A Health Guide to Food Intolerance
Health Topics on this page
What is food Intolerance and what are the causes?
Do you suffer from health problems like headaches, problems with digestion, fatigue or aching joints that won’t go away – and which your doctor can’t solve? The chances are that you could be suffering from food intolerance. It is estimated that at least 40 percent of people may be suffering from unexplained symptoms that make their lives a misery – and where medications seem to make the problem worse rather than relieve them.
Finding out you have a health problem with food intolerance might not be best news you can hear. Most of us go to the doctors hoping they will give us some pills to make the problem go away. So discovering that considerable effort and change might be needed on our part may not be the perfect solution. The trouble is with our medical system as it stands is that it concentrates too heavily on “magic pill” answers. Which is why so many people are disappointed that their doctors can do little to help them. However we cannot just rely on our doctors to solve all our health problems for us.
Most doctors do not recognise food intolerances – this may be because the definitions of what “food intolerance” is and how they come about can still be somewhat vague and hard to pin down. However, the end result of putting the wrong “fuel” into our bodies is the same as putting diesel into a petrol engine or vice versa – it won’t work properly!
One thing to remember is that emotional symptoms can often be caused by physical causes too. Thousands of people have already found relief from a whole range of chronic and unexplained health problems that had defeated both them and their doctors – simply by making small changes to their diets.
What is a Food Intolerance and what are the causes?Some textbooks state that food intolerance can include any adverse reaction to food – which can range from a mild reaction to a serious allergy. However, food intolerance and allergies are very different. Allergies involve fast and sometimes life-threatening reactions, whereas a food intolerance is generally something that will gradually get worse over time – often over months or even years.
It is possible that you may have intolerance to just one food – but in my experience, it’s more likely to be between two to five different foods. For some unlucky people the figure is much higher. Generally the longer you have been suffering the higher it’s likely to be.
There are no definitive answers as to what causes food intolerance – but there are a number of credible theories that may explain what is going on in the body. The most common is the body’s inability to completely break down food into a form that the body can use. More often than not this is due to an insufficient amount of healthy digestive enzymes. Another is the body’s immune system seems to develop a sensitivity to foods that we eat a lot of – and having to digest it so often perhaps reduces its ability to do so.
Whatever the causes, it seems to be partly a problem with immunity - as an auto-immune disease, partly a problem with digestion as well as a problem with Inflammation.
What are the Main Symptoms and Triggers of Food Intolerance?The symptoms can include some or all of the following:
Bloating, abdominal pains, diarrhoea, headaches and migraines, fatigue, depression or anxiety, aching muscles and joints, rheumatoid arthritis, skin problems, mouth ulcers, an inability to lose weight, nausea, irritable bowel syndrome, stomach ulcers and other digestive problems
This is not a complete list by any means and if you suffer from any symptoms or combination of symptoms that your doctors have been unable to help you with, it is worth investigating whether food intolerance could be the cause.
Food intolerance has been linked to dozens of different symptoms and even serious conditions such as asthma, crohn’s disease, and celiac disease. Yet a doctor is unlikely to even mention the possibility of food intolerance when you present him or her with your health problem. The main triggers of food intolerance are:
Milk, wheat, eggs, shellfish, oranges, coffee, alcohol, nuts, peanuts, yeast and food additives. the top two “safe” foods are considered to be lamb and pear.
Any foods that you have a particular craving for can also be the cause of your symptoms. You can however have intolerance to almost any food, even if another food in the same group does not present any symptoms. For example, for the last few years, every time I eat cashew nuts, a few hours later I feel nauseous, light-headed and dizzy, so I have learned to avoid them. However I can eat any other kind of nut – even peanuts with no symptoms at all.
Some people believe that milk or “lactose” intolerance affects more people than it doesn’t, as adults are not really meant to consume milk. However, finding out what affects you involves a process of elimination – and plenty of patience!
How can I find out if I have Food Intolerance?If you suspect that food intolerance may be the answer to your health problem, then it’s worth trying a few tests of your own first. These small tests may be enough to solve your problem on their own. On the other hand, they may offer you a breakthrough and encourage you to take the elimination diet one step further.
