Over the years, food intolerance has affected more people than food allergies. Food intolerances are very common. However, they’re less severe. The evolution of food intolerances often show causes of gastrointestinal symptoms, which can affect you for days. When you have a food intolerance, it’s always best to go on an elimination diet to discover which foods affect you and how severe your food intolerance is to different items.
What is food intolerance?
Another name for food intolerance is food sensitivity. It’s often caused by the body’s inability to break down certain foods. The cause for this problem can be various factors like insufficient enzymes to break down specific foods, underlying gastrointestinal conditions, and the body’s inability to digest some chemicals often used in processed foods.
Sometimes, food intolerance is caused by your gut being sensitive to some foods. So, when you consume these foods, you often suffer from digestive symptoms like diarrhea, gassiness, abdominal cramps, and other IBS-like symptoms. Food intolerance symptoms can persevere for some time, leading to over a week if you haven’t yet passed all the problematic food from your system.
For food intolerance symptoms to occur, there has to be undigested food in your gut. Usually, food gets broken down in the small intestines into small molecules that can be absorbed into the body through the walls of the small intestines. What goes into the colon is the bi-products of foods and things like fiber.
However, when you have a food intolerance, food isn’t digested in the small intestines and pushed into the large intestines. In there, it draws water into the colon, and the bacteria in the large intestines ferment the food, causing gas release. When this happens, you get bloated, gassiness, constipation, and have stomach cramps, among other digestive symptoms.
Food intolerance can cause digestive symptoms and other symptoms like headache, fatigue, joint pain, and anxiety. These additional symptoms are ones you’d usually not think to relate to food intolerance. All food intolerance symptoms, even though less severe than food allergies, are still very uncomfortable and can cause stress.
What is food intolerance testing?
Intolerance testing is a method used to diagnose food sensitivities. When you’re suffering from food intolerance symptoms, an Intolerance Test helps you determine which foods are problematic and causing you those symptoms.
After you’re aware of these foods, you can always undergo an elimination diet, which helps you figure out how problematic the foods are before you eliminate them entirely from your diet if they cause intense symptoms that can harm your health even in the future.
The evolution of food intolerance understanding
The first incidence of food intolerance treatment or identification was in 1978 when Australian researchers published on the topic of an “exclusion diet.” The purpose of this diet was to remove some food chemicals from the patient’s diets and see how their health improves. This diet offered a way to remove specific natural chemicals and additives from one’s diet.
The diet the Australian researchers developed was supposed to help patients with chronic idiopathic urticaria (CIU). Later on, the researchers tested additives and natural chemicals to see if they played a role in causing CIU. This was a great discovery that helped future scientific trials when studying substances relating to the study of these substances in relation to food intolerance.
In 1995, something phenomenal happened. The European Academy of Allergology and Clinical Immunology devised a way to classify food reactions based on the underlying reasons. They came up with two definitions, “food allergies” for when the immune system is triggered and “food intolerance” for when the immune system hasn’t been triggered. In conclusion, any negative reactions from food consumption wa labeled “adverse reactions to food.
From then, the evolution of food intolerances has skyrocketed. The Nomenclature Review Committee of the World Allergy Organization made a new proposal for a new terminology that was accepted widely in 2003. Food intolerance from then on was described as “non-allergic hypersensitivity.” this term helped people understand further how food intolerance affected their bodies, which was different from food allergies.
How is food intolerance diagnosed?
If you notice a food intolerance, mostly digestive symptoms, you must get an Intolerance Test. Thai test helps you determine which foods are causing you symptoms so you can eliminate them from your diet and see if your health improves. An elimination diet is short-term and will help you know which foods to keep and which you need to eliminate.
When checking for food intolerance, it’s also essential to note digestive illnesses that have the same symptoms as food intolerance and can contribute to the evolution of food intolerances. Gastrointestinal conditions like Crohn’s disease, leaky gut syndrome, ulcerative colitis, and irritable bowel disease often cause food intolerance and can be confused with food intolerance.
Before taking an intolerance test, we recommend a test that checks for these digestive tract illnesses. Treating these conditions can help eliminate food intolerance. Sometimes, these illnesses contribute to food intolerance, while at other times, you may confuse them for food intolerance symptoms because the symptoms are so similar.
Often, people with inflammatory bowel syndrome have food intolerance. Diagnosing these underlying conditions is necessary when it comes to managing food intolerances. Getting a doctor’s advice when removing some foods from your diet is also essential. Often, a food intolerance test lets you know which foods are problematic, and it can seem easy to eliminate all those foods from your diet.
However, food intolerances work differently than allergies, such that the amount of food you consume determines the severity of your symptoms. So, undergoing a guided elimination diet will help you know how severe your food sensitivity is to each item to understand the quantities to consume safely. However, if a specific food substance causes intolerance symptoms even in small amounts, you must remove it from your diet.
Removing a specific food from your diet means replacing it with something equally nutritious, providing you with vitamins and minerals to prevent deficiencies. For example, when you have lactose intolerance, you must indulge in lactose-free and plant-based milk alternatives. You must remember that milk offers calcium and other vitamins when you do so. So, ensure that you get one fortified with those minerals and vitamins when drinking plant-based milk.
Final thoughts
The evolution of food intolerances has grown over the years to get where it is today. Presently, we understand how different it is from food allergies and the various factors that cause it. A food Intolerance Test helps you know which foods are causing your intolerance symptoms so that you can manage your diet. When you take control of your diet, you’ll experience fewer digestive symptoms resulting from food intolerances.
