Why you should double check your dietary intolerances.

[Murph]

This is a blog post by some sicentists I respect who make a very important point about how we can be sure a food made us sick, when it didn't. I didn't eat eggs or dairy for several years, convinced they were harming me, before reintroducing them with no issues ,so this speaks to me.

https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2023/06/08/n1-dr-garcias-queasy-irradiated-rats/

At some point in the 1950s, a guy named John Garcia was irradiating Sprague-Dawley rats for his job at the U.S. Naval Radiological Defense Lab, like you do, when he noticed something weird. The rats who had been exposed to low levels of gamma radiation were eating and drinking less than usual, and groups that had been exposed to radiation the most times ate and drank the least.


Garcia thought that the rats might be learning to associate their food and water with the nausea from radiation exposure. After all, rats have no concept of ionizing radiation, so from their point of view, they were going about their day as normal when they suddenly started feeling nauseous for no clear reason. They might reasonably wonder if it was something they ate. In particular, he noticed that the rats wouldn’t drink out of the plastic bottles they were used to, but were happy to drink out of unfamiliar glass bottles. Garcia thought that maybe the plastic bottles gave the water a particular taste that the rats had learned to avoid.


So in a series of experiments, Garcia tried exposing rats to different kinds of stimuli to see what they would learn. He discovered two surprises that called the whole behaviorist concept into question.


First, he discovered that if a rat was exposed to radiation (making it nauseous) after encountering a new food, it would quickly learn to reject the food, even if the radiation came hours later.


This contradicted the understanding at the time of how conditioning worked — behaviorists thought that you had to present the unconditioned stimulus (nausea) immediately after the conditioned stimulus (the new food), or the animal wouldn’t learn to associate the two. But Garcia found that learning could occur even if the rat got sick well after eating a new food.


Rats would instantly associate nausea with whatever food they had most recently eaten, and had no problem doing so. If he made them sick after giving them Cheetos, they would learn to reject Cheetos forever. But the rats simply could not learn to associate their nausea with any other kind of stimulus. It didn’t matter if the stimulus was bright lights, or an annoying buzzer. No matter how many times Garcia flashed lights at them, the rats never learned to associate their nausea with the lights.

... continues at link... https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2023/06/08/n1-dr-garcias-queasy-irradiated-rats/

 

[Wayne]

Hi @Murph -- I find this interesting. I've discovered that I can eat certain foods on one day just fine, but immediately feel nauseous or bloated on another day. So my reactions to eating the same foods vary from day to day, depending on who knows how many different variables, perhaps even the weather.

I once read that some of the reactions we have to certain foods can actually be traced back to previous lifetimes. The example they gave was that if a person had a traumatic experience (perhaps something that caused their death) after eating a certain food, an association is formed that can carry over to a future lifetime. The ramifications are pretty significant when you stop to think about it.

 

[wabi-sabi]

Yep. Unless you have a double blind trial, which is pretty hard to do with food, you don't know it's the food.

I'm nauseous much of the time. I could decide it's my diet, but it's really just my illness. I feel sick because I am sick. So I'm going to eat what I want, no matter how nauseous I feel, because something has to be fun.

 

[wabi-sabi]

I've discovered that I can eat certain foods on one day just fine, but immediately feel nauseous or bloated on another day. So my reactions to eating the same foods vary from day to day, depending on who knows how many different variable, [erhaps even the weather.

This is what my doc told me would happen, and not to cut out any foods, because it wasn't really the food. I would just make myself crazy trying to follow up on these reactions. He was right.

 

[Judee]

I agree about double checking in many cases unless it was a severe and/or life-threatening reaction.

I usually don't eliminate a food before trying it many different times and getting the same negative reaction even years later when I try to re-introduce something.

Plus, usually my negative reactions are not nausea but things like itchy skin, plugged sinuses or a worsening of some of my ME symptoms (migraines, throat swelling/crimson crescents, heart pain, fatigue.)

 

[perchance dreamer]

I had a delayed reaction food intolerance test a long time ago, and 3 foods showed up in the severe category: peanuts, sage, and lobster, all of which are easily avoided.

I don't eat those 3, but other than that, I don't have noticeable reactions to any specific food. Generally, though, if I eat an excess of carbs, even the ones considered healthy, such as legumes, corn, rice, and oats, I'll gain weight. (Why must they be so tasty?)

Also, gluten makes my joints ache, so I avoid it for the most part.

 

[hapl808]

Rats would instantly associate nausea with whatever food they had most recently eaten, and had no problem doing so. If he made them sick after giving them Cheetos, they would learn to reject Cheetos forever. But the rats simply could not learn to associate their nausea with any other kind of stimulus. It didn’t matter if the stimulus was bright lights, or an annoying buzzer. No matter how many times Garcia flashed lights at them, the rats never learned to associate their nausea with the lights.

But is the other stimuli making them nauseous? I think the problems with these kind of studies is they make assumptions that are hard to truly prove or disprove. For instance, let's say that the radiation actually had a physiological effect and caused the rat's immune system to attack a protein in the most recently eaten food that might still be in the digestive tract. So possibly the rat's nausea was associated with the food? The fact that the study contradicted things they thought about behavior…but then there often isn't rigorous enough questioning on whether the new theory is accurate.

Interesting study, but I think there's dangers with these kinds of studies. Like the ones that assume people aren't affected by EMF because they can't tell a router that's on or off. I suppose you could do the same study with a box and you'd be hard pressed to tell if it contained cake or plutonium. Or someone smoking cigarettes and saying they felt fine afterward. Sometimes damage is slow and cumulative and we really don't understand the mechanisms - but we think we understand a lot more than we do.

Every study says either coffee is great for you or horrible for you. Each one disproves the last one. It just shows how challenging it is for these kinds of nutritional studies.

 

[hapl808]

That said - I think it's very challenging to know when a food is or isn't involved because of delayed reactions. Same for computer use. Took me years to realize that cognitive exertion caused horrible reflux…the following day or two. Never would've occurred to me and I spent years trying to chase food associations. Now, that didn't mean I felt nauseous after each food - more that I was baffled that sometimes I would and sometimes I wouldn't.

So some of the rat experiment is interesting, but I think assuming rat behavior and people behavior are the same can lead to some dangerous conclusions. I've seen some of those (like the rats swimming and being rescued) cited that deeply misunderstand the potential conclusions - often harming patient care.