Nutrition for Intolerances

Have you ever heard yourself say that a certain food “doesn’t agree with me” – you could be right

A food intolerance isn’t an allergy, if you have a food allergy you’ll know it yells at you, but an intolerance is more a quiet grumbler, the back-seat driver you are not fully aware of who disrupts your journey through life.

It can be a very gentle aggravation which simply leaves you feeling unsettled after some meals or a little ‘over-full’ or it may be something you have started to develop an awareness of by paying more attention to yourself. If you have you ever heard yourself say that a certain food “doesn’t agree with me” then you’re right and it could be important to investigate what this means and what causes it?

A food intolerance response takes place in your digestive system, it occurs when you are unable to properly breakdown a food. This could be due to enzyme deficiencies, sensitivity to food additives or reactions to naturally occurring chemicals in foods. Sometimes people can get away with eating small amounts of a food without causing problems or eating it in certain combinations where there are fewer of the triggers so the response is less pronounced. For example, if you are intolerant to wheat and cheese a cheese sandwich is obviously a bad idea, but a little cheese on a maize cracker may still not suit you but may cause a much smaller response.

It is important to remember an intolerance is different to an allergy which occurs in the immune system and can cause serious or even life threating reactions. However, while allergies have a sudden and dramatic impact on you intolerances have a steady relentless and diminishing affect on how the body works, affecting the flora and fauna of the gut, which we are increasingly discovering is crucial to have healthy, and so can become very problematic with unpleasant and inconvenient symptoms.

Food intolerances and sensitivities are extremely common and seem to be on the rise, in fact it’s estimated that up to 20% of the world’s population may have a food intolerance.

What Is a Food Intolerance?

The term “food hypersensitivity” refers to both food allergies and intolerances.

A food intolerance is not the same as a food allergy, although some of the symptoms may be similar.

When you have food allergy symptoms develop rapidly as your immune system over-reacts, while when you have a food intolerance your digestive system more slowly reacts to the challenge.

When you have a food intolerance, symptoms usually build slowly over a few hours of eating the food that you are intolerant to and correspondingly the effect can produce symptoms over a longer period. It may also be the case that you have a range of symptoms as your body struggles to process the food, and these can change. For example, within an hour you may feel a little bloated or a little flushed and that may pass over a couple of hours and the next symptom you have is a disturbed nights sleep, or become a bit windier for 24hrs, or more irritable.

This can then lead to a flare up of a pre-existing condition, like eczema, arthritis or even back pain, as the body tries to re-establish equilibrium and throughout this time you continue to eat and may start other small intolerant reactions which also create their own disruptions to your body.

Symptoms can last for hours or even days, this can make the offending food or ingredient especially difficult to pinpoint. What’s more, if you frequently consume foods or ingredients that you are intolerant to, it may be difficult to correlate symptoms to a specific food.

A food intolerance may be hereditary and with you from childhood, but it can also emerge later in life. It is possible for your body to develop an aversion to certain foods as you age or after a change in lifestyle. A sudden sensitivity to certain foods can also occur because of taking medications or due to a stressful life event.

Food intolerances and sensitivities can be hard to diagnose due to their wide range of symptoms, they most commonly involve skin, digestive and respiratory system reactions.

Common symptoms include:

Diarrhoea
Bloating
Rashes or flushing of the skin
Headaches
Nausea
Fatigue
Abdominal pain
Stuffy or runny nose
Reflux
Joint or muscle pain

Through a non-invasive testing process, we can investigate intolerances to over 900 food and non-food variants including dairy and gluten items, we can also check your digestive health along with mineral and nutrient analysis. With this all this information we are then able to develop a unique plan to help understand how to make a lasting effective change to your diet and wellbeing.