I wish I could remember his name, But with that last story about the diabetes, I did have one listener right in after that episode and really kind of sent a very sweet and loving email about me and my health. And I'm gonna go back and find out who it was, but uh, you know who you are. If you sent that and that did this is before even this weird false positive, But it meant a lot to me and and kind of kick me into gear even before that test. Oh that's great man, Yeah, it was very nice. Um. So back to allergies. We did a pretty good episode on allergies. Uh. We know that allergies are a defense against what it thinks is a harmful invader, whether it's a virus or some other kind of sickness. Um. But with allergies and food allergies especially, a lot of times it can get it wrong, and you can have your body can think it's wording off an invader that's not really an invader, right it it as far as you're concerned, it's the exact same thing. You can have an allergic reaction. Your body sends either T cells or immunoglobulin cells um that go to the site and say, oh, yeah, look we've got a foreign invader. You in flame, you start a fever, you make this stuff, make make everything itchy, and you have an immune response amounted. Now that's really good. Like you said, if there's like an actual pathogen or whatever, but an allergy is that mistaken identity. It's like strawberry is like, I'm just a strawberry, and they're like, that's what the last pathogen said exactly, I'm onto you, fraud. Uh, and then they beat up the poor strawberry and it's it's it's dead from that point on. But the UM, But that's an allergy. It's it's just mistaken identity. That's the same body processes. It's the thing that's kicking it off shouldn't really be kicking it off. It's not a threat. But again, to you, it doesn't matter. You want to stay away from, Yeah, stay away from strawberries or eggs or soy or peanuts, um, because yeah, I can kill you. And one of the hallmarks of a food allergy in particular is it doesn't matter if you have a peck of strawberries or a bushel um, or if you just have a little nibble of a strawberry, you're going to have that allergic reaction. And you need to stay away from from strawberries altogether, because, like you said, it can be life threatening. Yeah, so that's an allergy. Uh. There's also you can also be intolerant or sensitive UM. Like when we did our gluten episode, a lot of people do not have Celiac disease, but they may be intolerant of gluten. Yeah, yeah, a non celiac gluten sensitivity, I think is what it's called, which is also called gluten intolerance. Yeah, so that's a little bit different because that is an intolerance is triggered by your digestive system, not your immune system. So what this usually means is, uh, you're you you're lacking a certain enzyme maybe that is required to digest whatever food that you're sensitive to or intolerant to. Rather yeah, which doesn't sound like that would be really bad, Like you're just like, Okay, I'll just poop it out. But there's actually some compounds that are found in food that if they enter your digestive tract because you can't break it down, it can wreak havoc on you improve produce all sorts of horrible symptoms in you from pooping everywhere again um, from horrible cramps, bloating um, and then things that have to do with your mood as well, which sounds surprising at first and until you remember that there's like a gut brain connection, like um of the serotonin in your brain is actually produced in your gut. So when your guts going haywire because you've eaten something that you don't have an enzyme to metabolize, other things besides the serotonin production are happening and you might have um some sort of altered brain chemistry as a result. Yeah, and Celiac disease is uh, it has it does have a component of immune system response. So that is that is not this. I mean that is a legit allergy. Right, so the yeah, but gluten sensitivity is is or gluten intolerance is is different. It doesn't have the immune system. But you're still hate in life because you just ate a pizza crust that wasn't made from cauliflower. And again now you're pooping everywhere. Right, then you have the third bucket, which is a sensitivity. And this is not something they have studied much. Um it says in our own article, it's a bit of a mystery of medical science. But we just know that, you know, some people are like MSG makes me feel bad and I'm sensitive to it. That's everybody, right, Does that happen to you? I don't know, because I don't know when I've had MSG. I used to like put straight up MSG on my popcorn. Okay, it's really tasty stuff, but it's it can give you headaches and make you feel like there's a like a triveled claw grabbing the top of your stomach. Just all sorts of weird stuff. Yeah. I just remember, like for a while there, like Chinese food was the enemy of people. Yeah, and I was always like, man, I love Chinese food, but that Chinese food syndrome basically blaming it on ms G. Yeah, I saw that UM basically accused of being kind of racist. Actually before that, like that Chinese food doesn't do that to to anybody anymore than than other foods, especially other foods with MSG. But you're not gonna attack a cheeseburgerburger exactly. It's not like you have freedom fries syndrome or something. It's always Chinese Chinese food syndrome. Yeah, it's this eye opening to see that from that other perspective. Chinese food syndrome rolls off the tongue, you know. Yeah, I'm not gonna give up my egg rol. So the other thing, no way, the other thing about UM sensitivities is that, like you said, it's it's understudied, not well understood, because you might eat some ms G one day and get terrible headaches and that that claw on the top of your stomach, and the next day you might have some ms G and be fine. And so they have no idea what it counts for having the headache and the claw um. And so it's it's something we'll probably know more about in the future, but for now, because we know so little about it. You'll often hear intolerance and sensitivity interchangeable. And this article is one of the few places where I saw them broken out a separate thing. Actually, yeah, and I don't remember how what our attitude was like when we did our gluten episode way back when. I'm sure it was inclusive and welcoming. I hope so, because since Emily has become a gluten intolerant, there have been people that have like poop pooed that. And I'm like, man, if somebody, if somebody's eating something that it even if it's just their perception that it makes them feel bad and they don't want to eat it, right, who cares? So? So I saw this thing. I agree with you, no skin off your back, right, I know what is it that that bugs people like that? I really really wish we could get to the bottom of because I think it would clear up lot of stuff. If you if when you saw that, and I think everybody does it, you just get judgy and just irritated that that somebody's bought into something that you don't believe in or whatever whatever you want to say. Um, if you could step back and be like, oh, I'm just being or you know, well this is my going off. Um, I really think that would clear that up a lot. But it's just so easy to go with that, you know, I know, And I mean maybe it's for some of these people. It's just like not eating heavy breads and enriched flour and and the stuff that gluten is in. Maybe it just makes you feel better to not eat that stuff. That's that's fine too. I saw that the guy who basically proved that that non celiac gluten sensitivity was a thing back in two thousand and eleven. It's an Australian doctor named Peter Oh Doc, we'll just call him Doc Dundee Peter Gibson, Dr Peter Crocodile on the barbie with the Fosters slab as his full aim. But he um he proved that there was a gluten intolerance that wasn't immune based, right. He proved that this was around and when he did follow ups he found that actually, that doesn't seem to be the case, because in these placebo groups they still had the same kind of symptoms. And he now has taken it from gluten to something called fod maps. Have you heard of them? Frementable oglio die mono saccharides and Polly Yall's yeah, I don't remember ever talking about it before in my life. I just came across it in the last two days. I think, okay, well, my brain's shot to hell. But this um, these fod maps. They are a component that's a type of carb and it's found in gluten and some wheat products, but it's also found another stuff too, And so this guy has said, I think these are the actual culprit, not necessarily gluten. Now, if you have sea LEAs, it's gluten, But if you have gluten intolerance, he's saying, I think it's these fob maps. Which is that's great if you can narrow it down even further, But from the looks of it, it sounds like that means you've got a lot of other food that you can eat either rather than just pizza crust, you poor bastard. Yeah, and then the people in the audience of the convention hall say, is he saying fog hat? Free ride? Oh? Should we take a break and then talk about how to do an elimination diet? Oh wait, it's slow ride, you say, free ride? Yeah? I did. I confounded