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.
I didn’t even know food allergy tests existed. Are these blood tests or have to do with you sampling the food to see what is wrong for you?
if you have a look at the picture next to the heading “food allergy test” that is an example of the most common form of food allergy testing, via a skin test. After a certain period of time the skin is then examined to see what foods you react to.
However this is not entirely accurate, although it can be useful as a general guide.
Determining intolerant foods is a very unique process as your unique dna structure means you react to foods slightly differently than the next person.
However as a general rule eating a “natural” diet is likely to cause you less problems than a refined artifical diet, although you may still experience the occassional natural food that can cause you problems, one of the most common being citrus fruits.
Dude people with Addison’s disease crave SALT bc they have a major fluid imbalance, NOT an allergy. For you t o tell them to avoid salt WOULD BE TO KILL US! mEN THERE’S only shit in your articles. I think with all the blue you’re ALSO DOING THE MIND CONTROL : YOUR HEADLINES PROMISE A LOT OF SHIT THAT YOU FAIL TO DELIVER. SO LONG!
Yes you are completely correct. There are people who have rare genetic diseases, so this information may not apply to them.
However I am certaintly not telling people with Addisons disease to avoid salt. Rather this is meant as information for the average general person, of course there are allways exceptions.
This series of article is based upon an interview with one of the leading allergy experts in the world. You can listen to the full interview for free in the first part of this article:
http://www.eruptingmind.com/everyone-has-food-allergy/
The general point that was being made was that most people (although not all) become addicted to foods they are intolerant to. Similiar to how a person may become addicted to drugs.
I am sorry you feel that the design of this website and its colour scheme is a form of mind control. Most people have commented that they like the design and colour scheme, but of course, everyone has their own particular taste.
Hey
I seem to get allergic reactions to certain foods and i have had an allergy test but it was negative on the things they tested for which i beleieve were the most common allergies. I also drink about 2 letres of diet coke or diet pepsi everyday which i’m sure is terrible for me so i’m seriously considering fasting. during fasting is it just water you drink?
Oh and another reason fasting would be a good idea for me is my diabetes. i have an insulin pump so i have complete control of what insulin goes in for what reasons. theres the background insulin which goes in every 3 minutes and different amounts for each hour. then the food insulin which i can put in how ever much or little i need whenever i eat. so i could keep my blood sugars fine without eating so that wouldnt be an issue. generally when diabetics fast they only skip one meal and do blood tests during that time to see if the background insulin is correct. for example if you were getting lows at 3 in the afternoon you wouldnt be able to tell if your giving too much insulin for lunch or weather your recieving too much background insulin. so if i fasted for several days i could get the background insulin perfect then be able to improve on the insulin for the food.
the main problem i see is that if my blood sugar goes low i’ll have to eat something to make it go back up. would lucazade or glucose tablets affect fasting? either way if my blood sugar goes low i’ll have to take them i was just curious of weather they would.
you seem to have a good understanding of blood sugars so hopfully that all would have made sense. Oh and incase you don’t know, an insulin pump is a small machine which is connected to a canular in my leg so the insulin goes in constantly.
During fasting would exercise be bad? usually it gives me energy and makes me feel better but surely it wouldnt while fasting?
Great website by the way
Thanks
Hi LillyAnn,
Yes coke and pepsi are very bad for you, especially if you have diabetes. I would strongly recommend stopping drinking them, especially the diet versions.
Fasting can be a great tool for detoxification, but it can also be very dangerous. Since you have diabetes it would be a good idea to ask your doctor if it is a safe thing for you to do.
There are many different ways you can fast, water, fruit or vegetable juice are all options available to you.
However i am not a big fan of fruit juice fasting as it can cause rapid insulin spikes. Fruit juice is loaded with sugar, and is no good for you if you drink a lot of it quickly. If you do use fruit juice, sip it slowly over a longer period of time.
A better alternative is vegetable juice, as this should avoid the insulin spikes you get with fruit juice.
Water fasting is a great way to fast, but it is not recommended for beginners as it can cause you to detox very quickly, which can be a bit of a shock if you don’t know what to expect. When i have water fasted in the past i also drank herbal teas, which can help aid detoxification.
Since you are drinking a lot of sugar soft drinks, i think one of the best ways you can detox would be to gradually reduce the amount of coke/pepsi you drink, until you completly eliminate it.
Only then should you consider fasting.
If you try and do to much too soon you can actually harm your body, because you are detoxing too quickly and overloading the body.
So start by eliminating the soft drinks, then replace them with herbal teas. Dandelion tea is good for the liver which will help you detoxify.
Other things you can try are corriander, garlic, selenium, turmeric, chromium and water.
But make sure the water you are drinking is clean water that has gone through a proper filter. This is especially important if you live in Americia, which has very poor quality drinking water. In addition to this a shower filter should be used, as you absorb a lot of toxins in the shower.
Exercise during fasting is recommended as it aids the blood and lympthatic systems, thereby assisting detoxification.
Exercise should be light, such as yoga, incorporating stretching various muscles in the body and raising the heart rate slightly. Although if you have not fasted before, you may feel very weak to begin with and not want to exercise.
If your blood sugar gets low during fasting (which it will on a water fast) something sugary such as fruit juice would help to raise your blood sugar, and give you some short term energy again.
However i would stay away from any kind of soft drink or glucose tablets, as they are very bad for you, and a major contributor towards developing diabetes.
If you are trying to detox this is not what you want to be putting in your body. Do you know what aspartame is? Its in a lot of diet drinks. If you haven’t heard of aspartame look at this:
http://www.sweetpoison.com/aspartame-side-effects.html
Did you know that when you eat carbohydrates the food turns into glucose. Glucose can weaken your immune system by upto 50% for 5 hours making you more vulnerable to disease and infection.
So i eat a low carbohydrate diet, which some doctors have found can be used to reverse diabetes.
Overall i would recommend stopping the soft drinks first before doing any fasting. Detox slowly so you don’t do yourself any harm, and speak to your doctor first as there may be complications for diabetics who fast.
This is something you should be looking at over several months, rather than trying to detox yourself within a few days. Remember, body fat also stores toxins, so if you are overweight will you be accumulating toxins there.
In addition to this you can do a colon cleanse, as a lot of toxins accumulate in the bowels, especially if you are eating junk and drinking lots of sugary drinks. Both of which will encourage the growth of bad bacteria, giving you things like candida.
Thank you so much for this very informative set of articles. I am constantly recharging my health habits, falling back, recharging, etc. I went to the Pritikin center for two weeks a long time ago and it began me on the road to regular exercise and excellent eating habits. I have continued the exercise but the food is on/off. I also attend the Optimal Health Institute one week an year: there you do meditations, exercise and a very strict raw foods (mostly vegetables) regime. I love it and would love to follow mostly that most of the t ime …I did better when I lived in a warm climate, now I’m in a VERY cold climate and I am not good about healthy eating.
But I will keep trying (plus hopefully get back to a warm climate in 09).
How do you suggest doing a colon cleanse?
Lynn
Hi Lynn,
There are several ways you can do a colon cleanse at home, type these into google to find out more about how to do them.
1 - Salt water flush
2 - Enema bag/kit
3 - oxypowder
4- Epsom salts (although not really a deep cleanse)
You can get all these items from ebay quite easily.
Wow this is such a very informative post, a lot of people will definitely benefit from this! i definitely agree with the food cravings, that what ever food you crave the most are the food you are most intolerant to. Thanks for sharing