Read 31 times since Friday, October 21, 2011
lots of people, including those who are otherwise fit and lead a healthy lifestyle who eat a healthy, balanced diet, can have some kind of food intolerance which can cause a variety of problems even if they are relatively mild, can cause discomfort and lead to more serious problems later on down the road.
Food allergies act in a different way to food intolerance as they usually react and cause noticeable symptoms within seconds, minutes or hours after eating the offending foods. Food intolerance on the other hand can take several days before any sign of symptom becomes apparent, making the culprit foods much harder to diagnose. Food intolerance symptoms can include bloating, wind painful constipation and stomach cramps and aches.
A common way to try and figure out what foods may be causing problems is to keep a food diary or journal of everything you eat and drink as well as recording all symptoms and try and spot trends within your recorded data. Once a possible food trouble maker is spotted it should be removed, if the symptoms subside chances are you have found one of the many possible foods that may be causing you to have a food intolerance. This obviously isn't ideal and can take a few months of trial and error trying to identify the root of the intolerance.
A more convenient and sensible approach might be to take a food intolerance test. Developments in recent years have meant scientist can now test your blood for food-specific lgG antibodies. The tests highlight specific reactions to foods meaning offending foods may be quickly identified and removed from your diet. Unfortunately not all tests are made the same meaning not all results are the same so getting a test that is lab tested is best.
Unfortunately there are many tests on the market that produce high numbers of false positive results which leaves practitioners' confused, and the patient at risk of malnutrition if they followed the advice! This has led to some skepticism about test validity and it is really important to choose a test that has clinical data that support it.
Tests in Laboratories are able to test for food sensitivity for up to 113 individual foods which includes yeast, egg, milk, gluten, and more. From this you can gain better understanding about the foods that your body reacts unfavorably to and by cutting them out can help to improve some of your problematic symptoms. The tests are a simple finger prick test which you can usually do at home. You then send the blood sample off to the laboratory that then assess the sample. If your blood sample is found to have raised levels of food-specific IgG antibodies then this indicates that a reaction to a particular food or foods has occurred. Dr. Gillian Hart is a Scientific Director for YorkTest Laboratories Ltd. YorkTest specialise in allergy testing, food intolerance testing and food intolerance support. For more information visit http://www.yorktest.com or call 0800 074 6185.
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