slow ride and free bird and just walked right past the third use of elimination. So I'm a little hippie. I'm going to sleep for the rest of this, okay, all right, So we'll be back right after this to talk about how to do this, okay, man. So if you want to do this yourself, I think you you kind of see o aid right already. Yeah, well, let's do it again. I recommend that you go see a licensed nutritionist. Do some research first. Make sure you get somebody who's really good, maybe an M. D um and say I want to try this, help me out and they'll help you out. Um. Or you can also go on the internet and just find some smoke who's done it before, published a book about it, and is now a multi billionaire because they did their own elimination diet, and now everybody's doing those two. Yeah, if you go to do it on your own, though, it take your time. Uh, this might take a month or two. Don't don't rush in there and be like, all right, I'm gonna eat chicken broth for the next month. Like there are safe ways to do it, and they generally involved four steps, which is planning, uh, the eliminating round, the reintroducing, and then evaluating. Okay, so hold on, before we go any further, just pinpointed how legally exposed we are right now. This is what we're doing. We're saying you were talking to somebody like we're encouraging it. So let's do this instead. Let's say Sally and Tom. Now let's say forget it. We'll say Sally and Tom, Brenda and Eddie. Brenda and Eddie are, um, they're going to do an elimination diet, and this is how they're going to do it. How about that? Great? That's genius, isn't it. So Brenda and Eddie are going to sit down. I thought it was salient Tom, and they say, well, they live next door each other there and they they partner swap, so they're into it. Uh. They said, we gotta plan this out first, honey, and she says, sure, dear, let's do this. Let's sit down and let's us write down a big list of our symptoms when we feel poopy butt, or when we feel super tired or whatever, when our uh, when we feel constipated, maybe, and then let's list out what we think might be some of these problem foods. And what we're really gonna do is start a journal before we do anything, and start writing down what we're eating, maybe for a couple of weeks even, and how we feel after we eat stuff, and maybe we can sort of see a pattern start to emerge. Yeah, and you also want to write down the foods you're craving, foods you would feel like you would have the hardest time giving up. Apparently those are frequently the culprits. Yeah, I've heard of that. I even kids. I didn't know that actually, Yeah, like a kid who's always wants to drink milk may end up having a dairy allergy. So it's basically just our our tendency to punish ourselves is what's behind this stuff. There's probably some evolutionary reason. It makes zero sense, but okay, I don't know. Well, maybe maybe it does make sense, because maybe that could potentially be a dangerous thing, and your body craves it, so it will then know that it's an allergen. I don't know, could be population control, maybe thinning the herd. That's all right. So if you made your list, you're keeping your journal, and you're like, all right, here's what I think the deal is. I think for me, it's sugar and dairy. So I'm gonna eliminate for two to three weeks all dairy and all sugar from my diet. I'm gonna keep up with this journal. Um, I might have some sugar withdrawal. That'll be all right after a few days. And I'm gonna look at my my food diary at the end of this and I might have I might have to start over from scratch, or might say, you know what, I eliminated dairy and I feel great. Right, But since you eliminated, say, dairy and sugar, and actually it's with a lot of elimination diets, you do a bunch of them at once, right, Yeah, but you don't want to do too many at once, So that's true. That's true. You're right, but um, so let's just keep it simple than sugar and dairy. With the caveat that you frequently will need to do more than that. But as you as you cut them out for like two weeks, you've given your body enough time to basically clear up any symptoms that you may have generated by eating this stuff. This is phase two because you've journaled, maybe done a little scrap booking, but that's still part of the same phase, maybe a pinterest board. Phase two is the actual elimination diet. Part of the elimination diet. Yeah, and if you're cutting out something like dairy, like all dairy, then you may need to uh and this is where it really helps if you're working with a health professional. You might need to supplement what you got from that dairy, whether it's calcium or vitamin D or whatever. This is one reason why we switched over to the Sally Tom Brenda Eddie an area because there's a lot there's a lot of things that can go wrong that you can accidentally do to yourself with an elimination diet, which again is why you should go to a professional for it. But Sally and Tom are doing their elimination diet right now. They've cut out sugar and dairy and they've made it to the two week line, and like you said, they feel great, right, And now you get to phase three, which is what's called challenge. It's the challenge phase. And what you're doing is you're challenging your body with these foods that you've cut out to see if the symptoms will produce reproduce, right. And the way that you do that, I'm sorry, this is really tough to remember. The way that Sally and Tom do this is they wake up on the first day of phase three and they have a little bit of um milk cream in their coffee and they have um. They drink it and they sit around and they stare at each other. Maybe take the day off of work um, and then nothing happens, so they have a little more. They have maybe like a glass of milk with lunch, and then maybe they they just drink straight from the cow for dinner and they reintroduce dairy for that one day and then they stop again and then they spend two days back on the elimination diet like it was before and see what happens. And they say, over two days, that's enough time for these symptoms to reappear. And then you do the second step of this phase, which is you go to the sugar. Now you do the same thing. And this is a big key that I hadn't thought about. If you don't produce those symptoms from the first part where you do the dairy and everything's all good and then you move on to the sugar, that doesn't mean you add dairy back in. You stay off of dairy for the rest of the diet. Everything that you quit as you challenge yourself, you still go back to staying off of it as you're doing new challenges, and you keep doing that until you've you've gone through all the food that you cut out, and then you've entered the final phase, which is the done with the elimination diet part of the diet. Yeah, and boy, it can get really confusing because like you've got to be really organized Brenda and Eddie do, because it could like it might be the coffee or the caffeine, you know, and you put the cream in it and you think it's the cream, but it was really the coffee to begin with, So maybe you should have eliminated coffee as well at the beginning. Uh. But it's also it's also can be very broad, like it's not like well, this one vegetable is the cause of all my troubles or milk is really what kills me. But I'm fine with cheese and every other form of dairy. Like it's probably a broader category like dairy in general. Yeah, a food group is what they still call them, just like when we were kids. Yeah, like, so, yeah, you're gonna cut out dairy, you're gonna cut out carbs, or you're gonna cut out so kinds of vegetables or like gooms or something like that, or maybe meat um or wheat whatever, But these are all considered food groups. So yeah, you might have like a little creamer in your coffee and then like cheese at dinner or something like that. And as when you're reintroducing the dairy food group, but because it could be as specific as a type of cheese, you know, there's a lot of difference between fresh cheese and you know cheese it's been cave aged for five years. That could actually make a difference in your sensitivity to it. Yeah, Or is is chuck uh lactose intolerant or does he get poopy butt when he eats a pint of sugary ice cream? All in one sitting you know, right, which again is another reason why you want to UM why a lot of people will cut out more than just a couple of food groups. And then when they when they challenge, you've gotta you gotta keep it pure like that. I think that's what you're saying, right, You don't want to mix sugar and dairy together when you challenge your body again in during the elimination diet. Correct. Yeah, And and I think maybe I was just trying to speak to to like, you know, if I half a pizza and a pint of ice cream, that doesn't necessarily mean I am dairy intolerant. That maybe means that you shouldn't eat four pieces of pizza. I need a big thing on ice cream. I got you, you know what I mean? Like, that's that's an overdose of dairy, which is not the same thing as like, m dairy really messes me up. I'm really glad you brought that up because that's actually again that's a distinction between