Food Intolerance

Food intolerances occur when you eat food that your body is intolerant to. Sometimes a food intolerance may appear immediately after eating something, and in this case it usually signals a food allergy.

Other times you may not notice a food intolerance for many years because your body is able to “cope” with it. But once your body can take no more, then that food intolerance will start to cause you health problems.

This is why it is extremely important to know what food allergies and food intolerances you have, because in all likelihood you already have at least one food allergy or intolerance and it is affecting your life in ways you don’t even realise.

For example, did you know that milk and wheat allergies are an extremely common type of food intolerance that people aren’t even aware of? Both of these can eventually cause you respiratory problems such as asthma, or joint problems such as arthritis later in life.

In addition to this food intolerances can have persistent short term effects, such as feeling tired all the time or brain fog. Both of these symptoms can then negatively affect your everyday life without you even being aware of the cause.

How Do I Know If I Have A Food Intolerance?

Identifying food intolerances can be extremely difficult for several reasons:

1 - You experience symptoms that you consider normal and do not associate with food, such as lack of concentration, feeling tired in the morning, lack of energy, brain fog, irritability, depression etc..

2 - Everyone’s DNA is different, so you may be intolerant to a food you think is good for you.

3 - It takes 5 days for the withdrawal symptoms to disappear from food when you stop eating it.

4 - Your body has become adapted to the food, so you think it’s causing you no harm, when in reality it is slowly wearing your body down.

All of these factors make it hard to accurately diagnose a food intolerance because food affects us all in different ways.

What may be healthy for your neighbour, may be causing you serve long term health problems simply because your body can’t deal with that food.

This is why when you are following any form of diet advice, that you listen to your body and eat only what agrees with you not just because someone tells you it is good for you.

The idea of a universal healthy diet is a complete myth, and can actually be harmful for you if your genetic makeup doesn’t agree with the foods you eat.

Food Intolerance Tests

The only way you will discover if you have a food intolerance, is if you test for it. Below are some of the food intolerance tests you can do.

Lab/Home Food Intolerance Tests

A food Intolerance test is a kit that you can buy which will give you an indication of foods you are intolerant to.

Depending on the type of kit you get, these can give very accurate results so that you will immediately know what foods you should eliminate from your diet.

The less expensive kits however, may produce false positives. This means they will indicate that you have a food intolerance to a particular food when you do not.

But regardless of what type of food intolerance test kit you get, this is the most accurate and easiest way to diagnose food intolerances.

Test For Food Intolerance By Fasting

Fasting is another way to test for food intolerance, and can be very effective providing you know what to look out for and have some experience of fasting.

However fasting can also be dangerous, which is why you must know what you are doing and what to expect.

Fasting will help you to test food intolerances by cleansing your body. This is important because as long as food stays in your digestive system, you will continue to experience symptoms as a result of that food intolerance.

When you fast you will suffer withdrawal symptoms as your body is cleansed, which depending on how toxic your body is, can be very severe and make you feel extremely depressed.

After you have cleansed your body (about 5-7 days of fasting) you should gradually reintroduce foods into your diet, so that you can determine which foods your body is intolerant to.

This is a long process and requires lots of practice and experience, which is why it is not something you can do once and then cure all your food intolerances.

During your fast it would also be wise to do a colon cleanse, as the length of withdrawal symptoms are largely dependant on how long the food rests in your bowel. This means that if you are constipated the withdrawal symptoms will last longer.

Using Cravings As A Food Intolerance Test

The foods which you are most intolerant to will most likely be the foods you crave on a daily basis. This is because when you don’t eat foods you are intolerant to, your body starts to suffer withdrawal symptoms as it begins to detox itself.

The withdrawal symptoms then create food cravings, which cause you to seek out that food and eat it. So a simple food intolerance test you can do at home is to listen to your body when you get these food cravings.

Ask yourself, what foods do you crave? What foods do you have to eat everyday otherwise you feel in a bad mood, tired or unable to concentrate?

Try eliminating those foods from your diet for at least 7 days and do a colon cleanse. This should help you to greatly reduce the symptoms caused by your food intolerance.

However it is important to remember that whilst you can eliminate the majority of symptoms a food intolerance causes you within 5-7 days of not eating that food, you won’t be able to eliminate the symptoms completely.

This is because it can take months or even years for the symptoms of a food intolerance to completely disappear, depending on the type of food you are intolerant to and how long you have been eating it.

But don’t let this put you off, because you can eliminate the majority of your symptoms within 7 days and this will have a tremendous positive impact on your life, health and mood.