Are you food intolerant?

Some people get headaches, mood swings or fatigue after eating certain foods. Or they crave specific foods and then feel awful after eating them. Does that ever happen to you?

Believe it or not, it could be that the foods you eat most frequently are causing your problems.

This is often referred to as food intolerance, although the more accurate term for it would be 'food sensitivity'. Food sensitivity is when you have an adverse reaction to certain foods but all allergy tests prove negative.

What triggers a food sensitivity? Common triggers are usually the foods we eat most often and often include dairy products, wheat, eggs, nightshade family vegetables (potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and aubergines ) and citrus fruits.

Non-food factors such as stress, a strong flu or diarrhoea also play an important role in causing food sensitivity and can greatly exacerbate the symptoms and make the individual more sensitive to the foods they are eating.

Compared to a food allergy, food sensitivity reactions are much slower and it is often difficult to say when it began because the symptoms are very mild at first and then gradually get worse.

Contrary to a food allergy which usually persists for many years and often for a lifetime, food intolerance is not life-threatening and may well disappear if the food is not eaten for a few months, but might recur if the food is ever eaten regularly again.

If you have a food sensitivity, your symptoms may occur a few hours after eating the food, the following day, or even up to three days later. It is often difficult to make the link between the food and the symptoms, because the foods in question are often being eaten very frequently.

The symptoms can begin with mild problems such as headaches, tiredness or bouts of indigestion. Over the years, the symptoms get worse and the person gradually experiences more ill health.

The most common food sensitivity symptoms are fatigue, headaches, migraine, depression/anxiety, recurrent mouth ulcers, aching muscles and joints, digestive problems such as diarrhoea, constipation or bloating, itchy skin, lowered immunity, insomnia and even dark circles under the eyes.

If you suspect you have a food sensitivity, the best place to start is by looking at the foods you eat most frequently. If these happen to be wheat - or dairy-based - then you're definitely on the right track.

These would be bread, pastries, pastas, pizza, and cheese, milk, cream, yoghurt, labneh etc.

I usually recommend that people stop wheat and dairy products for two weeks and see how they feel.

If you feel better during those two weeks then you were probably reacting to wheat and dairy.

If you cannot stop wheat and dairy for two weeks, then that's an even bigger sign that you're sensitive to them ... because the biggest sign of a food sensitivity is addiction!

There are, of course, food sensitivity tests that you can do, but I believe that if you listen hard enough you will get the answer and your body will tell you exactly what it does or does not want.

Let's take Mariam as an example.

Mariam is a 30-year-old mother of two. She has been more or less healthy all her life except for the occasional cold, some headaches and the usual PMS.

Recently she's been getting more frequent headaches and has been feeling more tired, irritable and moody among other things but she has put it all down to 'the kids are driving me crazy'.

She leads quite a routine life where she has her standard breakfast of toast and spread (honey, cheese, or butter) and a cup of tea. She then grabs a sandwich for lunch and often makes a quick pasta dish for her and her family for dinner. During her PMS days, she craves bread and always buys a French baguette to eat with yoghurt.

After reading an article on food sensitivity, she realised that all the wheat in her diet may be causing her various symptoms so she decided to try and cut it out for a week to see if her symptoms improve.

The first few days all she could think of was bread. She found that she had to think harder during meal times in order to come up with alternative meal options.

She started experimenting with rye bread and oatmeal and she also tried different sandwich fillings such as mashed avocados and hummus and introduced more vegetables, fruits and other cereal grains such as brown rice and millet into her diet.

By the end of that week, she started to feel much better. She found that in addition to feeling less irritable and having less frequent headaches, she also didn't feel so bloated and her energy levels increased.

Today, Mariam continues to avoid wheat, except for the occasional sandwich when she 'really feels like it'. She finds that she feels so much better without it that she doesn't even miss it all that much.

Here are substitutes for some common sensitivity triggers you're having:

Cow's milk. Have instead: rice milk, oat milk, or home-made almond milk (you can find the recipe on my blog)

Wheat bread. Have instead: gluten-free bread, rye bread, rye crispbread, oatcackes and rice cakes

Cheese. Have instead: Tahini, hummus, mashed avocados.

For more information or to book a workshop for your organisation, contact me through my website at www.AliaAlmoayed.com