Do you suffer from food intolerance?

Anaphylactic reactions these are the classic food allergies that many of you will have heard of. They cause the dramatic and sometimes life threatening symptoms associated with peanut allergies, shellfish allergies and various other foods.

General food sensitivities these are sensitivities to specific foods that trigger conditions such as migraine, vomiting, eczema. Only a few key foods, such as cheese, chocolate and red wine in the case of migraines, are recognised to have links with ill health.

Gluten intolerance this is primarily linked with a condition known as coeliac disease. In this condition people cannot tolerate the presence of a protein called gliadin in their diets. Gluten/gliadin is found in greatest amounts in wheat, but is also present in other grains such as rye and oats. Coeliac disease causes bloating, abdominal discomfort and pain, weight loss and problems with nutrient absorption. In short the affected person fails to thrive.

Hypersensitivity this reaction is similar to the anaphylactic reaction but much more toned down. Here the person is reacting immunologically to certain food substances which produce things like vomiting and diarrhoea, eczema and itchy skin/rashes and abdominal discomfort in general.

All of the above are well recognised and can be clearly explained from a physiological point of view. So where does this leave us with the more general food intolerances? Approximately one in three people recognise that there are some foods which seem to affect them in a negative way. They feel sluggish or pulled down after certain meals but cannot quite put their finger on why. Already existing conditions such as irritable bowel, eczema, asthma and arthritis may be aggravated by or indeed they may even stem from such intolerances, it’s just that they have been around for so long the affected person does not make the connection with diet. These things may be due to ‘leaky gut' a concept that is very controversial in orthodox medical circles, but one which is readily accepted by complementary therapists as a definite physical occurrence. ‘Leaky gut' occurs when food molecules are able to leak across the gut wall into the blood stream where they trigger the immune response, the causes of ‘leaky gut' are thought to be many fold, but a major factor is an overgrowth of yeasts, such as Candida species. It is thought that the food intolerances related to this could either be responsible for or aggravate:

• Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
• Inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis
• Excess flatulence and abdominal bloating
• Sleep disturbances
• Chronic fatigue or low energy in general
• Skin disorders such as eczema, dry skin in general and acne
• Pre-menstrual problems
• Asthma
• Sinusitis or runny noses (rhinitis)
• Arthritis
• An over burdened immune system

So if you think you have a food intolerance what options are open to you to find out more?

You could try an exclusion diet, this is where you remove all of the foods that you think might trigger the intolerance from your diet, then after 3-4 weeks you introduce them one by one and observe any change in your symptom picture. Once the symptoms come back after introducing a particular food you know you have got the culprit. The down side of this method is that there might be several foods that are responsible and differentiating between them can be difficult, the entire process is very time consuming and quite frankly it is a drag to implement in our busy lifestyles.

Another method is to use the energy sensitive ‘diagnostic' machines which test your energetic resistance via a probe placed on an acupuncture point on the finger. In my experience this is a very inaccurate method as it is so dependent on the skill of the operator with regard to how much pressure they apply and whether or not the pressure is consistent with each trial of substances to be tested. I have lost count of the number of patients I have seen who have been wrongly diagnosed with a “severe intolerance' or a “marked deficiency" by this method. They have gone away from the test operator and removed the offending food groups or doubled up on their supplements only to find no difference in their symptoms quite simply because the original ‘diagnosis' was wrong!

By far the easiest and most accurate method to determine food intolerances is to test the antibody responses in the blood. This method is quick and accurate. Antibodies are defence proteins made by special immune cells against material in the blood which shouldn’t be there, this includes unmodified food particles. There are a new range of blood tests available which look for the presence of an antibody called IgG which is formed due to the presence of certain trigger foods. This is as opposed to an antibody called IgE which we already know is definitely behind food reactions like anaphylaxis and hypersensitivity. For more information on food intolerance blood testing turn to the relevant page in the Health Tests Available section.

Once the trigger foods have been properly identified they can be removed from the diet, an improvement in the presenting condition is usually seen within a week or so of this, but often takes several weeks to be completed. A word of caution though if several food groups are indicated to be producing a strong reaction withdraw them one at a time, if they are removed all at once the body may have a healing crisis in which the presenting symptoms often get much worse before improvement. Staggering the removal of trigger foods should reduce the likelihood of this happening.