Hi Beth.
The only way to determine a food intolerance/ allergy is by doing an elimination diet. I'm in the process of doing a detection diet at the moment.
The basic process I'm following is from the foodintol.com.au website. It involves eating normally for 2 weeks, recording EVERYTHING I eat, drink and the supplements I take. Also recording symptoms - GI, mood, skin condition etc, everything. Then based on the symptoms matrix I decide which of the four main food groups my symptoms are likely to be caused by: gluten, dairy, fructose or yeast.
For the following 2 weeks I do the restriction phase, whereby I completely eliminate ALL forms of the food group, still recording everything I eat and drink, and whether my symptoms have improved. The thing about C related IBS is it can take up to 48 hours for the food you've eaten to cause GI problems.
After two weeks of restriction, you test the food again and rejoice if you have only one food intolerance!!, or continue back to the restriction phase with another food group if you're symptoms are only slightly improved (if you have no change in your symptoms during the restriction phase you're not intolerant to that food, obviously, so you bring it back into your diet).
The thing about IBS is we're usually intolerant to numerous food groups. What I didn't realise is how prevalent fructose malabsorption is in people with IBS, and more importantly how many foods contain fructose! The other eye opener was yeast - its in just about everything! AND it causes all the typical IBS symptoms.
After only 2 weeks on the detection diet I'm already finely tuned into my response to gluten. So I now know that I definately am gluten intolerant, as opposed to only suspecting it. I'm interested to test out fructose and yeast, as these are the 2 food groups that I haven't tested before, and am hoping they'll be my final answer to the bloat.
And just a bit of extra info, fructose & yeast free diets are only temporary until your system stabilises. You can then go back to limited intake of these foods. A fructose free diet eliminates most fruits, all sweet veges, and all other forms of sugar except for glucose (there are tonnes of other forms, so depressing!). A yeast free diet eliminates all over ripe fruit and veges, all tomato based products, all sugar based products and all yeast based products.
After reading through all the info from the website I am SOOOOOOOOooo much better informed about how food affects us, and how to identify what foods have nasties in them (even fresh foods!). Its still only early days in the detection diet, but I've already got good results. I've got a goal of being bloat free by my birthday - May 13 - so fingers crossed this process is the answer for me
If you (or anyone else) wants more info just send me an email. Always happy to help.
Chrissy xx
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