Food Intolerance Testing- Other Benefits
I believe that one of the best health investments you can make is getting a food intolerance test. We eat 3 - 5 (or more) times a daily so getting your food right is critical to all aspects of your health!
Many people seek out an intolerance testing so they can understand what foods cause them to feel bloated, nauseas, sluggish or those that cause itchy skin, anxiety, fatigue, sinus tension, headaches, etc. They want to eat differently to feel better. Perfectly understandable and a position I support as eating the right foods does make you feel better. Therefore you are better able to heal and often can create momentum to make more healthier decisions.
But there are other reasons to get food intolerance testing beyond symptom management. Some others include:
Confidence to eat, not less, more foods - many people come to me with a very limited diet as they have systematically removed foods they felt were causing them to feel unwell. In many cases, this leaves very few “safe” foods. The issue though is often foods that are the causing the issues are not the foods that have been removed. For example, someone may feel unwell after their coffee with full cream milk and white sugar. So they change to lactose free milk but still feel unwell. Maybe the issue is the coffee or the sugar. Or maybe it is a food that you ate last night but the symptoms are only just manifesting (symptoms can take up 48-72 hours to manifest.) A food intolerance test gives you confidence on what foods you can eat. Which in turn means less stress and more nutrients -a perfect recipe for healing.
Improving the immune function in your gut - I often ask my clients to undertake a test to asses the microbiome of their large intestine which also includes key intestinal health markers. One of these markers, secretory IgA, is an indicator of the strength of the immune function in your gut. And this marker is often lowered due to food intolerances and/or stress. Often, the implementation of a food intolerance test is the first step in gut healing.
As an alternative to long term restrictive treatment diets - with the exception of the autoimmune protocol and SIBO treatment, I often recommend intolerance testing as a customized way to eat to treat certain conditions such as candida and IBS. I often see food intolerance testing amplifies the treatment of these conditions allowing for quicker recovery and stronger sustainable results.
As a means of stress resilience - through the process of food intolerance testing, I walk my clients thought a challenge process to identify high, medium and low reacting foods. The intent is to focus more so on avoiding the high reacting foods and minimising the moderate and low reacting foods. In periods of high stress, I recommend avoiding all the identified intolerant foods to help the person not only minimise the physical stress of eating low to moderate foods but also ensure the digestive system functions optimally, allowing stress support nutrients to be digested easily and well.
Food intolerance testing is a cornerstone of not just gut health but overall health. Yes, it does involves changing the way you eat, being restrictive and compliant. The benefits though, more often than not, outweigh these short terms issues.
And as the saying goes “Nothing changes, if nothing changes.”