UM uh an intolerance or a sensitivity and UH an allergy. You remember, with an allergy, it doesn't matter how much of the food you eat, you're gonna have reaction. With a sensitivity, UM and an intolerance too little amounts. Can you can slide by with them? And that's actually one of the things that people find out with elimination diets is Okay, I'm sensitive to to dairy, but I've found that I could I can actually have one slice pizzas. When I have that second or third one that I begin to poop everywhere. Yeah, Or like alcohol, I can have a glass of wine and I'm fine. What I'm allergic to is nine gin and tonics, Like that's why, that's why I have poopy butt. Right, That's not why I have poopy But I'm just saying in general everywhere that that was Eddie and Tom talking. Oh right right. Yeah. Here's another cool thing though, if you already have other allergies have nothing to do with food, you kind of have a head start because a lot of times they're I don't know code morbid as a word, but uh, like if you have a latex allergy, it's you could also be allergic to like certain vegetables or fruits, and they have you know, there are lists where people know, like doctors know, hey, latex is also sort of co morbid with apples. Let's say, so, do you eat apples. Are you allergic to latex? That might be a problem. Isn't that fascinating? I looked up I was like, well, why why do they you know, I think it's called um co. It's not more abid what cross reactive? Yeah, it's called the cross reactive food. And they they don't know. They just know that if you have a latex um if you have a latex allergy, you're probably very allergic to say bananas or something too. So that's that's wonderful. It's nice that there's still new mysteries out there that people are looking into. When you have a latex allergy and they ask you that at the dentist in doctor and you do have one, does that mean they dig into your mouth with their bare hands? Uh? I know. I think there's non latex gloves. I think nitrial gloves is non latex. Why don't they just use those all the time? Then they probably do just out of you know, keeping it cheaper and just everyone always asked though, still, do you have a latex allergy? Yeah? Because I don't think it's just the gloves. It can be like an intubation tube or there's a lot of latex going on and it has a do with an enzyme that's in natural rubber which makes its way into latex, which so you're really allergic to. If you go to the proctologist and ask if you have a latex allergy and you say yes, then your doctor has another alternative. Yeah. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, No, Actually I don't you know what a proctologist does. Oh did you say proctologists? Yes? I do. Okay, shall we move on? That was that was rough? All right, Let's talk about the how this can go bad. Um. It can go back in a lot of ways. Like we said, if you eliminate something that your body needs, a certain vitamin or something, and you eliminate all that, then your body might become deficient if you don't add something back in that will help make up for that. Or you sent a very interesting article, uh about something that I never heard of called orthor rexia or the thing that everybody we know has right now, do you think yeah, to some degree, yes, I totally do so orthorexia this um uh, this very brave woman wrote this article orthorexia colon how my clean eating turned into anorexia and orthorexia Even though it's not recognized by the d s m IS basically, but is recognized by the National Eating Disorders Association. Is kind of UH is kind of taking UM label reading and nutritional label reading and and thinking about what you're eating to the most obsessive level possible. It's a it's it's it's an eating disorder, but rather than being UM zoned in on calorie restriction like traditional anorexia UM and weight loss, it's an obsession with healthy or clean eating. And if you look around, if you realize this, you're like, there is this is all. This is all over the place. Like look around on the internet and see how many foods are labeled like toxic, Like this is a toxic food. Strawberries are toxic and you smack your hand as you try to take a bite of it or something like that. Or there's something called the plant paradox diet, which is like tomatoes are toxic like gooms or toxic like the just the way that people look at food now it's either good or bad. It's pure or it's toxic. It's healthy or it can kill you. This is very much where um orthorexia is rooted. Yeah, and with this woman in particular, Um. She wrote about her her journey through this and how it was getting worse and worse and how her friends started to notice like she would go and she said she spiraled into a total panic if she happened to eat something that was quote unquote bad. Uh, And it was just completely compulsive, like reading and rereading uh these nutritional lay bowls. Um feeling really anxious if you're if you're not reading these things, and it actually led to anorexi at her friend UM stepped in and said, hey, listen, I think you need to like get some help here. Things are getting a little out of hand. And luckily, uh, this woman in this case at least was listened, went to a health professional and they confirmed that she had had uh had morphed into anorexia. Right the way that it had morphed inn anorex is because she had whittled down her list of acceptable foods to such a small degree that she was becoming malnourished because there was so few types of foods that she would allow herself to eat. And I guess a byproduct of that was just inadvertent calorie restriction and like major weight loss too. But again she wasn't couldn't. She wasn't obsessed with um, her weight. It was good food or bad food, pure food or toxic food that and that distinction, and then becoming like obsessed with that, like thinking about that kind of food and foods you should avoid and and um, she points out, apparently one of the kind of accepted criterias that like you obsessively follow, like like fitness or nutrition experts or self proclaimed experts on like social media or something like that. And I think just in addition to obsessing about good food versus bad, it's just obsessing about food in general, and it begins to take over your life and you change your life. Like she was saying, she just stopped going to parties because she knew that it would be weird if she didn't drink or she didn't eat a slice of birthday cake. Um, So she just stopped going to those kind of social functions and eventually after a while, stopped getting invited to him too. So it had like a major effect on her life as well. It is extremely sad, and you're right, she was brave for writing this. Her name is Hannah Matthews and the article was orthor xia, How am I clean eating? Turned into anorexia in self. I think it was right, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. One of the other good things though about an elimination diet um in our own article that they point out is is one good side effect is, uh, it just makes you really pay attention to what you're eating. And that's always good if you're like keeping food journals and trying to clean up your diet, even if for something that ends up being a psycho somatic food reaction, which is a thing. Um that's okay, and those psychosomatic food reactions are real. I mean, just because it's not a physiological response doesn't mean your body doesn't go a certain direction because you think, you know, I'm gonna eat this slice of bread and it's gonna make me feel like crap. It's like a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But paying attention to your diet in general can be a positive result of one of these, so Brenda and any out with God, right, that's the thing is, like, yes, there are positive benefits. There's also pitfalls and pratfalls, and some of them can be substantial, like accidentally ending up malnourished or accidentally triggering UM an eating disorder in yourself. Um, And so again this is why it's good to go see your professional. But but I think the fact that there's just so many people who have just come up with their own elimination diet and like blog about it and now have like licensing agreements with hot dog companies because you're allowed to eat hot dogs on this elimination diet, which makes zero sense. Um, it's like a it's a it's just to me, it's a symptom of a larger death of of expertise that that we're going through. You don't have to be an expert at anything. You don't have to be actually to know what you're talking about. It's a good way to say it. You can start a blog or a website or an Instagram and people follow what you're saying, even if you like, I have no idea what you're doing. Yeah, and then like this stuff you're saying isn't backed by any research or peer view or whatever. And I realized, like, you can look at what we do from a certain perspective and be like, that's pretty rich that you're even bringing this up, Pal, But we like that we're not experts, but we defer to experts. Typically we like there are research is based on stuff that experts have come up with, are people who know what they're talking about have come