Have I Got A Food Intolerance?

Find out whether you have a food intolerance by finding out the most common symptoms of food intolerance.

If you feel like something is wrong after you eat food but you can’t quite put your finger on what, then it could well be an intolerance issue. Do you suffer from bloating? Or abdominal pain after eating, or maybe you have forgotten the last time you had a well formed bowel movement! All of these digestive issues can be caused by eating a food that your body is intolerant too.

Less obvious effects of a food intolerance may be fatigue, brain fog, excess mucous and a constant need to clear your throat. If you are eating something that your body doesn’t want you to, it will be doing it’s best to let you know, but maybe in a way you hadn’t expected.

Perhaps you have been to the GP for coeliac blood tests or other allergy tests and all have come back clear, yet you are still suffering. Allergies and intolerances are very different and whilst a blood test can be used to diagnose an allergy, it isn’t that straight forward for an intolerance issue. Read more here about the difference between allergies and intolerances.

The advantages to finding out whether you have a food intolerance are numerous. The weekly food shop becomes easier to navigate, food choices when eating out are simple and the stress surrounding food will lessen.

What Are the Common Symptoms of a Food Intolerance?

Once again, we need to stress that there’s a big difference between a food allergy and food intolerance. We’re here to talk about the latter.

Naturally, most of the symptoms are related to the digestive system and that can include stomach pain along with gas, cramps or bloating. It might be the case that the food intolerance can include other common symptoms such as heartburn, diarrhoea, headaches and irritability.

How Can I Test My Food Intolerance?

So you might have identified some of the above symptoms and the next step is to work out exactly what has caused those symptoms. Many people start to keep a food diary and this can be a really successful way of identifying trends between when they eat something and how it might go on to have an adverse reaction.

 It might be the case that you’ve always got on well with certain foods only to find that you become food intolerant at a later stage in life. A food and drink diary will be able to shed some positive light on the situation and ensure that you have a path forward with a diet that includes foods that agree with you.

Beyond this, there are also other methods and we are big advocates of something called kinesiology which is becoming increasingly popular for those that want to really pin down something that is causing them a food intolerance.

In a nutshell, kinesiology uses muscle testing to works out if people have a food intolerance. This is a more detailed approach than simply performing some kind of DIY self-diagnosis and it is certainly worth approaching a specialist should you want to get the ultimate lowdown on your condition.

A trained kinesiologist is able to detect a muscle responding to a food that might be causing an energy imbalance, while there are suggested remedies which might include lifestyle changes, food supplements and other therapies which can give you a fuller life moving forward.