If you’ve ever felt bloated, foggy, tired, achy, or just “off” after eating — even when you think you’re eating healthy — you’re not alone. I hear from so many clients who say: “Everything looks normal on my labs… so why don’t I feel normal?” That’s where the concept of leaky gut and food reactivity becomes important.
What Is a Leaky Gut?
Your gut lining is meant to be a selective barrier — letting nutrients like amino acids, vitamins, and sugars enter your bloodstream, while keeping bigger particles, toxins, and bacteria out. But when that lining gets damaged or inflamed, it becomes more permeable than it should be. This is what people refer to as “leaky gut.”
When the gut becomes “leaky,” undigested food particles, microbes, and toxins can cross into circulation — where they don’t belong. Your immune system sees that as a threat and responds — which is when symptoms show up.
You can think of it like leaving your front door wide open: unwanted guests get in, your defenses kick into high gear, and your body reacts.
How Leaky Gut & Food Sensitivities Are Connected
Here’s the tricky part: food sensitivities themselves can cause a leaky gut — and a leaky gut can make food sensitivities worse. That means symptoms and gut damage can feed into each other in a vicious cycle.
Unlike classic food allergies, which show up almost immediately and usually involve the immune antibody IgE, food sensitivities show up much later — sometimes hours or even days after eating. They can also be dose-dependent (so one bite might not trigger symptoms, but a full serving will).
Unlike classic food allergies, which show up almost immediately and usually involve the immune antibody IgE, food sensitivities show up much later — sometimes hours or even days after eating. They can also be dose-dependent (so one bite might not trigger symptoms, but a full serving will). Oxford Biomedical Technologies, Inc.
And here’s something most people don’t expect:
Even foods that sound healthy — like salmon, broccoli, blueberries, or garlic — can trigger inflammation for certain people.
That’s why there’s no one-size-fits-all diet. Each person has a unique set of reactive foods — just like a fingerprint.
Why It’s So Hard to Figure Out What’s Causing Your Symptoms
A few things make this puzzle especially challenging:
Food sensitivities often show up late and unpredictably — so it’s hard to connect cause and effect.
There are usually many reactive foods, not just one or two.
These reactions don’t show up on standard allergy tests — so your doctor might tell you that “everything looks normal.”
All of this can leave you feeling dismissed or confused, even when your body is clearly struggling.
So What Does Work?
The most effective way to uncover your personal food triggers is through individualized testing and guided dietary change. One approach that’s shown promise for identifying hidden food reactions is the Mediator Release Test (MRT). MRT measures how your immune system reacts to a wide range of foods and chemicals — and helps identify:
Which foods cause the biggest inflammatory reactions
Which foods are safest for your body right now
This kind of targeted information lays the foundation for a personalized eating plan — one that actually reduces inflammation instead of unintentionally fueling it.
Pairing that individualized plan with stress reduction and supportive supplements can help your gut begin to heal, symptoms improve, and inflammation decrease.
The Bottom Line
Leaky gut isn’t just a buzzword — it’s a real physiological process where your gut becomes more permeable than it should be. While it’s not easily diagnosed with standard tests, the symptoms it creates are very real. And the key to breaking the cycle often isn’t avoiding all gluten, dairy, or sugar — it’s discovering which foods your immune system is reacting to and removing those triggers long enough for healing to occur.
If you’ve been struggling with chronic bloating, headaches, fatigue, or unexplained symptoms, food reactivity could be part of the story — and decoding that story starts with precise testing and a tailored nutrition plan.
Ready to stop guessing which foods are triggering your symptoms?
Mediator Release Testing (MRT) helps identify your personal inflammatory food triggers so we can create a nutrition plan that actually works for your body — not a generic elimination diet.