Start by going entirely without any dairy products for a week or two, then eat quite a lot of it for a whole day and compare how you feel. If this does work and you think you’ve found the answer, next move onto wheat (remember it is likely you could be intolerant of several foods) and go without all the foods that contain it for another week (Including bread, pasta, biscuits pastry and beer) After that move on to the other trigger foods mentioned above, including foods you crave.
I always ask my clients to keep a food diary. That is, write everything down that has been eaten and drank for a week or a fortnight. By the side of the food record, make a note of any symptoms. For example you may have experienced a bad migraine on the same day that you ate a lot of bread or pasta, or foods high in additives and this will be clearly seen in your diary.
Whilst there are patch tests available to see if you have an allergy to a certain food, there is no "instant" test that can give definite results about whether or not you have a food intolerance. You can certainly find a lot of companies on the Internet offering a variety of tests for a range of different prices (some up to £250) but although these may be useful, there is no definite proof that they are as conclusive as they claim.
Some health practitioners use a kinesiology resistance test for food intolerances and some are very good. I have recommended a local naturopath at the foot of this page who uses this method very successfully and has treated hundreds of patients in this way.
Points to RememberThere are some important health factors to consider when you do this initial testing work on your own:
Top of page
What is an elimination diet?This is not really a diet as such – but more of an elimination process as a diagnostic test to find out what the sources of your health problems may be. It involves eliminating all foods that could possibly be causing your symptoms for two or three weeks or until you feel better – whichever is sooner. This is the “exclusion” phase of the diet. After that you then reintroduce all the potential trigger foods one at a time for one week each.
Exactly how this is carried out will depend on a lot of factors. Who you consult (i.e what methods the therapist uses) how dedicated and determined you are, the kind of person you are, and how serious your symptoms are. Some therapists recommend that you start by going on a healthy diet for at least one month before you start excluding foods. This involves cutting out tea, coffee, fizzy drinks, anything sweet, alcohol, all additives, take-away and fast foods, continental sausages and very ripe cheeses (because they are a rich source of histamines).
In fact, a bare minimum elimination diet may exclude all the items mentioned above, plus the most common triggers like milk, wheat, eggs, shellfish, oranges, nuts, yeast and additives, plus any medications like painkillers (that you will probably not need anyway) Very often this does the trick and you will feel much better.
In the reintroduction phase of the diet, you would then introduce one food item at a time. Eat a normal size portion of it for lunch and dinner. Foods can take up to two or three days to have an effect and you should include them in your diet for three consecutive days before ruling them out as a health problem and allowing them in. Your nutritional therapist would guide you as to the best foods to start reintroducing first.
Further points to Consider
By now you are probably beginning to realise how difficult it can be to pinpoint food intolerances in people. But difficulties can be overcome if you stick with it. Setbacks are not completely avoidable but it is probably safe to say that the more dedicated you are to finding the causes of your symptoms - and dealing with them - the better chance you have of succeeding to improve your health.
Other ways of dealing with food intolerance
As mentioned earlier, there are three main health areas to consider when it comes to strengthening your body’s natural resistance to food intolerance: Your digestion, your immune system and inflammation.
Taking steps to improve your digestion is the first step towards rebuilding your health. People who suffer with food intolerance often have an underlying digestive imbalance and suffer with digestive problems. One of the most common is Leaky Gut Syndrome. This involves poor absorption of food in the intestines due to increased weakness of the intestinal wall. This can lead to chronic inflammation, bowel conditions like Crohn’s disease, skin conditions, and fatigue as well as food intolerances.
Fortunately there is a lot you can do to heal yourself and create better digestion. In fact many patients have been healed of other mysterious symptoms simply by looking after their digestive system alone. Another positive “side effect” of looking after your digestion means having more energy and feeling more alive than you have in years.
How can I improve my digestion?It is important to eat as many kinds of good foods as possible and severely reduce the amount of “bad” foods and drink you ask your stomach to deal with. Try not to allow your diet to include too many dairy foods, too many wheat based products, or too much sugar. Everything in moderation is the key – and do include many different foods in your diet rather than just sticking with the same types of meals and a few food groups.
