Stuff You Should Know - How Elimination Diets Work

Episode Date: August 30, 2018

Elimination diets are all about whittling down what you eat, then building it back up again in order to identify foods that don't work for your body. Is it safe? It can be. Learn all about this process in today's episode.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, ya everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say. Bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.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 man, sounds like a mad doctor, maybe a little bit of German to him. And Latka from Taxi. I have no idea. I don't know. Well, when I think Elimination, I think that 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 it's what I think about. Man, I feel bad for people with poop problems. Me too.

That'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 it 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. He couldn't say it like that the whole time. No. That's it. 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 nowhere, huh? You're not gonna know what's coming. You know there's a 100% chance that you'll forget to do it again. Probably. Okay. That's the stuff you should know away.

That's right. Underdeliver. So, Chuck, we're talking about elimination diets. Man, yes we are. And that doesn't really mean that you poop 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 West in general, where you cut out a bunch of foods and then you add them back to see if there's something behind whatever's bothering you, whether it's irritable bowel syndrome, whether you get headaches, whether you get tired at 3PM, 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 a, I mean, I don't know if controversy is the right word. Sure, let's say it.

It can be controversial in that sometimes someone goes through a doctor or a nutritionist or some kind of health professional 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.

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. So 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, all right. So 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. My poops are all over the place.

I fall asleep while I'm talking to people. I get headaches. I'm feeling kind of anxious. There's a whole suite 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, Dr. Nutritionist MD. And the nutritionist will say, what, Chuck? I don't know, what will they say? Maybe you should... They'll say elimination diet. Yeah, they'll say I propose an elimination diet. And that is the sort of middle of the road legit way

to do this. Again, most people do this DIY style and 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. Oh, good point. But there are some pretty brainless steps that if you don't follow,

you could end up making things worse. Right, which is again why this is originally a medical procedure that was kind of hijacked and done not that great all the time. But in addition to this elimination diet, which we'll go through in a second, the steps of it, you are probably also gonna get a skin prick test where they will, well, they prick your skin

to see if they get an allergic reaction from you 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,

I saw they give false positives around like 75% of the time, which that's not a test. That's worse than chance, it sounds like. I mean, that's terrible. That's a terrible track record. If you'll remember, back from our extremely confusing false positives episode. So I think that's probably why some people do it

on their own is they're just like, I don't need the blood test or the skin prick test, I can do this myself. That leads me into this stat. 30% of Americans think they have a food allergy when only three and 4% do. Right. But just because you don't have a food allergy

and we're gonna talk about allergy sensitivities and intolerances, it doesn't mean that like, if you quit drinking and eating sugar and loading down with carbs, you might feel a lot better. Yes, and some people suspect that this is what's really behind an elimination diet because just from the attention that you pay to what you're eating or not eating

and to your health in general, that it forces you to adopt, 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. 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. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair.

Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll wanna be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in

as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you.

Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so, my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael.

And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen.

So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. 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. Oh, that's... And I'm going to go back and find out who it was, but 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 kind of kicked me into gear even before that test.

Oh, that's great, man. Yeah, it was very nice. So back to allergies. We did a pretty good episode on allergies. 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. 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 warding off an invader that's not really an invader. Right. 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

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 everything itchy and you have an immune response mounted. Now, that's really good. Like you said, if there's like an actual pathogen or whatever, but an allergy is that mistaken identity.

Yeah, it's like strawberries, like I'm just a strawberry. And they're like, that's what the last pathogen said. Yeah, exactly. I'm on to you, fraud. And then they beat up the poor strawberry and it's dead from that point on. But that's an allergy. 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. No, it can kill you. You wanna stay away from, yeah, stay away from strawberries or eggs or soy or peanuts.

Because yeah, it 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 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 strawberries altogether. Because like you said, it can be life threatening. Yeah, so that's an allergy.

There is also, you can also be intolerant or sensitive. Like when we did our gluten episode, a lot of people do not have celiac disease, but they may be intolerant of gluten. 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. Right. So what this usually means is 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 and produce all sorts of horrible symptoms in you from pooping everywhere again, from horrible cramps, bloating,

and then things that have to do with your mood as well, which sounds surprising at first until you remember that there's like a gut brain connection. Like 90% of the serotonin in your brain is actually produced in your gut. So when your guts go in 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 some sort of altered brain chemistry as a result. Yeah, and celiac disease is, it does have a component of immune system response. Right. So that is not, I mean, that is a legit allergy. Right, so the, yeah, but gluten sensitivity is,

or gluten intolerance is different. It doesn't have the immune system, but you're still hating 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. 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 and- That's everybody. Right. Does that happen to you?

