If you’ve found yourself in the frustrating game of symptom hide-and-seek, where bloating, diarrhoea, headaches, rashes, and fatigue seem to pop up unexpectedly, then welcome to the club. The wellness journey of decoding food intolerances can be a perplexing one, leaving many of us scratching their heads. You’ve kept food diaries, tried to connect the dots, but the symptoms stubbornly refuse to align with specific foods. Well, you’re not alone.
Identifying Common Intolerances – navigating the confusion
Common Intolerances can be sneaky and they might not make an immediate appearance, throwing off your attempts at correlation in your food diary. In fact, the symptoms may be delayed by 12-24 hours after you’ve enjoyed a meal. To add to the complexity, the intensity may vary based on the quantity of a particular food consumed.
Dairy Dilemmas – Unmasking the Unexpected
In my clinic, one of the most common intolerances I encounter is dairy intolerance. Many clients come to their appointment already steering clear of all milk products, armed with suspicion about the potential troublemakers in their diet. Enter the Test Your Intolerance Intolerance Test which tests for 63 common triggers. What I find particularly useful is its ability to differentiate a milk intolerance into separate intolerances to goat, sheep, and cow milk.
Clients who initially believed they had to bid farewell to all things dairy often discover a surprising twist. As we discuss their results, many find out that they’re actually surprisingly tolerant of goat and/or sheep milk products. It’s the cow milk products that are causing the issues – and with cow milk making up 81% of the world milk production, it’s easy to see how that conclusion may be drawn. What initially felt like a daunting farewell to all dairy products becomes a more nuanced understanding, allowing for a selective approach to what they choose to include in their diet.
Gluten – Debunking the Social Expectation
Similarly, many of my clients feel they should be avoiding gluten – it’s almost as if there is a social expectation for them to be gluten free if they have symptoms of intolerance. But gluten is a protein found in several grains – wheat, rye, barley, oats, spelt, kamut and not all clients need to avoid all of the gluten grains. Some clients take their Intolerance Test and find that they actually only need to be avoiding one or two of the grains e.g. oats and rye, and that the rest of the gluten grains may in fact still be an option for them to eat. As a side note, I always rule out coeliac disease with their doctor before giving the green light to any gluten grains, as this is not an allergy or intolerance and requires a specific antibody test.
A test worth it’s weight in wisdom
The beauty of the Test Your Intolerance, Intolerance Test lies in its power to demystify the confusion surrounding food intolerances. No more guesswork. No more assumptions. Just the clarity that comes from testing for your specific intolerances.
So, if you’re tired of the detective work of hunting for your dietary triggers, it might be time to consider a more precise approach. Intolerance testing doesn’t just tell you what you need to avoid but, more importantly, it also highlights the foods you may be able to enjoy without issues.
In the world of food intolerances, knowledge is not just power – it’s the key to having more of the foods you enjoy on your plate, and less of the symptoms you dread.