Also be careful to eat slowly and methodically and be careful not to overload your stomach at mealtimes. – and most importantly, avoid caffeinated drinks like coca cola, tea and coffee at the same time as you eat. Top of the list in digestive aids is acidophilus. This is an essential good bacterium of the stomach that is important to improve how much of the nutrients in your food are actually absorbed – and also to heal any damage.
You can buy supplements from health food shops but in it’s natural form is found in live yoghurt, sauerkraut, cottage cheese and miso, preferably organic. Another very effective substance for improved digestion is FOS (fructooligosaccharides). This is contained in bananas, garlic and Jerusalem artichokes, and it both detoxifies the digestive system and supports the growth of good bacteria, whilst interfering with the growth of harmful bacteria.
There are also a number of remarkable healing herbs that can be very effective in helping the digestion. These include Cats Claw, Gentian root, dandelion root and ginger. Cats claw in particular cleanses the intestinal tract and supports the whole digestive system.
So to recap:
Top of page
Improving your Immune systemIt is not always easy to know to what extent – if at all – that the immune system plays in food intolerances. However, as a strong immune system is crucial to good health, working on this area is essential to us all.
The main recipe for a healthy immune system is a healthy lifestyle and a healthy state of mental and emotional health. If you feel that your lifestyle is not as healthy as it could be, you can try to write a list of areas where you feel improvement can be made, with some small steps you could slowly start taking to improve them.
One area could be for example, not rushing food, and cutting back or not eating any "junk" food. Both of these things undermine the immune system by nutrients not being absorbed and overloading your body with toxins. There are a number of herbs that support the immune system too. These are Garlic, Echinacea and Astragalus.
Reducing Inflammation in the bodyInflammation is now being seen increasingly as the culprit behind many health problems and diseases. Whenever the body is injured, irritated or infected, inflammation is the basic way in which it reacts to it. The key features are redness, swelling, and pain and all these serve their purpose for as long as they are necessary.
What can happen however is that factors such as a poor diet or food intolerances can over stimulate the immune system and cause a constant state of inflammation. It also seems that in some immune-related conditions, the immune system just doesn’t seem to be able to turn itself off and then attacks the body itself. This is known as an auto-immune disease and includes conditions like rheumatoid arthritis and crohn's disease
For many people who suffer from symptoms related to food intolerance, taking steroids can often be effective in switching off their symptoms. But taking steroids on an ongoing basis can also be detrimental to the health and is not a real option. So what is the alternative?
The main answer is diet, once again. Not only is a healthy diet full of plentiful fruit and vegetables essential, there are a number of foods you can eat that have anti-inflammatory properties.
Omega 3 fatty acids are the most important one to add to your diet. It has great anti-inflammatory properties but is commonly lacking in most people’s diets. Eat plenty of oily fish like sardines, wild salmon, anchovies and tuna. Nuts and seeds and especially flax seed and walnuts are also great sources. More about essential fatty acids here
Sugar and refined carbohydrates are foods that can cause increased inflammation. Don’t over-eat on sugary foods or wheat products and beware of overloading your system with too many food additives. More about food additives here
The main anti-inflammatory nutrients are folic acid and other B vitamins, essential fatty acids and vitamin D. It may therefore be a good idea to take a good multivitamin supplement every day. Bioflavanoids taken in supplement form are also good anti-inflammatory substances, the best being, Pycnogenol, quercetin and rutin.
Finally, there are three main herbs that have been used as anti-inflammatory in natural medicine for centuries. Today, scientists studying extracts of Boswellia are reporting that it can switch off key cell signallers that cause inflammation. Ginger has now been found to suppress pro- inflammatory molecules called prostglandins and can have a similar effect as anti-inflammatory drugs.
Turmeric is another spice used as an anti-inflammatory in Indian medicine. Its strong effects are being validated by modern science and its effects are compared to (although not the same as) COX-2 inhibitor drugs used in prescription anti-inflammatories.
Of course one of the fastest ways to reduce inflammation is to stop smoking and using stimulants!
Contact number and address on this site for the Four Winds Healing Centre Food Intolerance testing by kinesiology. Speak to Keith Jones or Carol Goddard. Highly recommended
Information about many different types of allergy on a useful website here including the various relief options that are available today.Allergy Relief
More about the dangers of eating too much sugar
|