up with And this is very largely like some dude just came up with his elimination diet, and now you know, ten percent of the country's trying it themselves and the hopes that it will it will finally change their their life in some positive way. And um, I don't know it was that the Hannah Matthews orthorexia article really kind of was eye opening to how I view food too, Like it's definitely, um, like my attitude towards food has changed, that there's definitely something you just shouldn't need, that it's better food that's terrible, and and like that, you know, stay away from that. And I realized, like I think about food a lot, and it's not just I want to eat, but also I should stay away from this or whatever. And it's I feel like a lot of people are kind of moving in that direction, just kind of developing unhealthy relationship with food. But then I asked myself, so what I just should stop paying attention to just eat whatever. And I can tell you based on history when I do that I tend to get a little tubby, a little unhealthy and unhappy by a little. Yeah, a little, I mean like a lot. Right, So that points me to this direction that there's a third thing. There's some underlying thing that has to do with my relationship with food that I've not gotten to the bottom yet. But just obsessing over healthy food versus toxic food or whatever, it helps, Like I definitely eat better and I feel better than general. But if you're still thinking too much about something, if something that shouldn't be as big a component of your life is a big component, then it suggests that there's something else there that you haven't gotten to the bottom of. And I'm talking to you specifically, Brenda and Eddie. Somewhere between you and me there is a healthy middle ground, and that's probably Jerry. That's right. It always comes down to Jerry Chuck. That's right. Have you got anything else? Uh? No, I will say though that um for all you Billy Joel fans, and I very much purposely said Brenda and Eddie, So save your emails, okay, Well, also save your emails because now I know even though I had no idea until just now, I said Sally and Tom because I have no imagination. Yeah, well know that great Springsteen song Sally and Tom ride west Man. That's pretty believable, Chuck, is it a real song? No, Springstein certainly saying about a lot of people. But that's that's what I mean. That was believable joke. Uh. If you want to know more about elimination diets, um man, they're they're out there. But go see your nutritionists. That's our advice. And since I said nutrition, this is time for listening, may you. Yeah, and this is uh not so much a listener mail as it is a little shout out to our friends at COED. That's right. So everyone, if you are not hip to co ED, let us fill you in. Because back in two thousand nine, oh man, it's been a while. Back in I think two thousand nine, COED, which is the Cooperative for Education, said hey, guys, we've got this cool um ngo down in Guatemala where we see to it that as many indigenous Guatemalan kids get educations where otherwise they wouldn't, and we want to come show you what we got. So we ended up going down there and did a two part episode about what we saw. Yeah, it was it was really cool, and they've been We've been kind of working with them off and on through the years to help raise awareness. And I think my favorite thing about their organization is how specific their mission is. Uh, they're not They're they're literally trying to educate kids because they think that is the basis of pulling people out of the cycle of poverty. And they're right, because it's working. Uh. And right now they have something going on called the Thousand Girls Initiative and they are trying to keep literally one thousand girls in Guatemala from dropping out of school because education is really what it takes to break the cycle of poverty everywhere, but especially in UH in rural Guatemala. Yeah, from their research, they found that um, something like twelve years of education is what it takes to break the cycle of poverty in Guatemala, but that the average rural Guatemalan has about a one and twenty chance of getting twelve years of education. So what they do is they have a several a number of programs set up, but one of them is where you are sponsored and you bought your paying in as a kid, You're paying into this book fund and you get your books up front. But then as you're paying in over time, and it's enough that even like UM, some of the poorest of the rural Guatemalan families can can pay for this um. When the books run out, you can replace them from this fund that you've been paying into over time, or if the books stay good, you can buy more books that you didn't have before, or things like computers and all this stuff. And so kids who would have normally had to drop out of school and work in the fields with their families now have a chance to stay in because they're not costing their families as much by going to school, so their families can invest in their kids education. Yeah, you can sponsor one of these students for eighty dollars a month, or if you want to only pay forty dollars a month, you can do that because they will pair you with another sponsor. And all you have to do is go to Thousand Girls Initiative dot org or just go to the co ed page. They have a lot of great ways you can take part. And you know, it's it's it's one of these things where you are literally like, I'm sponsoring this girl. That's her name, there's her picture, and she's going to get to go to school now because is I'm pairing up with someone else and throwing forty dollars a month their way? Uh? And it's it once again. Thousands girls initiative dot org can mean anything more worthwhile, agreed, man um, So go check them out and if you want to get in touch with us in the meantime, you can hang out with us at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com, where you'll find links to all of our social media accounts, and you can also send us an email. Just send it off to Stuff Podcasts how Stuff Works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com.

Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w Huggy Bear Bryant, and Jerry's over there. So this is the mod squad. What I'm just mixing metaphors. I can't remember who said it this way, but ever since I was researching this, I've been saying in my head, elimination. What is that? From? Oh me? And uh? It sounds like a mad doctor. Maybe a little bit of German and latka from taxi. I have no idea. Well, when I think elimination, I think that, you know, the term for pooping something out. So it makes me think that it's like the diet where you just poop everything out and you get skinny that way. Oh yeah, I know that's not what it is, but that's what I think about. Man. I feel bad for people with poop problems too. It's a tough thing me too, whether you can't or you do too much, or it's just unpleasant one way or another. Yeah, for sure, it's bad stuff. Yeah, and that has to do with this, because IBS is certainly one condition where one might want and we should do a show on that. But where one might want to propose an elimination diet, you can say it like that whole time. No that I was hoping you were. I'll do one more rule of threes. I'll do one more at some point, but just out of out of nowhere. Huh, you're not gonna know what's coming. You know, there's a chance that you'll forget to do it again. Probably. Okay, that's the stuff you should know. Why under deliver, So, Chuck, we're talking about elimination diets, Yes we are. And um, that doesn't really mean that you poop your your pounds away. It doesn't really have anything to do with losing weight, actually, to tell you the truth. And yet it is one of the hottest trends right now in America at least, if not the Western general. Where you you cut out a bunch of foods and then you add them back to see if there's something behind whatever is bothering you, whether it's irritable bowel syndrome, whether you get headaches, whether you get tired at three pm, whatever it is, you change your lifestyle temporarily, slowly add back all of the components that made up your lifestyle and try to identify the thing that was messing with you, and that's an elimination diet. And it's all the rage right now. Yeah, and this is uh, I mean, I don't know if controversies starry word. Sure, let's say it. It can be controversial in that. Uh. Sometimes someone goes through a doctor, orange nutritionist or some kind of health professional too for an assistance with something like this, But many times these days people will just do it themselves. Yeah mostly I would say, yeah, which isn't inherently bad. Um, if you if you do it the right way, you can learn a lot about your body and what foods work best for you. But it can also go wrong in a lot of ways. Uh, so let's let's get into it. That's my little caveat. I guess well, we're gonna talk more about that later, right, yeah for sure. Okay, alright, So, um, you kind of hit upon how some people go to see like a nutritionist or a doctor to do an elimination diet, and that's originally where the whole thing started. This is an outgrowth