I don't know, because I don't know when I've had MSG always. I used to like put straight up MSG on my popcorn. It's really tasty stuff, but it can give you headaches and make you feel like there's like a shriveled claw grabbing the top of your stomach. Just all sorts of weird stuff. Yeah, I just remembered like for a while there,

like Chinese food was the enemy of people. Yeah. And I was always like, man, I love Chinese food. That Chinese food syndrome, basically blaming it on MSG. Right. Yeah. I saw that basically accused of being kind of racist

actually before that like that Chinese food doesn't do that to anybody any more than other foods, especially other foods with MSG. But you're not gonna attack a cheeseburger, a good American cheeseburger. Exactly. It's not like you have freedom fries syndrome or something. It's always Chinese food syndrome.

Yeah. It's just eye-opening to see it from that other perspective. Yeah, get to it. Chinese food syndrome rolls off the tongue, you know? Sure. I'm not gonna give up my egg roll, so. The other thing, no, wait. The other thing about sensitivities is that,

like you said, it's understudied, not well understood because you might eat some MSG one day and get terrible headaches in that claw on the top of your stomach. And the next day you might have some MSG and be fine. And so they have no idea what accounts for having the headache in the claw. And so 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 as separate things actually. Yeah, and I don't remember 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 gluten intolerant, there have been people that have like poo-pooed that and I'm like, man, if somebody's eating something that even if it's just their perception that it makes them feel bad and they don't wanna eat it, who cares? So I saw this thing, I agree with you. No skin off your back.

Right. I know, what is it that bugs people like that? I really, really wish we could get to the bottom of it because I think it would clear up a lot of stuff if when you saw that, and I think everybody does it, you just get judgy and just irritated that somebody's bought into something that you don't believe in or whatever,

whatever you wanna say. If you could step back and be like, oh, I'm just being, or, you know, oh, this is my going off. I really think that would clear that up a lot, but it's just so easy to go with that, you know? I know, I mean, maybe it's for some of these people, it's just like not eating heavy breads and enriched flour and the stuff that gluten is in,

maybe it just makes you feel better to not eat that stuff. That's fine too. I saw that the guy who basically proved that non-celiac gluten sensitivity was a thing back in 2011. It's an Australian doctor named Peter, oh, we'll just call him, oh, Dundee. Peter Gibson, Dr. Peter Crocodile on the barbie with the Foster's slab is his full name,

but 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, we 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 FODMAPS. Have you heard of them? No. Fermentable Ogliodi-monosaccharides and polyols. Oh, wait, yeah, we talked about that, I think. I don't remember ever talking about it before in my life. I just came across it in the last two days. I think we have.

Okay, well, my brain's shot to hell, but these FODMAPS, they are component. This is a type of carb, and it's found in gluten and some wheat products, but it's also found in other stuff too. And so this guy has said, I think these are the actual culprit, not necessarily gluten.

Now, if you have CLAX, it's gluten, but if you have gluten intolerance, he's saying, I think it's these FODMAPS, which is, that's great if you could narrow it down even further, but from the looks of it, it sounds like that means you got a lot of other food that you can't 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. Would 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 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. ["Pay Dude the 90s"] On the podcast, Pay Dude the 90s called

David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough,

or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god.

Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander

each week to guide you through life, step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general, can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye.

Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. OK, man. So if you want to do this yourself, I think you kind of see a way, 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 MD, and say, I want to try this, help me out. And they'll help you out. Or you can also go on the internet and just find some Schmo who's done it before, published a book about it, and is now a multi-millionaire

because they did their own elimination diet, and now everybody's doing those too. Yeah, if you go to do it on your own, though, take your time. This might take a month or two. Don't rush in there and be like, all right, I'm going to eat chicken broth for the next month. Like, there are safe ways to do it, and they generally involve four steps, which

is planning the eliminating round, the reintroducing, and then evaluating. OK, so hold on. Before we go any further, I've just pinpointed how legally exposed we are right now. This is what we're doing. We're saying, you, we're talking to somebody like we're encouraging it.

So let's do this instead. Let's say Sally and Tom. No, let's say, forget it, we'll say Sally and Tom. Brenda and Eddie. Brenda and Eddie are, 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 Sally and Tom. And they say, well, they live next door to each other. And they partner swap, so they're into it. They said, we got to plan this out first, honey. And she says, sure, dear, let's do this.

Let's sit down and let's just write down a big list of our symptoms, when we feel poopy butt, or when we feel super tired or whatever, 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 going to 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. Even with kids. I didn't know that, actually. Yeah, like a kid who always wants to drink milk may end up having a dairy allergy. So it's basically just our tendency to punish ourselves is what's behind this stuff, right? There's probably some evolutionary reason.

