Articles of Interest

Do you often find yourself feeling sick after meals? Do you dread eating out because you never know which meal, which day, what time will trigger unpleasant symptoms? You're not alone. You could have a food intolerance - a condition similar to a food allergy, but not as severe.

Specific enzymes are required to break down the different foods you eat. Food intolerances can be caused by your bodies lack of these enzymes. The response to the food in question may not been seen immediately, as usually happens with food allergies. This delayed response can make it difficult to determine the "trigger food".

Some usual intolerances - some of which you may already have heard of before - are lactose intolerance (i.e. the inability to process dairy products) and gluten intolerance (i.e. the inability to process wheat products or gluten). However, there are more types of intolerance than these, and most of them will produce unpleasant symptoms.

Diarrhea, flatulence, constipation, IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), pain and fatigue are among the possible symptoms of food intolerances. The best way to really prevent these symptoms to occur is to refrain from eating the foods in question, and the best way to find out which foods these is to undertake a food intolerance test.

The elisa food test - meaning enzyme-linked immunorbent assay - is a very common type of food intolerance test. After collecting blood - usually from a fingertip - either at home or at a doctor's parlour - it is then analysed at a lab for possible reactions with specific foods. Strong reactions will produce many IgG antibodies in your blod: the more there are, the worse the reactions.

The results of the food intolerance test will reveal how much was produced, and from what type of foods. Different providers use different scales, but they all measure basically the same thing - the production of antibodies. It should be apparent which, if any foods were causing intolerance reactions; studies have shown this sort of test to be quite effective in tracking down the source.

Should you realise you have a food intolerance, there are many steps you may take. The most obvious of them all is to avoid some food from your diet: this can be simple or difficult, depending on every specific food involved. For more usual intolerances - such as dairy - there are safe products properly labelled like that by manufacturers. But as far as other foods are concerned, you have to read ingredients and ask questions. This can be insensible at times, but it's far better than the symptoms. Eventually, a food intolerance test is well justified even considering the cost and effort.