New Findings on Insomnia: Is This at the Root?

Depending on which study you read, roughly one third to one half of Americans suffer from insomnia.¹ For both children and adults, this can mean trouble falling asleep, frequently waking up at night, or difficultly getting back to sleep after waking. Even after struggling with these symptoms for years, many of us fail to realize that food allergies and insomnia could be connected.

So, what causes insomnia? There is no one single cause of insomnia. And it often arises with other disorders.

Examples include:

• Autoimmune diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis or hyperthyroidism.²
• Gut disorders, like heartburn, constipation, and irritable bowel syndrome — or, IBS.^3,4
• Shifts in hormone balance, such as menopause.⁵
• Mood and behavioral imbalances, like depression, anxiety, OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), and ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder).^6,7,8

Research has pointed to food allergies as a common source of insomnia.⁹

For many people with gluten sensitivity or celiac disease, gluten can also be a common interrupter of sleep. Fatigue is considered a standard symptom of gluten sensitivity and celiac disease, possibly related to difficulty getting to and staying asleep. For others, genetics could be to blame by making the problem of food-triggered sleep issues even worse. The GAD gene is needed to convert glutamate into GABA in the body, helping us to quiet down and reduce anxiety, while the AANAT gene may prevent serotonin from being converted into melatonin. The MOA-A gene may also make it difficult to degrade serotonin — resulting in a serotonin overload, which can cause sleep problems if serotonin is not able to get into the cells.

Genetics and food play a major role in getting a good night’s sleep, but thankfully, both of these factors can be managed or controlled by the lifestyle choices we make. American Academy of Sleep Medicine researchers discovered in 2016 that eating low-fiber, sugary, processed foods can lead to lighter and less restful sleep.¹⁰ Conversely, making dietary changes that lead to weight loss could help to improve sleep quality in those who are overweight or obese — sleep quality has been significantly associated with a loss of belly fat.¹¹ And in many cases, healthy lifestyle choices are the defining factor as to whether some of the more troublesome genes are expressed or “activated.”

Sleepless nights and daytime exhaustion eventually take their toll on your overall wellbeing.¹² If you have a food allergy, or if you mount an immune response to a specific food, the only symptoms may be in your mood, behavior, or quality of sleep.¹³

The Difference Between a Food Allergy and Food Intolerance

According to the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease (NIAID), a food allergy is defined as, “an adverse health effect arising from a specific immune response that occurs reproducibly on exposure to a given food.”¹⁴

In other words, if you consistently feel lousy after eating a specific food and the immune system is involved, you’ve got a food allergy.

A food allergy can be severe and life-threatening. Or it can be chronic. An IgE-mediated food allergy is immediate and life-threatening, whereas a non-IgE-mediated food allergy is delayed, and symptoms usually show up within 4–72 hours after eating. In both types of food allergies, the immune system responds to the proteins in certain foods. These foods (and specifically the proteins they contain) are called allergens.

Common allergens include:

• Corn¹⁵
• Cow’s milk
• Crustacean shellfish
• Egg
• Peanut
• Soy
• Tree nuts
• Wheat

The list doesn’t end there.

The immune system will often cross-react with foods that contain similar proteins — making the mistake that these foods are the same as the allergenic food. The proteins in wheat gluten, for example, cross-react with a long list of foods.¹⁶ And according to the NIAID, cross-reactions are common between shellfish and tree nuts.

Common foods that are cross-reactive with the proteins in wheat include:

• Coffee
• Egg
• Gluten-free grains, like sorghum, oats, rice, and corn
• Milk
• Potato
• Soy

On the other hand, food intolerance is slightly different. The NIAID defines food intolerance as a “nonimmunologic adverse reaction.” This means that the immune system plays no role in the flare-up of symptoms that happen in response to food. One good example of food intolerance is enzyme deficiency: If you are unable to digest the milk sugars — or lactose — in milk, you may be missing a key enzyme called lactase. This would mean that you have a food intolerance to milk, otherwise known as lactose intolerance.

Food Allergies and Insomnia

Both types of food allergies (IgE and non-IgE-mediated) will usually show up in the form of gut distress. This includes diarrhea, abdominal pain, and nutrient deficiency.

But that’s not all. When it comes to a food allergy, you may also notice:

• Arthritis
• Asthma
• Behavioral disorders (especially in children)
• Eczema
• Fatigue
• Heartburn
• Insomnia
• Migraines and cluster headaches

Researchers have found that gut disorders may be occult, or hidden. This means that clinically and in the doctor’s office, a physician will see little to no signs of gut distress.^17,18 Insomnia may be your only clue that you have a food allergy.

How to Get a Good Night’s Rest

If you are desperate to get a good night’s sleep, you may visit your doctor and leave with a prescription. But according to sleep experts and researchers at Ryerson University, Heather Hood and Dr. Colleen Carney, this may not offer much relief.¹⁹ Hood explains, “Poor sleepers who engage in what we call safety behaviors, such as taking sleep medication or drinking alcohol, are actually disrupting their sleep in the long term.”

In fact, sleep medication is notoriously unhelpful — possibly giving immediate short-term relief but almost always with long-term consequences, such as drug dependence or memory loss.²⁰

If you suspect that a food allergy may be at the root of your insomnia, it is essential to first address the food allergy. Unfortunately, according to the NIAID, there is no test to diagnose delayed-onset (or non-IgE-mediated) food allergies. Skin prick tests and blood tests are not reliable. Only invasive procedures — such as endoscopy and biopsy — can confirm a food allergy.

If you do have a food allergy, your doctor will find inflammation along your gastrointestinal tract — whether or not you show signs of a gut disorder.

The NIAID suggests an elimination diet — beginning with common allergens — to treat food allergies. This means that if you have insomnia and think a food allergy may be the cause, the Body Ecology Diet may assist you in ruling out the common allergenic foods and cross-reactive foods. In 2016, some seaweed, a staple of the Asian diet that can also be found in Body Ecology’s Ocean Plant Extract, was found to have food allergy-fighting benefits.²¹

Rebalancing the inner ecosystem is at the core of the Body Ecology Diet. Beneficial bacteria and yeast have been shown to reduce the inflammation of the intestinal wall. Taking an immune-boosting and gut-strengthening probiotic at every meal is a convenient way to get high-potency probiotics into your digestive tract. Along with nourishing the gut, eating well, and staying active, cultivating a daily meditation practice may also help. In 2009, researchers from Northwestern Memorial Hospital who examined 11 healthy insomniacs from ages 25 to 45 found that meditation may be an effective behavioral treatment option for the chronic sleep disorder.²²