The Food Intolerance Bible: A nutritionist's plan to beat food cravings, fatigue, mood swings, bloating, headaches and IBS. Antoinette Savill

      The trouble is, no test that is useful for diagnosing food intolerances has had masses of solid research performed on it. One of the main reasons for this is that they are not mainstream medical tests for which large-scale studies are conducted, and they are very expensive to undertake. Also, the nature of such studies usually favours the use of one active substance (e.g. drug) on one outcome (e.g. pain) which does not lend itself well to assessing multiple food intolerances with multiple symptoms.

      Now let’s take a look in more detail at each of these.

       The Pulse Test

      This is a wonderfully useful test, and I would recommend it for monitoring your reactions to different foods. If your heart beats faster after having eaten a certain food (complete instructions are given in Appendix I), this indicates that it may be a culprit food for you. When you test your pulse on a regular basis, it gives you great feedback and soon you will have confidence in the method.

      This is a method which requires attention to detail, concentration and application, but the results can be very rewarding.

       The Elimination Diet

      This is the traditional method for identifying foods to which you have an adverse reaction. There are variations on the theme, but the most strict type is to avoid all food and go on a water fast only for three days, and then introduce lamb and pears only. You do this for a period of time, from two to four weeks, then reintroduce individual foods one by one, with a gap of a number of days (usually four) in between each reintroduction. If the avoidance of a food leads to a reduction in symptoms and its reintroduction leads to a worsening of symptoms, then you are intolerant to that food.

      This approach requires time and attention – and it is recommended that you record your reactions in writing as you go.

      Following this method is difficult, and there are also problems related to malnutrition and care of the individual who embarks on this process. It is also difficult to confirm results with other modes of testing. With multiple food intolerances, it may prove very difficult to identify them all, since your symptoms may not improve even if you do avoid culprit foods because other foods contributing to your symptoms have not been avoided, even in the limited exclusion diet. This is where it may be best to consider a blood test.

      Additionally, if there are complicating conditions as highlighted in Part 2, it may not be possible to identify whether symptoms are related to the food or to something else, such as a bacterial overgrowth or a liver detoxification problem. Lastly, this type of testing is not so suitable for unmasking delayed food intolerances as opposed to immediate reactions – which would in any case require medical attention.

      A variation on this type of approach has been outlined in Chapter 1, and involves ‘simply’ eliminating the most obvious culprit foods from the Usual Suspects list for a period of time and then reintroducing them one by one. This is much more straightforward and produces good results without the extreme measures of the full Elimination Diet. The recipes and Resources in this book should greatly help you to implement this simpler approach.

      Again, it is important to warn you that those with more serious conditions such as asthma should not undertake this approach because it is possible that reintroducing culprit foods will trigger a more severe reaction than when you were consuming it every day.

      Elimination-Challenge Method Proves Useful in IBS

      Over 20 years ago, the Lancet published a study which showed that food intolerance affects the symptoms of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Twenty-one patients with IBS followed a strict elimination diet (no other tests were done) which consisted of one meat, one fruit and distilled or spring water for one week. For 14 of the patients, the symptoms disappeared. Then the patients reintroduced single foods, one at a time, and recorded their reactions. The following foods evoked symptoms: wheat (9 patients), corn (5), dairy products (4), coffee (4), tea (3), citrus fruits (2). Biopsies were carried out on the nine cases of wheat intolerance and proved that they did not have coeliac disease. Their blood was analysed, and this confirmed that the symptoms were mediated at least in part by prostaglandins, but that an immunological mechanism did not seem to be involved.

      Since complying with such a strict elimination diet may be very difficult for some, it makes it extremely difficult to use this type of testing method for every patient.

       Skin Prick

      This test is not suitable for food intolerance testing.

       Vega Test

      I know colleagues who use the Vega test and they have consistently good results with their patients. There is not much scientific evidence in the way of trials – but then this is true for many tests for food intolerance.

       Electroacupuncture According to Voll (EAV)

      Similar comments apply to this as to Kinesiology and Vega testing, although this is less commonly available than either of the other two.

       Kinesiology

      Muscle-testing can prove very effective as a means of testing for food intolerance.

      Again, I know of practitioners who have a great deal of success with it, but there are also studies which highlight the inconsistencies of this technique.

       RAST

      This test is not suitable for food intolerance testing.

       ELISA IgG

      This method has been shown to be effective by a small number of studies that have been carried out. However, you may recall that not all food intolerances are mediated by IgG reactions, and while 80 per cent is a high figure you could miss some extremely important reactions to foods that are causing your symptoms by another means. There is much clinical evidence for this type of test, although one question with IgG testing is the source of the antigens, which could be something other than the foods you eat. This explains why one lab’s results can vary from another, even from blood drawn from the same person on the same day.

       Cellular Mediators (i.e. FACT)

      There is at least one study, along with much clinical evidence and practitioner support, that validate the efficacy of this test. Many find it appealing because it examines the inflammatory cascade which may be triggered by more than just one type of immunoglobulin (i.e. IgG) and which occurs in non-immune mediated reactions.

       Food Allergen Cellular Test (FACT)

      This is a test that measures cellular mediators released from white blood cells, such as histamine and leukotrienes (which can be 10,000 more inflammatory than histamine), when they are exposed to food allergens. It is available from a lab called Individual Wellbeing Diagnostic Laboratories (see Appendix II).

      It is already known that inflammatory chemicals are responsible for a number of symptoms associated with food intolerance. ELISA technology is used in the testing procedure to measure leukotriene release very precisely. Since leukotrienes are released in the face of a number of different types of intolerance/allergic reaction, including IgE and IgG as well as other non-immune-related responses, the test is therefore thought to be capable of detecting