"GMO" really isn't a
food allergen, if you see what I mean.
For it to be an ALLERGY, you need to understand what the mechanism is. So, for example-- how does your immune system recognize when food is "GMO" and when it is "organic"? I'm not aware of any mechanism that has been supported by preliminary investigation there and published after peer review.
For other types of food allergies, such a mechanism DOES exist, and has been demonstrated to operate fairly robustly and predictably across a wide range of allergens and individuals.
My own body, for example, simply does not CARE whether my allergen has been lovingly and sustainably produced in a pristine natural setting, or if it has been produced under the most artificial, polluting, factory-processed conditions imaginable.
My immune system considers that allergen a threat just the same-- and I do mean
just the same-- and would be willing to react by killing me in a few minutes over less than a gram of it either way. Yes, really. I agree that this is grossly unfair. I would raise my own happy little allergen for the opportunity to eat some occasionally, I assure you, if this were not so. The form doesn't really matter to my immune system. It reacts with anaphylaxis no matter how awesome the food is, and no matter how wonderful it might be for the planet or another person without my allergies.
What kind of symptoms did your food allergy seem to elicit? Food allergy symptoms are actually quite narrow in scope, involving skin, gastrointestinal tract, and more ominously, one's cardiovascular system and airways. If your symptoms don't fit into that range very well, it's
probable that the answer is not true food allergy.
If you
feel better eating non-GMO, then that's great either way. You've solved your problem, right?
I'd ask that you NOT refer to this as an
allergy to others, however, unless you have been to a board-certified food allergy specialist and determined whether or not you need to carry epinephrine with you for the rest of your life. You know, just in case someone were to, say, not take your allergy quite seriously enough when prepping food for you at that nice vegan restaurant that you wanted to try for your anniversary. Hypothetically.
I realize this seems petty-- but-- I can really die if someone doesn't believe me or isn't careful enough to keep my food from TOUCHING one of my allergens. So when someone says "food allergy" to a food service staffer, I'd really prefer it if they meant "I could die if you screw this up, thanks." I'd especially like it if people working in schools think about food allergies that way, given what's at stake for kids with peanut, milk, or egg allergies there.
I'll add that many OTHER things strike me as being more or less compatible with your hypothesis that GMO foods in particular caused particular symptoms for you. Incidentally-- a theory is (technically) something that has been extensively tested in many trials, usually independently and by many individuals, and explains a wide swathe of related phenomena... like gravity, or natural selection. A single counter-example is enough to DIS-prove a hypothesis-- so if your hypothesis is that GMO foods are allergens for you personally, a counter example could probably be had via an in-office food challenge in which YOU do not know which food sample is which, but the physician DOES. Does that make sense? By the way, with potential IgE-mediated food allergy, this is
not a DIY or at-home project, and I strongly discourage people from trying this on their own with a life-threatening allergen.
Back to "other possible explanations" for improved health upon the removal of GMO foods:
When people begin to pay more
attention to their dietary choices and choose less processed, more fresh options, overall health
often improves as a result of better diet. That's not to say that this is an unimportant result! It's really great when people treat what they eat with more respect and put more thought into it, period. I'm also (just personally-- nothing to do with food allergies in particular) a BIG fan of eating seasonally and locally when feasible, and I try very hard to make my family's choices sustainable and healthy ones, food allergies aside.
It's also possible that lifestyle factors unrelated to diet may have been the underlying cause of your recent improvement in health. Did you also begin paying more attention to adequate exercise? Get rid of a pet about the same time? Move to a home that doesn't have a mold problem? Move to an area of the country where you no longer have seasonal allergies at this time of year?
The placebo effect is also a potent factor in possible improvements in overall health. People really DO feel better when they expect that they will. This is why a food challenge-- even a food challenge for an IgE-mediated allergen-- is often conducted "blind" so that the patient doesn't
know when they've been dosed with the allergen.
The problem with self-diagnosis/investigation like this is that human beings are highly susceptible not only to suggestion, but also to correlation fallacy-- that is, that because two things are somewhat coincident temporally, that one must be the cause of the other. This is why a blinded, controlled experiment is important; if you can't reproduce the effect that you think is linked with the stimulus, then the linkage isn't valid.
It's a problem even when diagnosing
IgE-mediated food allergy. Suppose that you go to visit a friend in another city, and s/he takes you out for a very nice dinner. On the way back to his/her apartment, you anaphylax in the cab-- having rushed to the hospital and gotten emergency treatment, you return home to your own allergist to narrow down just what could have caused such a thing to happen to you. Your allergist asks you to list EVERYTHING that you ate, came into contact with, or did in the two to three hours prior to reacting in that taxicab. Okay, but the problem here is that the list is nearly
endless. ANY of those things *could* have been the trigger. In my hypothetical example,
You caught a flight last minute-- direct from your city to your friend's. S/he picked you up at the airport and you went directly to dinner-- GREAT sushi restaurant since you don't live on the coast and s/he does. Dessert was also to die for (well, you'd have thought so then... now, you're not so sure about stating that
)... started to walk, it being a nice night, figuring that you'd catch a cab "whenever" basically, but you realized how LATE it was, and ran to flag down a random cab you spotted, so that you could get back to your friend's apartment to catch some ZZzz's before your very early flight home-- obviously, never making it there. The cab smelled a little like air freshener, but not bad otherwise.
Can you pick out the potential triggers? Some of them aren't in the story, because our erstwhile victim doesn't know about them-- or doesn't understand their importance. What would you pick out right away as the most LIKELY thing? Shellfish? You'd be wrong. (Hey-- it's my example, I can do what I want.)
Your allergist skin tests you for shellfish... and nothing happens. Well, this is certainly puzzling. Then the allergist checks your other allergies-- tree pollens, to which several are highly positive... decides to include some other environmental allergens. Dust mites-- that might explain a cross-reactive thing with shellfish, but alas, it's negative too... okay, pets, then-- WHOAHHHH.... the skin prick test that ate half your back and resulted in your allergist giving you meds in less than five minutes!! Cat allergy is the real trigger-- you don't own a cat, and haven't been around one in a long time, really-- because your dad was so allergic as a kid, and swore that he'd never have one in the house or he was "moving out for good." He even knew when you and your friend tried to sneak a kitten into your bedroom once. He was REALLY allergic. Since living on your own you haven't had time for a pet, and really-- your parents visit, and your dad IS still horribly allergic. You have allergies, too-- occasionally your nose will run or your eyes will get all puffy out of nowhere. It's annoying, but it's never felt DANGEROUS before now. You've developed asthma in the last four years-- every spring when the trees bloom you wheeze a little and take allergy pills like they're candy. It's spring already in your friend's city, even though YOUR hometown still has snow on the ground-- there's a big old hit to your immune system-- TREE pollen, all at once, and you unprepared to deal with it, not having brought antihistamines with you to tamp it down. The person in front of you on the plane had a cat in a carrier. Your friend works in a bookshop WITH a cat, and was snuggling it before coming to pick you up at the airport-- first thing you two ? Hug-hug-hug, yup. Finally-- the cab driver also has a cat-- it rides in the cab with him to keep him company. Too. much. cat. + too much tree pollen = *boom*
How realistic is this example? Pretty realistic, unfortunately. It is
very easy to incorrectly identify a food allergen as a trigger, and way harder to pin down an environmental cause of allergy symptoms.