What’s Behind Food Intolerance?

The num­ber of peo­ple being diag­nosed with lac­tose intol­er­ance, gluten aller­gies, soy intol­er­ance, and dia­betes is grow­ing at a rapid pace. A food intol­er­ance exists when the body can’t ingest or metab­o­lize food prop­erly, caus­ing pain and dis­com­fort that often pre­vents the body from absorb­ing impor­tant nutri­ents. A food intol­er­ance is not the same thing as a food allergy, which is an over­re­ac­tion of the immune sys­tem and can be deadly.

Part of the rise in food intol­er­ance diag­noses stems from advances in med­i­cine and a greater knowl­edge and aware­ness of the prob­lem. But the dras­tic changes that have taken place in the Western diet are a major fac­tor. Cyndi O’Meara, an expert nutri­tion­ist and author of Changing Habits, Changing Lives Cookbook, notes a 10-fold increase in the num­ber of peo­ple with food intol­er­ances in the UK in the last 25 years. O’Meara, along with sci­en­tific researchers, points to the large quan­ti­ties of chem­i­cals and processed foods and major changes in food prepa­ra­tion. Ingredients like arti­fi­cial sweet­ers and mod­i­fied milk can lead to a hyper-vigilant immune sys­tem that reacts painfully to more and more foods. As oth­er­wise healthy peo­ple have delved into why they often feel unwell, “food intol­er­ance” has emerged as a 21st-century health con­cern. The Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network and the National Institutes for Health find that as many as 30 mil­lion peo­ple in the United States suf­fer from food intol­er­ance –  four to five times the num­ber with food aller­gies. Skin rashes, abdom­i­nal pains and even headaches can be symp­toms of the body’s strug­gle with cer­tain ingredients.

Food intol­er­ances can be extremely com­pli­cated. I went through years of embar­rass­ing sit­u­a­tions and extreme pain before I was finally able to real­ize that the source of my dis­com­fort was the food I was eat­ing. It has taken me another three years to fig­ure out which foods are my friends and which are my enemies.

I found that even the best med­ical doc­tors do not know how to iso­late food intol­er­ances, and dif­fer­ent nutri­tion experts have vary­ing ideas about what types of foods make you sick and why. Fortunately, I finally found a nutri­tional ther­a­pist who dis­cov­ered that I had an H. Pylori infec­tion in my stom­ach and IBS (irri­ta­ble bowel syn­drome). She explained to me that the symp­toms I was expe­ri­enc­ing (daily, extremely painful mus­cle spasms in my stom­ach being one of them) could be nearly com­pletely elim­i­nated with the right diet and nat­ural supplements.

The six-week diet to cure my stom­ach infec­tion con­sisted of a max­i­mum of two fruits per day, no refined sugar, no deep-fried foods, no cof­fee, no alco­hol, no cow’s milk or soy prod­ucts, only gluten-free foods, and an extremely lim­ited salt intake. But that six-week diet was just to cure my infec­tion. To stay bet­ter in the long-term, I was told that I would need to have a sim­i­lar diet for the rest of my life. I’m in my early 20s, so this felt like some­one had whacked me in the face with a large fry­ing pan. If there is any­thing that I really love, it’s food, and if there is any­thing I hate, it’s not being able to make my own deci­sions about how I lead my life.

But if I wanted to feel healthy, I had to for­get the foods that I loved, and hand over my decision-making to my nutri­tion­ist. Imagine find­ing out that you would never again be able to enjoy a glass of wine, some candy, or some freshly baked bread? Ouch! I hon­estly didn’t think I would be able to pull it off with­out a few very painful cheats here and there.

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