of basically a medical procedure where if you say, I don't really feel very good, I my poops are all over the place. Um, I fall as equhile I'm talking to people, I get headaches. I'm feeling kind of anxious. There's a whole suite of of things that I'm not sure what's wrong with me, but there's a lot of stuff that I feel like is wrong with me, and I'm starting to suspect that it might have something to do with my diet. So I'm here to see you doctor nutritionist m D. And the nutritionists will say, what, chuck, I don't know what. What will they say? Maybe they'll say elimination diet. Yeah, they'll say, I propose an elimination diet. And uh that is the sort of middle of the road, legit way to do this. Again, most people do this uh d I Y style, and that's it's not necessarily a bad way to do it. But we're here to tell you how you should go about that. We're not doctors or nutritionists. A good point, but there are some pretty brainless steps that if you don't follow, you could end up you could end up making things work right, which is again why why this is originally a medical procedure that was kind of hijacked and done not that great all the time, But In addition to UM this elimination diet, which we'll go through in a second steps of it. UM, you you UM are probably also going to get a skin prick test where they will UM, well, they prick your skin to see if they get an allergic reaction from you or UM and or a blood test. But here's part of the problem, and I suspect that this is why some people do this on their own. The skin prick test is not an infallible test, and even a blood test for things like food sensitivities and food allergies are UM. I saw it. They give false positives around like sevent of the time, which that's not a test that's worse than chance. It sounds like, I mean, that's terrible. It's a terrible track record, if you'll remember back from our extreme really confusing false positives episode. So I think that's probably why some people do it on their own, is there's like, I don't need the blood test or the skiin prick tests. I can do this myself. That leads me into this statu you know of Americans think they have a food allergy when only three and four do. But just because you don't have a food allergy, and we're going to talk about allergy, sensitivities and intolerances. Uh, it doesn't mean that like if you quit drinking and eating sugar and loading down with carbs, you're you might feel a lot better. Yes, And some people suspect that this is what's really behind an elimination diet because just just from the the attention that you pay to what you're eating or not eating and to your health in general, that it forces you to to to adopt that's um. I mean, that's gonna have probably a positive beneficial effect right that in and of itself, But that's not to say that it doesn't actually do something more than that. Um, And it has to do a lot with food allergies and sensitivities and stuff. And let's take a break and then we'll talk about all that. How about that great h so before we get going with allergies. I wish I could remember his name, But with that last story about the diabetes, I did have one listener right in after that episode and really kind of sent a very sweet and loving email about me and my health. And I'm gonna go back and find out who it was, but uh, you know who you are. If you sent that and that did this is before even this weird false positive, But it meant a lot to me and and kind of kick me into gear even before that test. Oh that's great man, Yeah, it was very nice. Um. So back to allergies. We did a pretty good episode on allergies. Uh. We know that allergies are a defense against what it thinks is a harmful invader, whether it's a virus or some other kind of sickness. Um. But with allergies and food allergies especially, a lot of times it can get it wrong, and you can have your body can think it's wording off an invader that's not really an invader, right it it as far as you're concerned, it's the exact same thing. You can have an allergic reaction. Your body sends either T cells or immunoglobulin cells um that go to the site and say, oh, yeah, look we've got a foreign invader. You in flame, you start a fever, you make this stuff, make make everything itchy, and you have an immune response amounted. Now that's really good. Like you said, if there's like an actual pathogen or whatever, but an allergy is that mistaken identity. It's like strawberry is like, I'm just a strawberry, and they're like, that's what the last pathogen said exactly, I'm onto you, fraud. Uh, and then they beat up the poor strawberry and it's it's it's dead from that point on. But the UM, But that's an allergy. It's it's just mistaken identity. That's the same body processes. It's the thing that's kicking it off shouldn't really be kicking it off. It's not a threat. But again, to you, it doesn't matter. You want to stay away from, Yeah, stay away from strawberries or eggs or soy or peanuts, um, because yeah, I can kill you. And one of the hallmarks of a food allergy in particular is it doesn't matter if you have a peck of strawberries or a bushel um, or if you just have a little nibble of a strawberry, you're going to have that allergic reaction. And you need to stay away from from strawberries altogether, because, like you said, it can be life threatening. Yeah, so that's an allergy. Uh. There's also you can also be intolerant or sensitive UM. Like when we did our gluten episode, a lot of people do not have Celiac disease, but they may be intolerant of gluten. Yeah, yeah, a non celiac gluten sensitivity, I think is what it's called, which is also called gluten intolerance. Yeah, so that's a little bit different because that is an intolerance is triggered by your digestive system, not your immune system. So what this usually means is, uh, you're you you're lacking a certain enzyme maybe that is required to digest whatever food that you're sensitive to or intolerant to. Rather yeah, which doesn't sound like that would be really bad, Like you're just like, Okay, I'll just poop it out. But there's actually some compounds that are found in food that if they enter your digestive tract because you can't break it down, it can wreak havoc on you improve produce all sorts of horrible symptoms in you from pooping everywhere again um, from horrible cramps, bloating um, and then things that have to do with your mood as well, which sounds surprising at first and until you remember that there's like a gut brain connection, like um of the serotonin in your brain is actually produced in your gut. So when your guts going haywire because you've eaten something that you don't have an enzyme to metabolize, other things besides the serotonin production are happening and you might have um some sort of altered brain chemistry as a result. Yeah, and Celiac disease is uh, it has it does have a component of immune system response. So that is that is not this. I mean that is a legit allergy. Right, so the yeah, but gluten sensitivity is is or gluten intolerance is is different. It doesn't have the immune system. But you're still hate in life because you just ate a pizza crust that wasn't made from cauliflower. And again now you're pooping everywhere. Right, then you have the third bucket, which is a sensitivity. And this is not something they have studied much. Um it says in our own article, it's a bit of a mystery of medical science. But we just know that, you know, some people are like MSG makes me feel bad and I'm sensitive to it. That's everybody, right, Does that happen to you? I don't know, because I don't know when I've had MSG. I used to like put straight up MSG on my popcorn. Okay, it's really tasty stuff, but it's it can give you headaches and make you feel like there's a like a triveled claw grabbing the top of your stomach. Just all sorts of weird stuff. Yeah. I just remember, like for a while there, like Chinese food was the enemy of people. Yeah, and I was always like, man, I love Chinese food, but that Chinese food syndrome basically blaming it on ms G. Yeah, I saw that UM basically accused of being kind of racist. Actually before that, like that Chinese food doesn't do that to to anybody anymore than than other foods, especially other foods with MSG. But you're not gonna attack a cheeseburgerburger exactly. It's not like you have freedom fries syndrome or something. It's always Chinese Chinese food syndrome. Yeah, it's this eye opening to see that from that other perspective. Chinese food syndrome rolls off the tongue, you know. Yeah, I'm not gonna give up my egg rol. So the other thing, no way, the other thing about UM sensitivities is that, like you said, it's it's understudied, not well understood, because you might eat some ms G one day and get terrible headaches and that that claw on the top of your stomach, and the next day you might have some ms G and be fine. And so they have no idea what it counts for having the headache and the claw um. And so it's it's something we'll probably know more about in the future, but for now, because we know so little about it. You'll often hear intolerance and sensitivity interchangeable. And this article is one