Your body’s inability to digest food properly is known as food sensitivity. Food sensitivity is also commonly referred to as food intolerance. It is a common occurrence worldwide, and the number of people affected by food sensitivity symptoms keeps rising as the years go by.
The most common food sensitivities include gluten intolerance and lactose intolerance. Most people with food intolerances are affected by these two common ones. However, it’s also possible for you to have a severe sensitivity to any food you eat, even additives and dyes in food.
Listening to your body is the best way to know whether you have food sensitivity. The body offers many signals regarding symptoms that can make you aware of your food sensitivities. When you have food sensitivity, it’s common to witness some digestive signs, indicating that you need to adjust your diet and cut out foods causing these symptoms.
Common food sensitivity symptoms
Food sensitivity symptoms can vary from one individual to the next in terms of how long they appear, the symptoms they suffer from, and the intensity of these symptoms. Common symptoms include:
- Abdominal pain
- Diarrhea
- Vomiting/nausea
- Gas
- Joint pain
- Headache
- Brain fog bloating
- Constipation
It is common to witness sensitivity symptoms hours to three days after ingesting the trigger food. It’s common to see symptoms within a few hours or minutes for sensitivities like caffeine. However, when it comes to gluten intolerance, it’s going to take longer, depending on the individual.
Causes of food sensitivities
Unlike food allergies, food sensitivities don’t suddenly develop. For example, you can’t wake up one morning unable to consume wheat without symptoms. However, sensitivities develop over time, and the severity increases until you notice these symptoms.
For example, one only develops lactose intolerance after they’re done breastfeeding. Once children stop solely depending on milk as their main meal, the body stops producing as many lactase enzymes as it used to before.
Therefore, over time, one develops lactose intolerance if the body doesn’t stop decreasing the enzymes it’s producing. It’s also common for people to develop food sensitivities as they age because the body starts making fewer and fewer enzymes to digest food, causing the emergence of sensitivities.
There is no sure cause for food sensitivities because many people develop sensitivities for varying reasons. These include:
- Enzymatic defects include sensitivities caused by the body’s lack of sufficient enzyme production. These include lactose intolerance and FODMAP intolerance. Both conditions can be solved by adequate enzyme production to digest these foods.
- Bacteria overgrowth: Treatment using proton pump inhibitors and bowel resection can cause food sensitivity due to bacterial overgrowth following these conditions and treatment. That’s because excessive bacterial decomposition products are released in the gut.
- Transport defects: You can have transporter molecules deceit, such as GLUT 5, which is responsible for transporting fructose, or GLUT 2 for glucose. Fructose and galactose. When these aren’t transported as they should into the intestinal cells, they end up in the large intestines, where they ferment, causing intestinal symptoms.
- Structural issues: When the digestive tract has an abnormal structure, like in the intestinal diverticula, it causes food to be trapped in the outpouchings, which then causes bacterial overgrowth and symptoms of food sensitivity. This also occurs in chronic inflammatory bowel disease.
- Idiosyncratic issues: Some substances cause intolerance. These include sulfites, monosodium glutamate, coloring and preservative agents, coloring and preservatives, and artificial sweeteners.
Food sensitivity treatment
The best way to treat food sensitivity is through an elimination diet. But first, you need to take a Food Sensitivity Test. This test will help you know which foods you’re intolerant to so you can remove them from your diet. Doing an elimination diet means going for weeks without consuming the foods you’re sensitive to and reintroducing them into your diet.
The reintroduction period of foods helps you know your level of sensitivity, which can help you know whether you’ll still consume that food in small amounts or completely cut it from your diet.
Eliminating sensitive foods from your diet requires you to know what nutrients that food supplies you so you can replace them with other equally nutritious foods. If you’re careful when eliminating foods from your diet, you can avoid suffering from deficiencies, which isn’t ideal.
Specific food sensitivities like lactose intolerance can be solved using lactase enzyme pills. These can be purchased over the counter, and one can consume them before taking any dairy products so they can help digest lactose. Unfortunately, this isn’t the solution for most food sensitivities.
If you’ve already accidentally consumed food that causes sensitivity symptoms, you can take over-the-counter medications like antidiarrheals and antacids to help with the symptoms.
Living with food sensitivities
Even though realizing you have food sensitivity may be upsetting, you can still live a healthy life without suffering from sensitivity symptoms. As long as you’ve had a food Sensitivity Test, you can easily manage your diet and live more informedly.
When you have food sensitivities, reading food labels to identify which ingredients you’re not looking to consume is essential. This will help you stay away from foods that cause you sensitivity symptoms. Even when eating out or at a friend’s place, you must let others know which foods or ingredients you’re avoiding due to sensitivities.
When you have food sensitivities, eliminating foods from your diet must come with adding other nutritious foods. A nutritionist can help you determine what you’ll be losing and recommend other foods as substitutes or supplements to help you meet your daily needs.
For example, gluten intolerance means you’ll have to avoid wheat and other grains that contain fiber. However, consuming more fruits and vegetables can add more fiber to your diet. When you have lactose intolerance, you can consume lactose-free milk, which still contains calcium or plant-based milk fortified with calcium. Making these changes ensures you strike a balance in your dieting.
Final thoughts
Your body can signal whether you have food sensitivities or not. You need to be keen so you can see. Food sensitivities often cause digestive symptoms, which only go away after you’re able to pass the food. A Food Sensitivity Test helps you know which foods are causing symptoms in your body so you can eliminate them.
Eliminating foods from your diet is a critical process, and you need a professional’s help so that you can do it the right way. Food sensitivities are, however, easy to manage once you’ve mastered the ingredients to eat and which ones to avoid. Taking a food sensitivity test helps you take control of your health and diet.
