Learn About Food Allergies & Food Intolerance |
Many people suffer from chronic symptoms like anaemia, diarrhea, bloating, flatulence, itchy flaking skin, tinea, headaches and nutrient deficiencies. Not all of them have Food Intolerances or Food Allergies. But many do.
(If you don't know the meaning of a word - find it in the Glossary.)
Why not investigate for yourself? There are no drugs or tests needed to change what you eat. Why not maintain a healthy balanced diet AND lose the symptoms? Check your symptoms in the Symptoms Matrix.
Michelle was a 30-something audiologist and had been tired and pale for years, and forever embarrassed by abdominal bloating, flatulence and diarrhea. Then she decided to do something about it. She researched her symptoms on the net and discovered she had a Food Intolerance. Simple as that.
She began eating differently and within 2 weeks felt much better. Now six months later she has loads of energy, loves life and has begun her own business consulting to call centres.
How often do we expect a doctor to "fix" us with a pill? It may be worth a moment to stop and consider what we are putting in our mouths apart from pills.
Could you write down easily ALL of what you ate in the last week? What about in the last month? The truth is many of us eat without thinking. And we may have little idea exactly what we are eating.
We eat meals, we snack, we drink, we chew, we swallow vitamins. We devour chocolate cake and coffee and steak and processed foods. We treat ourselves to buttered popcorn* at the cinema, along with sweets, ice creams and large soft drinks.
Some of us spend considerable effort to monitor the fat content of food, or cholesterol, or we count calories.
But did you ever stop and think that the food you choose could actually be making you sick? Food Intolerance is much more prevalent than you might think and reading on through these pages will bring you up to date information about this.
While Food Allergies are usually rather easy to spot because of the immediate and dramatic reactions, Food Intolerance is widely misdiagnosed or hardly ever suspected.
People who believe they might be food intolerant find out by different methods. One is to undergo an Elimination Diet. This is where the variety of foods you normally eat is reduced to those that are suspected. There are only a few "usual suspects" and are largely indicated by your symptoms. They fall into three categories and include:
Here at foodintol we have also developed the Detection Diet which you can take without the expense and formal supervision of a dietician or medical professional. It's much easier and safer than the Elimination Diet and just as effective for identifying the foods that cause your symptoms and stress.
If your symptoms are not relieved by relevant changes in your diet then they are probably caused by something other than food intolerance.
(Remember - always consult your Healthcare professional when changing your diet, especially if taking medications.)
It is quite common to suffer from abdominal pain, flatulence, bloating and diarrhea. If due to a Food Intolerance it is likely to be Dairy or Yeast intolerance rather than Gluten Intolerance (Celiac Disease).
Celiac Disease or CD occurs in less than half of one percent of populations in the US and Britain, and assumed to be the same for Australians.
Intolerance to Dairy foods however (predominantly Lactose Intolerance) is known to occur in the majority of the world's population - somewhere between 70% and 90% - depending on the ancestry of individuals. So your diarrhea or "grumbly guts" could well be Dairy Sensitivity.
Most Food intolerances and Food Allergies are with you for life. That means you don't "get over" them and generally they get worse with age. The good news is that you can enjoy symptom-free living by identifying and avoiding those foods that cause the trouble.
Read about the difference between food allergy and food intolerance.
New research is continually updating the medical profession's understanding of Food Intolerance. In the last few years alone there has been a significant shift in the acceptance of Food Intolerance as a serious affliction. The distinction from Food Allergies has been further refined and the debate about how the Immune System is involved is now less polarised.
In other words, Healthcare Professionals now have clinical evidence that certain foods can cause unpleasant physical, mental and emotional symptoms. Now there is a range of simple and effective therapies - most diet-related - which can make life good again.
We help you stay in touch with our Hot Topics articles, and if you miss one you can find back issues in the archives.
If you have food intolerance - it doesn't mean you are gravely ill. It just means you are giving yourself the wrong fuels.
An Analogy: Stories from World War II told of desperate people who ran their cars on alcoholic spirits like whisky to get across the German border - these being in more plentiful supply than petrol.
If you put leaded petrol (or ethanol or toluene or in some cases even cooking oil) in a car it will still go. The car may not go very well, but it will go. It may cough and splutter and run inefficiently and produce terrible toxic gases, but it will still operate.
However, over time, using these inappropriate fuels will cause a raft of systemic problems triggering flow-on problems in adjoining systems.
Blockages from foreign residues will clog the fuel line.
Combustion of inappropriate fuel will cause dirty spark plugs.
The car stalls a lot and more use of the ignition system puts extra strain on the starter motor, fan belts and battery. And so on.
Soon the car is all choked up and just won't go.
It may be simplistic but the Motor Car Analogy is useful for understanding food intolerance. If we had used the correct fuel in the first place we would not have all the systemic damage.
The Human body is an amazing system - in fact it is a finely tuned system of hundreds of other systems. And changing a part of one system affects others around it.
If we use inappropriate food to fuel our bodies we will suffer similar consequences to the car. Our bodies still operate. We can still walk and think and work and have our busy lives.
But over time we do damage to our systems: our digestive tract, our skin and hair, our respiratory system, our blood, even our immune system.
Consider the digestive system (gut) of a healthy person. When food passes through the stomach and intestine it moves through various stages of digestion that separate out the nutrients for absorption into the bloodstream. Solid waste products are then gradually dehydrated for elimination.
In healthy people the digestion of food is almost completely unfelt. It just goes on in the background and we hardly ever think about it.
However digestion is an extremely complex symphony of co-operation of many of the body's organs according to a set plan and schedule.
A food intolerance upsets this delicate balance of digestion: when the gut is unable to process food in the available time we get problems which are gastro-intestinal in nature - commonly nausea, diarrhea, bloating, flatulence, constipation, or a combination of these known as Irritable Bowel Syndrome or IBS.
Sometimes food is moved along too fast - before it has been processed properly and still very liquid - and is lost from the body before we have absorbed any nutrients.
Other times it doesn't move along fast enough and spends too long in the dehydration chamber (the colon or large intestine). This causes difficulty in elimination - constipation. In addition abnormal fermentation of food in the gut causes production of excessive gases.
If these symptoms are experienced on a long term or chronic basis, there is often a number of consequent symptoms: haemorrhoids, anal inflammation, weight loss, dehydration, and poor absorption of vital nutrients like iron, calcium or trace elements leading to deficiencies.
These can then lead to further problems in other parts of the body - dry flaking or itchy skin, respiratory difficulties and general problems like lethargy, headache and even an inability to concentrate. Indeed for those who are extremely sensitive, one dose of an ill-tolerated food can send the body into a domino effect or chain reaction of multiple symptoms.
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More information
Symptoms Matrix (must register first)
The Food Intolerance Healing Program.
References
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