It makes zero sense, but OK. I don't know. Well, 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. Maybe that's it.

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 going to eliminate, for two to three weeks, all dairy and all sugar from my diet. I'm going to keep up with this journal. I might have some sugar withdrawal.

That'll be all right after a few days. And I'm going to look in my food diary at the end of this. And I might have to start over from scratch, or I might say, you know what? I eliminated dairy, and I feel great. Right, but since you eliminated, say, dairy and sugar. And actually, 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. So let's just keep it simple, then, sugar and dairy, with the caveat that you frequently will need to do more than that. But as you cut them out for 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 scrapbooking, 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, 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 scenario, because 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 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 milk, cream, in their coffee. And they drink it, and they sit around, and they stare at each other, maybe take the day off of work. And then nothing happens. So they have a little more.

They have maybe like a glass of milk with lunch. And then maybe 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. Right. 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've 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 gone through all the foods that you cut out.

And then you've entered the final phase, which is the done with the elimination part of the diet. Yeah, and boy, it can get really confusing because you've got to be really organized, Brenda and Eddie do. Right. Because it might be the coffee or the caffeine. 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. But 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 going to cut out dairy. You're going to cut out carbs, or you're going to cut out certain kinds of vegetables, or legumes, or something like that.

Or maybe meat, or wheat, whatever. But these are all considered food groups. So yeah, you might have a little creamer in your coffee, and then cheese at dinner, or something like that, when you're reintroducing the dairy food group. But because it could be as specific as a type of cheese, there's a lot of difference between fresh cheese and cheese that's been cave-aged for five years.

That could actually make a difference in your sensitivity to it. Yeah, or is Chuck lactose intolerant? Or does he get poopy butt when he eats a pint of sugary ice cream all in one sitting? Right, which again is another reason why you want to, why a lot of people will cut out more than just a couple of food groups.

And then when they challenge, you've got to keep it pure like that, I think. That's what you're saying. You don't want to mix sugar and dairy together when you challenge your body again during the elimination diet, correct? Yeah, and I think maybe I was just trying to speak too to like, if I have 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 and eat a big thing of ice cream. I gotcha. You know what I mean? That's an overdose of dairy, which is not the same thing as dairy really messes me up.

I'm really glad you brought that up because that's actually, again, that's a distinction between an intolerance or a sensitivity and an allergy. You remember with an allergy, it doesn't matter how much of the food you eat, you're going to have a reaction with a sensitivity and an intolerance too. Little amounts, you can slide by with them.

And that's actually one of the things that people find out with elimination diets is, OK, I'm sensitive to dairy, but I've found that I can actually have one slice of pizza is 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. That's why I have poopy butt. That's not why I have poopy butt, I'm just saying in general. Pooping everywhere. That was Eddie and Tom talking. Oh, right, right. 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, comorbid is the word. But if you have a latex allergy, you could also be allergic to certain vegetables or fruits. And there are lists where people know, like doctors know, hey, latex is also sort of comorbid 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 do they, you know, I think it's called co- Yeah, it's not comorbid, what is it? Cross-reactive. Yeah, yeah.

It's called a cross-reactive food. And they don't know. They just know that if you have a latex allergy, you're probably very allergic to say bananas or something too. So 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 and doctor, and you do have one, does that mean they dig into your mouth with their bare hands? No, I think there's non-latex gloves. I think nitrile 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 asks 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 to do with an enzyme that's in natural rubber, which makes its way into latex, which you're really allergic to. If you go to the proctologist and they ask if you have a latex allergy, and you say yes, then your doctor has another alternative.

Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. No, actually, I don't. You know what a proctologist does? Oh, did you say proctologist? Yes. Yes, I do.

OK. Shall we move on? That was rough. All right, let's talk about how this can go bad. It can go bad 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 about something that I'd never heard of called orthorexia. Or the thing that everybody we know has right now. Do you think? Yeah.

To some degree, yes, I totally do. So orthorexia, 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 DSM, is basically, but is recognized by the National Eating Disorders Association, is kind of taking label reading and nutritional label reading and thinking about what you're eating to the most obsessive level possible.

Right. It's an eating disorder, but rather than being zoned in on calorie restriction, like traditional anorexia and weight loss, it's an obsession with healthy or clean eating. And if you look around, if you realize this, you're like, this is all over the place. Like, look around on the internet

and see how many foods are labeled toxic. Like, this is a toxic food. Strawberries are toxic, and they 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, legumes are toxic. Like, 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 orthorexia is rooted. Yeah, and with this woman in particular, she wrote about her journey through this and how it was getting worse and worse and how her friends started to notice. Like, she said she spiraled into a total panic

if she happened to eat something that was, quote unquote, bad and was just completely compulsive, like, reading and rereading these nutritional labels, feeling really anxious if you're not reading these things. And it actually led to anorexia. Her friend stepped in and said, hey, listen, I think you need to get some help here. Things are getting a little out of hand.

