We’ve got a big problem in this country: we have lost the ability to listen to our own bodies. We eat things that make us feel sick, but we don’t make the connection. 

We discount how we actually feel in favor of how we think we should feel, at least according to the latest nutrition claims and advertising on that box of “Frosty-0 Jumbos” or “Specialized Healthy Nutrient-Brand.” [I made up these names in case you couldn’t tell.] Here we have an entire country filled with people who feel kind of sick, for one reason or another, and have no idea why. That’s pretty wild all by itself, but it’s just half the story. The other half of the story is that we continue to accept as dogma all kinds of food-related information, even in the face of significant evidence to the contrary. We experience distressing symptoms, and then ignore them.

A few years back, Mark Bittman, a respected cook, foodie, food journalist, and former NYT columnist, raised a ruckus when he wrote about having discovered, half a lifetime after it started, that the cause of his pharmaceutical-grade heartburn turned out to be dairy. Suddenly, he was eating hot sauce and anchovies to his heart’s content, and it mattered not one bit whether dinner was at 7 or midnight. His column, which received so many responses that he couldn’t publish them all, showed that about one-third of respondents had discovered that they, too, healed their bellies by removing dairy from their diets.

In my opinion, it’s not just heartburn, belly aches, and constipation. Some patients share that respiratory symptoms — like asthma, earaches, sinus infections, and even mouth sores — also go away when they take all the dairy out of their diet. This is rather extraordinary to me. 

We are being influenced, encouraged even, to ignore our guts despite overwhelming personal evidence to the contrary. It’s not dairy in particular that concerns me. The fact of the matter is that it might be dairy for me, wheat for you, processed corn-derived products for the next person in line, and peanuts for the one after that.  

What bothers me most is that so many people aren’t making the connection between items that don’t agree with them, and the symptoms that come afterward. Once, when I was a little girl, I got sick to my stomach shortly after eating a chocolate bar. I did not eat another chocolate bar for many years. Since then, I have more than made up for it. 

But that’s not the point. The point is that my brain made a connection.

Think about the expression, “Trust your gut.” This expression has a rich history. If you eat something, and that something seems not to agree with you, don’t eat it for a while. See what happens. See how you feel. Allow your brain to make the connection. See what happens when you trust your gut.