Hippocrates also identified that stomach upset and skin hives could be caused by drinking milk. It is also something that has been acknowledged and appreciated in medical and academic papers for over a hundred years, but this peer-reviewed literature has not always been given the credence it deserves. It is because of this lack of appreciation for what might be causing a variety of symptoms that uncertainty has been created, and an assumption that such-and-such a symptom must be due to something else, like stress. However, we are now in an age where food intolerance affects at least 45 per cent of the population and it has become such an issue that people are seeking out the answers for themselves. Since a food intolerance does not represent a pathology for which there is a medical treatment – by contrast, a food allergy has the potential to do much harm and does require medical attention – there has been much less medical attention focused on this subject. With the march of the masses who suffer from adverse reactions, however, the development of tests, research and investigations into the topic now provide previously unheralded recognition that food intolerance is very real and, unfortunately, a significant factor in many people’s health.
I predict, unwillingly and hoping that I will be proven wrong, that with modern lifestyles and our food supply being what they are, food intolerance will increase in the coming years, making it a major cause of unpleasant symptoms for decades to come.
Putting Food Intolerance into Context
However, to place the blame entirely on food intolerance does not properly put the increasing prevalence into context. This assumes that the food is the problem, just like the bacteria is the problem for which the solution is antibiotics. In this example, the germ-warfare approach misses the point which Louis Pasteur, founder of modern-day antibiotics, regretted in his latter days when he said, ‘C’est le terrain, pas le germ’ which, translated means: It is the host (i.e., the environment or the body) and not the germ (bug, microbe, bacterium, virus) that is important.
In this way, those who believe that stress causes the symptoms have a point, because this can create imbalances within the ‘host terrain’ (i.e. your body) that permit or make it react inappropriately to foods.
In later chapters you will learn about the connections between stress and food intolerance as well as other underlying issues. These also include imbalances within the digestive system in terms of maldigestion and the graphically-termed ‘leaky gut syndrome’, and imbalances in the micro-organisms living within our intestines, from yeasts to bacteria and parasites. You will be shown how to address your food intolerances as well as how to address the underlying imbalances. However, it is worth noting that this is not a book designed to assess allergies that require medical attention. More on this in Chapter 1.
Proof of Food Intolerance
There have been observations that food can elicit adverse reactions since the days of Hippocrates. As you will find out in Chapter 1, there are potentially a vast range of symptoms that can be caused by food intolerance reactions. These can be divided into two broad categories: physical (especially digestive) and mental/emotional/behavioural. Since the nature of the symptoms is so diverse, there could potentially be other contributory factors, too, and it is this lack of specificity which has cast some doubt about the phenomenon of food intolerance.
So, can you prove that food intolerance is really the cause of your symptoms? In many cases, you may not need any more proof other than the fact that when you avoid a food you do not get a symptom, but when you eat it you do. In other cases you may have a suspicion about a certain food and therefore an approach which involves elimination/reintroduction – removing the suspected food from your diet and later on reintroducing it into your diet – may serve a useful purpose. (This is not a good thing to do if you have a true food allergy, however). Alternatively, you may wish to implement the pulse-testing method, which will be described later.
However, there are some people who have a potential for multiple food intolerances, which makes an elimination diet and reintroduction difficult to implement. In these cases, a test to tell you which foods you react to would be very useful.
Most people in this situation want to have a firm diagnosis of what is causing, or contributing to, their problems. Equally, practitioners also want to have some certainty about what is wrong with their patients so they can make the most apt recommendations. To this end, a degree of proof is always useful – and in Chapter 2 you will find descriptions of a number of accurate tests to help you gather this proof. However, simply testing for immune reactions does not prove in itself that this is the cause of your symptoms; there can be a number of foods to which you are intolerant that cause you no symptoms at all. This is where the avoidance of these foods and a monitoring of symptoms can ‘prove’ the point nicely. The reintroduction of the offending foods should trigger, in a way that can be easily reproduced, your symptoms.
There have not been many large studies conducted to ‘prove’ how food intolerance affects various aspects of health. However, there have been studies that show very strong evidence of cause and effect between food intolerance and Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). Indeed, one complaint a medical doctor friend of mine raised about this issue was that he wasn’t particularly aware of any ‘decent’ studies showing that food intolerances really were to blame for a number of symptoms they are claimed to cause. One of the very good reasons for this is that typical medical studies (randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind studies) are designed to test a drug against a sign or symptom. They are not designed to evaluate the effects of a number of different agents (i.e. foods) on multiple variables (i.e. symptoms). Furthermore, in the case of food intolerance, since the technology for testing is relatively new and because there is no one single test that will accurately identify every single food to which an individual may react, there is difficulty in verifying exactly what foods should be assessed.
Food Intolerance and IBS
IBS was the subject of a recently published study in the respected journal Gut, which showed that food intolerances are very much involved in Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS). It proved what most complementary practitioners have known all their professional lives.
The study involved 150 out-patients with IBS who then had an IgG food intolerance test. They were not shown their results. Seventy-five of the participants were provided with diets that excluded the foods to which they had raised IgG antibodies, while the other 75 participants were given ‘sham’ diets that excluded foods to which they did not have raised IgG levels. A number of symptoms of IBS were compared before and after the diet for 12 weeks. The conclusion was that a diet that eliminates foods to which you have a raised IgG level is indeed effective in reducing the symptoms of IBS.
You may say that this is an obvious finding and you might have expected as much, but the current treatment of IBS is based largely on the use of antispasmodics, antidepressants and medications that alter bowel habit, depending on whether constipation or diarrhoea is the predominant problem. This is usually unsatisfactory, however, and encourages patients to seek out alternative treatment. Of course, if food intolerance is to blame for the symptoms, even if not wholly, then the most sensible first-line approach would be to change your diet. This would make recourse to medications the alternative path.
This study represents an important landmark in acknowledging the importance of food in triggering or causing IBS. The patients had experienced symptoms for over a decade and were found to be sensitive to approximately six to seven foods each, on average. Those who fully adhered to the diet showed the greatest improvement.
The reintroduction of the culprit foods