of the few places where I saw them broken out a separate thing. Actually, yeah, and I don't remember how what our attitude was like when we did our gluten episode way back when. I'm sure it was inclusive and welcoming. I hope so, because since Emily has become a gluten intolerant, there have been people that have like poop pooed that. And I'm like, man, if somebody, if somebody's eating something that it even if it's just their perception that it makes them feel bad and they don't want to eat it, right, who cares? So? So I saw this thing. I agree with you, no skin off your back, right, I know what is it that that bugs people like that? I really really wish we could get to the bottom of because I think it would clear up lot of stuff. If you if when you saw that, and I think everybody does it, you just get judgy and just irritated that that somebody's bought into something that you don't believe in or whatever whatever you want to say. Um, if you could step back and be like, oh, I'm just being or you know, well this is my going off. Um, I really think that would clear that up a lot. But it's just so easy to go with that, you know, I know, And I mean maybe it's for some of these people. It's just like not eating heavy breads and enriched flour and and the stuff that gluten is in. Maybe it just makes you feel better to not eat that stuff. That's that's fine too. I saw that the guy who basically proved that that non celiac gluten sensitivity was a thing back in two thousand and eleven. It's an Australian doctor named Peter Oh Doc, we'll just call him Doc Dundee Peter Gibson, Dr Peter Crocodile on the barbie with the Fosters slab as his full aim. But he um he proved that there was a gluten intolerance that wasn't immune based, right. He proved that this was around and when he did follow ups he found that actually, that doesn't seem to be the case, because in these placebo groups they still had the same kind of symptoms. And he now has taken it from gluten to something called fod maps. Have you heard of them? Frementable oglio die mono saccharides and Polly Yall's yeah, I don't remember ever talking about it before in my life. I just came across it in the last two days. I think, okay, well, my brain's shot to hell. But this um, these fod maps. They are a component that's a type of carb and it's found in gluten and some wheat products, but it's also found another stuff too, And so this guy has said, I think these are the actual culprit, not necessarily gluten. Now, if you have sea LEAs, it's gluten, But if you have gluten intolerance, he's saying, I think it's these fob maps. Which is that's great if you can narrow it down even further, But from the looks of it, it sounds like that means you've got a lot of other food that you can eat either rather than just pizza crust, you poor bastard. Yeah, and then the people in the audience of the convention hall say, is he saying fog hat? Free ride? Oh? Should we take a break and then talk about how to do an elimination diet? Oh wait, it's slow ride, you say, free ride? Yeah? I did. I confounded slow ride and free bird and just walked right past the third use of elimination. So I'm a little hippie. I'm going to sleep for the rest of this, okay, all right, So we'll be back right after this to talk about how to do this, okay, man. So if you want to do this yourself, I think you you kind of see o aid right already. Yeah, well, let's do it again. I recommend that you go see a licensed nutritionist. Do some research first. Make sure you get somebody who's really good, maybe an M. D um and say I want to try this, help me out and they'll help you out. Um. Or you can also go on the internet and just find some smoke who's done it before, published a book about it, and is now a multi billionaire because they did their own elimination diet, and now everybody's doing those two. Yeah, if you go to do it on your own, though, it take your time. Uh, this might take a month or two. Don't don't rush in there and be like, all right, I'm gonna eat chicken broth for the next month. Like there are safe ways to do it, and they generally involved four steps, which is planning, uh, the eliminating round, the reintroducing, and then evaluating. Okay, so hold on, before we go any further, just pinpointed how legally exposed we are right now. This is what we're doing. We're saying you were talking to somebody like we're encouraging it. So let's do this instead. Let's say Sally and Tom. Now let's say forget it. We'll say Sally and Tom, Brenda and Eddie. Brenda and Eddie are, um, they're going to do an elimination diet, and this is how they're going to do it. How about that? Great? That's genius, isn't it. So Brenda and Eddie are going to sit down. I thought it was salient Tom, and they say, well, they live next door each other there and they they partner swap, so they're into it. Uh. They said, we gotta plan this out first, honey, and she says, sure, dear, let's do this. Let's sit down and let's us write down a big list of our symptoms when we feel poopy butt, or when we feel super tired or whatever, when our uh, when we feel constipated, maybe, and then let's list out what we think might be some of these problem foods. And what we're really gonna do is start a journal before we do anything, and start writing down what we're eating, maybe for a couple of weeks even, and how we feel after we eat stuff, and maybe we can sort of see a pattern start to emerge. Yeah, and you also want to write down the foods you're craving, foods you would feel like you would have the hardest time giving up. Apparently those are frequently the culprits. Yeah, I've heard of that. I even kids. I didn't know that actually, Yeah, like a kid who's always wants to drink milk may end up having a dairy allergy. So it's basically just our our tendency to punish ourselves is what's behind this stuff. There's probably some evolutionary reason. It makes zero sense, but okay, I don't know. Well, maybe maybe it does make sense, because maybe that could potentially be a dangerous thing, and your body craves it, so it will then know that it's an allergen. I don't know, could be population control, maybe thinning the herd. That's all right. So if you made your list, you're keeping your journal, and you're like, all right, here's what I think the deal is. I think for me, it's sugar and dairy. So I'm gonna eliminate for two to three weeks all dairy and all sugar from my diet. I'm gonna keep up with this journal. Um, I might have some sugar withdrawal. That'll be all right after a few days. And I'm gonna look at my my food diary at the end of this and I might have I might have to start over from scratch, or might say, you know what, I eliminated dairy and I feel great. Right, But since you eliminated, say, dairy and sugar, and actually it's with a lot of elimination diets, you do a bunch of them at once, right, Yeah, but you don't want to do too many at once, So that's true. That's true. You're right, but um, so let's just keep it simple than sugar and dairy. With the caveat that you frequently will need to do more than that. But as you as you cut them out for like two weeks, you've given your body enough time to basically clear up any symptoms that you may have generated by eating this stuff. This is phase two because you've journaled, maybe done a little scrap booking, but that's still part of the same phase, maybe a pinterest board. Phase two is the actual elimination diet. Part of the elimination diet. Yeah, and if you're cutting out something like dairy, like all dairy, then you may need to uh and this is where it really helps if you're working with a health professional. You might need to supplement what you got from that dairy, whether it's calcium or vitamin D or whatever. This is one reason why we switched over to the Sally Tom Brenda Eddie an area because there's a lot there's a lot of things that can go wrong that you can accidentally do to yourself with an elimination diet, which again is why you should go to a professional for it. But Sally and Tom are doing their elimination diet right now. They've cut out sugar and dairy and they've made it to the two week line, and like you said, they feel great, right, And now you get to phase three, which is what's called challenge. It's the challenge phase. And what you're doing is you're challenging your body with these foods that you've cut out to see if the symptoms will produce reproduce, right. And the way that you do that, I'm sorry, this is really tough to remember. The way that Sally and Tom do this is they wake up on the first day of phase three and they have a little bit of um milk cream in their coffee and they have um. They drink it and they sit around and they stare at each other. Maybe take the day off of work um, and then nothing happens, so they have a little more. They have maybe like a glass of milk with lunch, and then maybe they they just drink straight from the cow for dinner and they reintroduce dairy for that one day and then they stop again and then they spend two days back on the elimination diet like it was before and see what happens. And they say, over two days, that's enough time for these symptoms to