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Hi everyone,
I am frustrated too about food intolerances and allergies. I go to the GI Doc in September, and am hoping she'll agree to have me tested for food allergies. There are so many things that bother me!
I'm so thankful for this support group, because it has helped me identify possible triggers and many helpful solutions. I hope you all have some good luck soon.
Cloudygirl 
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This might be overly simplistic, and I'm sure at least one person is going to chime in with "but that's not true for me!", but this is what I understand: skin tests for allergies cannot accurately predict food allergies/intolerances (which I know are different...I'll get to that in a minute). Only a blood test for allergies can diagnose true food allergies, and food intolerances can only be diagnosed through trial and error/an elimination diet. My personal experience with a skin test for allergies was pretty sketchy...I came up as allergic to pretty much everything that grows (that's true for my dad too), cats (that's true for my mom too), apples (nope, apples have never given me a problem in any form--I can't overdo the cider/juice now but that's recent and IBS-related), and milk (yep, I have all the classic symptoms of a dairy allergy, including increased mucous production, digestive upset, etc.). So you see, I can't trust what the test says exactly...I have to go with what I know about my body. Does that make sense? Now, I guess the question is: do the doctor's test results make sense to you, since you know your body best?
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Thanks.. indeed it all makes sense. I did have blood tests done as well and they came back with a lot of intolerances as well. But (in my un-professional opinion) I believe that my system is so out of whack, it doesn't know what I should eat. The tests seemed to show intolerances for ALL the food I normally eat... despite tehm being 'good' for me. It seemed everything I COULD eat, according to the tests, are things I haven't put in my system for years, hence my system wouldn't know if I could handle them or not.  Did that make sense?
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Just fyi, but here is some good information on food allergies and intolerences, which are very different.
http://www.niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/food.htm
However, IBS is not caused by foods. You can have food intolerences and an allergy, along with IBS, but foods do not cause IBS, only trigger it.
I asked one of the worlds leading experts in IBS and he wrote this for me.
Functional GI Disorders Coordinating Committee
Douglas A. Drossman, MD
Chair
Chapel Hill, NC USA
http://www.ibshealth.com/ibs_foods_2.htm
I can explain this better also in regards to IBS now as well, because I have done a lot of research into this matter and I have had a lot of help from experts on it, just fyi.
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My website on IBS is www.ibshealth.com
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PS, I don't want anybody to think I don't believe foods are not important, or diet isn't by what I said above, but its important also, actually very much so that foods are not the only triggers to IBS, but they are very important to management.
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My website on IBS is www.ibshealth.com
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