Food Intolerance Test A Good Idea For Stomach Sufferers
If you have a food intolerance, you know how aggravating it can be. Intolerances aren't allergies, which means that they sometimes have an effect, and sometimes don't. In this framework, you could avoid a food for weeks, and still not discover exactly what is causing your illness. If this has happened to you, you might want to try a food intolerance test, to explore the food related symptoms more closely.
To start with, just because you cannot tolerate a food, that does not necessarily mean that you have an allergy to it. They are just simply not the same thing at all. If you have an allergy, the symptoms usually come on without warning, and are anything but mild. Intolerance is more mild and slower to appear. A food intolerance test, however, can clue you in to what should be avoided.
With a food allergy, your body is in fact allergic to the food in question and the reaction is that of your immune system itself fighting back, very comparable to if you were allergic to pollen. With food intolerance, the immune system does not come into the picture.
While your body will not react as if it is infected by something foreign, your body's digestive organs (like your stomach and intestines) will respond negatively to many ingredients in food, simply because they are not tolerant of those particular ingredients in those foods.
When the body of a person stops to produce particular enzymes or chemicals, which help in digesting a specific food, then there is food intolerance. Many people experience this during their growing stage. Hence there are people who are intolerant to lactose, since the enzyme produced to digest lactose is decreased from the age of two years. Only when a person grows older, he develops symptoms that are unpleasant.
There are a couple of ways of discovering which foods you are intolerant to. You can reduce your diet to just a few foods that are known to cause the least amount of problems, brown rice, lamb and water are the common starting foods. After about 3 weeks of eating only these foods you can then reintroduce one food at time, every 3 or 4 days. It is a good idea to keep a very thorough diary to see if you get any reactions. After about 6 to 9 months you should have a clear picture of which foods you have an intolerance to.
The other way to discover which foods you are intolerant to is to take an ELISA IgG blood test for food intolerances. This only needs a few drops of blood and over 200 foods can be tested. Once you start avoiding the foods you are intolerant to you will typically find that your energy levels increase, digestion improves, you get better sleep. Many people also find an added benefit of fairly rapid weight loss!
Possibly one of the most frustrating things that you can suffer from is food intolerances. Unlike food allergies, which can be recognized by the reactions, food intolerances are a hit and miss proposition. In this case a food intolerance test is the logical way to go to find out what is causing your problems. Just because you cannot tolerate a food, it may not mean that you have an allergy to it. Once you know the foods that you can not tolerate and begin eliminating them from your diet, your digestion will improve as will your energy and sleep. Another unexpected benefit that everyone loves is rapid weight loss.
Published May 14th, 2008
Filed in Fitness, Health, Weight Loss, Women
BlinkList
Delicious
Digg
Facebook
Fark
Furl
Google Bookmarks
Livejournal
Ma.gnolia
Netvouz
Newsvine
Reddit
Spurl
Stumbleupon
Wists
Yahoo My Web