reappear. And then you do the second step of this phase, which is you go to the sugar. Now you do the same thing. And this is a big key that I hadn't thought about. If you don't produce those symptoms from the first part where you do the dairy and everything's all good and then you move on to the sugar, that doesn't mean you add dairy back in. You stay off of dairy for the rest of the diet. Everything that you quit as you challenge yourself, you still go back to staying off of it as you're doing new challenges, and you keep doing that until you've you've gone through all the food that you cut out, and then you've entered the final phase, which is the done with the elimination diet part of the diet. Yeah, and boy, it can get really confusing because like you've got to be really organized Brenda and Eddie do, because it could like it might be the coffee or the caffeine, you know, and you put the cream in it and you think it's the cream, but it was really the coffee to begin with, So maybe you should have eliminated coffee as well at the beginning. Uh. But it's also it's also can be very broad, like it's not like well, this one vegetable is the cause of all my troubles or milk is really what kills me. But I'm fine with cheese and every other form of dairy. Like it's probably a broader category like dairy in general. Yeah, a food group is what they still call them, just like when we were kids. Yeah, like, so, yeah, you're gonna cut out dairy, you're gonna cut out carbs, or you're gonna cut out so kinds of vegetables or like gooms or something like that, or maybe meat um or wheat whatever, But these are all considered food groups. So yeah, you might have like a little creamer in your coffee and then like cheese at dinner or something like that. And as when you're reintroducing the dairy food group, but because it could be as specific as a type of cheese, you know, there's a lot of difference between fresh cheese and you know cheese it's been cave aged for five years. That could actually make a difference in your sensitivity to it. Yeah, Or is is chuck uh lactose intolerant or does he get poopy butt when he eats a pint of sugary ice cream? All in one sitting you know, right, which again is another reason why you want to UM why a lot of people will cut out more than just a couple of food groups. And then when they when they challenge, you've gotta you gotta keep it pure like that. I think that's what you're saying, right, You don't want to mix sugar and dairy together when you challenge your body again in during the elimination diet. Correct. Yeah, And and I think maybe I was just trying to speak to to like, you know, if I half a pizza and a pint of ice cream, that doesn't necessarily mean I am dairy intolerant. That maybe means that you shouldn't eat four pieces of pizza. I need a big thing on ice cream. I got you, you know what I mean? Like, that's that's an overdose of dairy, which is not the same thing as like, m dairy really messes me up. I'm really glad you brought that up because that's actually again that's a distinction between UM uh an intolerance or a sensitivity and UH an allergy. You remember, with an allergy, it doesn't matter how much of the food you eat, you're gonna have reaction. With a sensitivity, UM and an intolerance too little amounts. Can you can slide by with them? And that's actually one of the things that people find out with elimination diets is Okay, I'm sensitive to to dairy, but I've found that I could I can actually have one slice pizzas. When I have that second or third one that I begin to poop everywhere. Yeah, Or like alcohol, I can have a glass of wine and I'm fine. What I'm allergic to is nine gin and tonics, Like that's why, that's why I have poopy butt. Right, That's not why I have poopy But I'm just saying in general everywhere that that was Eddie and Tom talking. Oh right right. Yeah. Here's another cool thing though, if you already have other allergies have nothing to do with food, you kind of have a head start because a lot of times they're I don't know code morbid as a word, but uh, like if you have a latex allergy, it's you could also be allergic to like certain vegetables or fruits, and they have you know, there are lists where people know, like doctors know, hey, latex is also sort of co morbid with apples. Let's say, so, do you eat apples. Are you allergic to latex? That might be a problem. Isn't that fascinating? I looked up I was like, well, why why do they you know, I think it's called um co. It's not more abid what cross reactive? Yeah, it's called the cross reactive food. And they they don't know. They just know that if you have a latex um if you have a latex allergy, you're probably very allergic to say bananas or something too. So that's that's wonderful. It's nice that there's still new mysteries out there that people are looking into. When you have a latex allergy and they ask you that at the dentist in doctor and you do have one, does that mean they dig into your mouth with their bare hands? Uh? I know. I think there's non latex gloves. I think nitrial gloves is non latex. Why don't they just use those all the time? Then they probably do just out of you know, keeping it cheaper and just everyone always asked though, still, do you have a latex allergy? Yeah? Because I don't think it's just the gloves. It can be like an intubation tube or there's a lot of latex going on and it has a do with an enzyme that's in natural rubber which makes its way into latex, which so you're really allergic to. If you go to the proctologist and ask if you have a latex allergy and you say yes, then your doctor has another alternative. Yeah. Yeah, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, No, Actually I don't you know what a proctologist does. Oh did you say proctologists? Yes? I do. Okay, shall we move on? That was that was rough? All right, Let's talk about the how this can go bad. Um. It can go back in a lot of ways. Like we said, if you eliminate something that your body needs, a certain vitamin or something, and you eliminate all that, then your body might become deficient if you don't add something back in that will help make up for that. Or you sent a very interesting article, uh about something that I never heard of called orthor rexia or the thing that everybody we know has right now, do you think yeah, to some degree, yes, I totally do so orthorexia this um uh, this very brave woman wrote this article orthorexia colon how my clean eating turned into anorexia and orthorexia Even though it's not recognized by the d s m IS basically, but is recognized by the National Eating Disorders Association. Is kind of UH is kind of taking UM label reading and nutritional label reading and and thinking about what you're eating to the most obsessive level possible. It's a it's it's it's an eating disorder, but rather than being UM zoned in on calorie restriction like traditional anorexia UM and weight loss, it's an obsession with healthy or clean eating. And if you look around, if you realize this, you're like, there is this is all. This is all over the place. Like look around on the internet and see how many foods are labeled like toxic, Like this is a toxic food. Strawberries are toxic and you smack your hand as you try to take a bite of it or something like that. Or there's something called the plant paradox diet, which is like tomatoes are toxic like gooms or toxic like the just the way that people look at food now it's either good or bad. It's pure or it's toxic. It's healthy or it can kill you. This is very much where um orthorexia is rooted. Yeah, and with this woman in particular, Um. She wrote about her her journey through this and how it was getting worse and worse and how her friends started to notice like she would go and she said she spiraled into a total panic if she happened to eat something that was quote unquote bad. Uh, And it was just completely compulsive, like reading and rereading uh these nutritional lay bowls. Um feeling really anxious if you're if you're not reading these things, and it actually led to anorexi at her friend UM stepped in and said, hey, listen, I think you need to like get some help here. Things are getting a little out of hand. And luckily, uh, this woman in this case at least was listened, went to a health professional and they confirmed that she had had uh had morphed into anorexia. Right the way that it had morphed inn anorex is because she had whittled down her list of acceptable foods to such a small degree that she was becoming malnourished because there was so few types of foods that she would allow herself to eat. And I guess a byproduct of that was just inadvertent calorie restriction and like major weight loss too. But again she wasn't couldn't. She wasn't obsessed with um, her weight. It was good food or bad food, pure food or toxic food that and that distinction, and then becoming like obsessed with that, like thinking about that kind of food and foods you should avoid and and um, she points out, apparently one of the kind of accepted criterias that like you obsessively follow, like like fitness or nutrition experts or self proclaimed experts on like social media or