Inability to Gain Weight

Strange as it might seem to many Americans, a fairly regular complaint of patients is the inability to gain weight. This can be a problem at any age and ranges and can be relevant for infants, children, teenagers, men and women of all ages, and athletes who work out and are trying to put on muscle mass. In fact, it’s common enough that it is well worth writing about.

The inability to gain weight, or in the case of infants and children, poor development or even a failure to thrive, often indicates a problem properly digesting and assimilating nutrients. The next logical question is, “Why isn’t that person able to properly digest and assimilate nutrients?”

There are several possible reasons for this, but the most common one is that they are ingesting things that their body isn’t handling well. These “things” are foods, or what most people consider foods. And in most cases these foods are usually considered healthy foods. Unfortunately, not everyone is meant to eat the same thing, and any food has the potential to be unhealthy for a particular individual.

Most of these people are suffering from food allergies. But these allergies are not the typical kind that your allergist is looking for. These are food allergies that are often leading to digestive symptoms, but at the very least they are leading to the poor absorption of nutrients.

When you have a food allergy, your immune system is attacking that food whenever you ingest it. In a person without food allergies, the immune system ignores food. But all too often we eat things that our immune system does not recognize as food, even though our entire culture, family, and educational system may have told us that it is good for us.

One primary example of a food that often does more harm than good is dairy. Almost everyone grows up believing that dairy is essential for good health. Yet this is not supported by science, and it isn’t even supported by common sense. But the marketing of dairy has been so effective that it has overridden these other factors and the product has become part of our identity.

Unfortunately, all too often people do not tolerate dairy well. One type of problem is lactose intolerance, but many people are experiencing a far more profound and deeper reaching problem: a dairy allergy.

If you have a dairy allergy, then every time you ingest a dairy product your immune system conducts an attack against it, just as it would a virus. You may or may not realize it when it’s happening, but it is certainly affecting how you digest that food.

This causes inflammation, and for some people leads to a great difficulty in putting on weight, although it is just one of many potential food allergies and causes of poor weight gain. Let’s look at a couple of examples. It is not usual to see patients who are working out, eating lots of protein and calories, and trying to gain muscle mass or simply put on weight. However, they are frequently increasing the amount of one of the common allergens, such as dairy, egg, or wheat. When this happens they often feel worse rather than better. A particularly striking example is when people start including a protein shake into their diet. Protein shakes are usually dairy based. For many people this is the exact opposite of what they should be doing.

Another example is with infants. The first food usually introduced to infants is a dairy based formula. Infants that experience a failure to thrive or poor development may simply be reacting to the food that they are eating. In fact, even if they are just breast feeding, they can be reacting to the food that the mother is eating.

There are many more examples, but in all cases one of the best things that can be done is to be properly tested for food allergies. This is easier said than done, since most physicians are not skilled or versed in the full spectrum of potential food allergies or the wide range of symptoms that can be caused by them. More information about this type of testing at IBS Treatment Center.

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Great image thanks to samoeba