And luckily, this woman, in this case at least, was listened, went to a health professional, and they confirmed that it had morphed into anorexia. Right, and the way that it had morphed into anorexia is because she had whittled down her list of acceptable foods to such a small degree that she was becoming malnourished because there were 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 major weight loss, too. But again, she wasn't obsessed with her weight. It was good food or bad food or pure food or toxic food and that distinction. And then becoming obsessed with it, like thinking about that kind of food and foods you should avoid.

And she points out, apparently, one of the kind of accepted criteria is that you obsessively follow fitness or nutrition experts or self-proclaimed experts on 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'd just stop 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. So she'd just stop going to those kind of social functions and eventually after a while stop getting invited to them, too. So it had like a major effect on her life as well.

Yeah, really sad. It is extremely sad. And you're right. She was brave for writing this. Her name is Hannah Matthews. And the article was orthorexia, how my clean eating turned into anorexia in self. I think it was, right?

I think so, yeah. One of the other good things, though, about an elimination diet in our own article that they point out is one good side effect is it just makes you really pay attention to what you're eating. And that's always good. If you're keeping food journals and trying to clean up your diet, even if it's

for something that ends up being a psychosomatic food reaction, which is a thing, that's OK. 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 going to eat this slice of bread, and it's going to make me feel like crap.

Right. 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 Eddie, go 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 an eating disorder in yourself. And so again, this is why it's good to go see a professional. But I think the fact that there's just so many people who have just come up with their own elimination diet and blog about it and now have licensing agreements

with hot dog companies because you're allowed to eat hot dogs on this elimination diet. Right. Which makes zero sense. It's like a, to me, it's a symptom of a larger death of expertise 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.

Yeah, yeah, that'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 have no idea what you're doing. Yeah, and then the stuff you're saying isn't backed by any research or peer review or whatever. And I realize 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're not experts, but we defer to experts, typically. Our research is based on stuff that experts have come up with, or 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 10% of the country's trying it themselves in the hopes

that it will finally change their life in some positive way. And I don't know, it was the Hannah Matthews orthorexia article really kind of was eye-opening to how I view food, too. Like, it's definitely, like my attitude towards food has changed, like there's definitely some, you just shouldn't eat that, it's bad for you, that's terrible, and stay away from that.

And I realize, 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 I feel like a lot of people are kind of moving in that direction, just kind of developing an unhealthy relationship with food. But then I ask myself, so what, I just should stop paying attention and 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, and 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 Addy.

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. You got anything else? No, I will say though that for all you Billy Joel fans, I very much purposefully said Brenda and Addy, so save your emails.

Oh, 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, no, that great Springsteen song, Sally and Tom, Ride West. Man, that's pretty believable, Chuck. Is it a real song? No, I know Springsteen certainly saying

about a lot of people, but I don't think. That's what I mean, that was believable joke. If you want to know more about elimination diets, man, they're out there, but go see your nutritionist. That's our advice. And since I said nutritionist, it's time for Listen a Mail. Yeah, and this is 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 Coed, let us fill you in because back in 2009. Oh man, it's been a while. Back in, I think 2009 Coed, which is the cooperative for education said, hey guys, we've got this cool 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 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. They're not, 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. And right now they have something going on called the Thousand Girls Initiative. And they are trying to keep literally 1,000 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 rural Guatemala. Yeah, from their research they found that something like 12 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 in 20 chance of getting 12 years of education. So what they do is they have several, a number of programs set up. But one of them is where you are sponsored and you're 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 some of the poorest of the rural Guatemalan families can pay for this. 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 $80 a month or if you wanna only pay $40 a month you can do that because they will pair you with another sponsor. And all you have to do is go to 1000girlsinitiative.org or just go to the co-ed page. You have a lot of great ways you can take part. And you know, 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 gonna get to go to school now because I'm pairing up with someone else and throwing $40 a month their way. And it's at, once again, 1000girlsinitiative.org. Yep, check it out. Couldn't be anything more worthwhile. Agreed, man.

So go check them out. And if you wanna get in touch with us in the meantime, you can hang out with us at our home on the web, StuffYouShouldKnow.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 StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics,

visit HowStuffWorks.com. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back

into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called, on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Bye-bye-bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass

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