something like that. And I think just in addition to obsessing about good food versus bad, it's just obsessing about food in general, and it begins to take over your life and you change your life. Like she was saying, she just stopped going to parties because she knew that it would be weird if she didn't drink or she didn't eat a slice of birthday cake. Um, So she just stopped going to those kind of social functions and eventually after a while, stopped getting invited to him too. So it had like a major effect on her life as well. It is extremely sad, and you're right, she was brave for writing this. Her name is Hannah Matthews and the article was orthor xia, How am I clean eating? Turned into anorexia in self. I think it was right, I think so. Yeah. Yeah. One of the other good things though about an elimination diet um in our own article that they point out is is one good side effect is, uh, it just makes you really pay attention to what you're eating. And that's always good if you're like keeping food journals and trying to clean up your diet, even if for something that ends up being a psycho somatic food reaction, which is a thing. Um that's okay, and those psychosomatic food reactions are real. I mean, just because it's not a physiological response doesn't mean your body doesn't go a certain direction because you think, you know, I'm gonna eat this slice of bread and it's gonna make me feel like crap. It's like a self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But paying attention to your diet in general can be a positive result of one of these, so Brenda and any out with God, right, that's the thing is, like, yes, there are positive benefits. There's also pitfalls and pratfalls, and some of them can be substantial, like accidentally ending up malnourished or accidentally triggering UM an eating disorder in yourself. Um, And so again this is why it's good to go see your professional. But but I think the fact that there's just so many people who have just come up with their own elimination diet and like blog about it and now have like licensing agreements with hot dog companies because you're allowed to eat hot dogs on this elimination diet, which makes zero sense. Um, it's like a it's a it's just to me, it's a symptom of a larger death of of expertise that that we're going through. You don't have to be an expert at anything. You don't have to be actually to know what you're talking about. It's a good way to say it. You can start a blog or a website or an Instagram and people follow what you're saying, even if you like, I have no idea what you're doing. Yeah, and then like this stuff you're saying isn't backed by any research or peer view or whatever. And I realized, like, you can look at what we do from a certain perspective and be like, that's pretty rich that you're even bringing this up, Pal, But we like that we're not experts, but we defer to experts. Typically we like there are research is based on stuff that experts have come up with, are people who know what they're talking about have come up with And this is very largely like some dude just came up with his elimination diet, and now you know, ten percent of the country's trying it themselves and the hopes that it will it will finally change their their life in some positive way. And um, I don't know it was that the Hannah Matthews orthorexia article really kind of was eye opening to how I view food too, Like it's definitely, um, like my attitude towards food has changed, that there's definitely something you just shouldn't need, that it's better food that's terrible, and and like that, you know, stay away from that. And I realized, like I think about food a lot, and it's not just I want to eat, but also I should stay away from this or whatever. And it's I feel like a lot of people are kind of moving in that direction, just kind of developing unhealthy relationship with food. But then I asked myself, so what I just should stop paying attention to just eat whatever. And I can tell you based on history when I do that I tend to get a little tubby, a little unhealthy and unhappy by a little. Yeah, a little, I mean like a lot. Right, So that points me to this direction that there's a third thing. There's some underlying thing that has to do with my relationship with food that I've not gotten to the bottom yet. But just obsessing over healthy food versus toxic food or whatever, it helps, Like I definitely eat better and I feel better than general. But if you're still thinking too much about something, if something that shouldn't be as big a component of your life is a big component, then it suggests that there's something else there that you haven't gotten to the bottom of. And I'm talking to you specifically, Brenda and Eddie. Somewhere between you and me there is a healthy middle ground, and that's probably Jerry. That's right. It always comes down to Jerry Chuck. That's right. Have you got anything else? Uh? No, I will say though that um for all you Billy Joel fans, and I very much purposely said Brenda and Eddie, So save your emails, okay, Well, also save your emails because now I know even though I had no idea until just now, I said Sally and Tom because I have no imagination. Yeah, well know that great Springsteen song Sally and Tom ride west Man. That's pretty believable, Chuck, is it a real song? No, Springstein certainly saying about a lot of people. But that's that's what I mean. That was believable joke. Uh. If you want to know more about elimination diets, um man, they're they're out there. But go see your nutritionists. That's our advice. And since I said nutrition, this is time for listening, may you. Yeah, and this is uh not so much a listener mail as it is a little shout out to our friends at COED. That's right. So everyone, if you are not hip to co ED, let us fill you in. Because back in two thousand nine, oh man, it's been a while. Back in I think two thousand nine, COED, which is the Cooperative for Education, said hey, guys, we've got this cool um ngo down in Guatemala where we see to it that as many indigenous Guatemalan kids get educations where otherwise they wouldn't, and we want to come show you what we got. So we ended up going down there and did a two part episode about what we saw. Yeah, it was it was really cool, and they've been We've been kind of working with them off and on through the years to help raise awareness. And I think my favorite thing about their organization is how specific their mission is. Uh, they're not They're they're literally trying to educate kids because they think that is the basis of pulling people out of the cycle of poverty. And they're right, because it's working. Uh. And right now they have something going on called the Thousand Girls Initiative and they are trying to keep literally one thousand girls in Guatemala from dropping out of school because education is really what it takes to break the cycle of poverty everywhere, but especially in UH in rural Guatemala. Yeah, from their research, they found that um, something like twelve years of education is what it takes to break the cycle of poverty in Guatemala, but that the average rural Guatemalan has about a one and twenty chance of getting twelve years of education. So what they do is they have a several a number of programs set up, but one of them is where you are sponsored and you bought your paying in as a kid, You're paying into this book fund and you get your books up front. But then as you're paying in over time, and it's enough that even like UM, some of the poorest of the rural Guatemalan families can can pay for this um. When the books run out, you can replace them from this fund that you've been paying into over time, or if the books stay good, you can buy more books that you didn't have before, or things like computers and all this stuff. And so kids who would have normally had to drop out of school and work in the fields with their families now have a chance to stay in because they're not costing their families as much by going to school, so their families can invest in their kids education. Yeah, you can sponsor one of these students for eighty dollars a month, or if you want to only pay forty dollars a month, you can do that because they will pair you with another sponsor. And all you have to do is go to Thousand Girls Initiative dot org or just go to the co ed page. They have a lot of great ways you can take part. And you know, it's it's it's one of these things where you are literally like, I'm sponsoring this girl. That's her name, there's her picture, and she's going to get to go to school now because is I'm pairing up with someone else and throwing forty dollars a month their way? Uh? And it's it once again. Thousands girls initiative dot org can mean anything more worthwhile, agreed, man um, So go check them out and if you want to get in touch with us in the meantime, you can hang out with us at our home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com, where you'll find links to all of our social media accounts, and you can also send us an email. Just send it off to Stuff Podcasts how Stuff Works dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com.