A few Food Intolerance questions I need help with please
Posted , 4 users are following.
Hello All
I've been newly diagnosed with food intolerances, and still trying to work out which foods cause me issues. I have a few questions regarding food intolerances that I am hoping some of you kind peeps can answer for me.
I'm pretty sure I have a number of food intolerances, one being cow's milk, and since going onto rice milk have found a general improvement in my symptoms. However, the other day we ran out of rice milk so went to the shop to buy some more and found that they were out of stock. Looking at the alternatives I decided to opt for almond milk. Now I only use milk for my breakfast, which is generally gluten free porridge, and I only add about 50ml of milk to water to make my porridge. Anyway, I had my usual breakfast on Friday, but this time using the almond milk. On Saturday morning I woke feeling really ill, there seemed to be lots of stomach and abdominal bloating, churning, pain and discomfort, chest pains, shortness of breath, lightheaded and generally awful feeling. On Sunday I felt pretty ill, but not as bad as Saturday, and today I have improved again. The questions regarding food intolerances I have are as follows:
How long does it take for food intolerances to kick in after eating a suspect food?
How long does it take for food intolerance symptoms to subside after stopping suspect food?
Can just small amounts of suspect food cause intolerance symptoms?
Does food intolerance reactions cause or lead to digestive system inflammation?
Any answers for these questions would be greatly appreciated, as well as some comments on whether my Almond milk episode does actually sound like a food intolerance reaction.
Many thanks in advance.
1 like, 2 replies
EileenH paul75665
Posted
You DO have to consider it might have been coincidence!
I suspect some of your questions don't have an answer - or rather that it varies considerably. In some people who are coeliac but also have a problem related to wheat I know that the effect on eating wheat can be very very fast and it can be small amounts that trigger the response. I have an allergy to something in some red wines (we assume, that has been the linking factor) and that takes about 5 or 6 hours to kick off. Once I have emptied my gut I feel weak (hardly surprising after several hours of D&V) but that soon passes and I'm OK again. If I take a dose of loratadine as soon as I feel the start of the episode I can abort it. I also am allergic to something in the structure of highly commercialised wheat starch (not gluten) and the response to that can take weeks, emerging in the form of a rash and eczema. Something that seems common is that when you have abstained from a given irritant for any length of time and then reintroduce it too soon, before all inflammation has healed, then the reaction may be more extreme.
I imagine it usually does cause an inflammatory reaction - as this article explains:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25442377
and they mention there are two types of intolerance - one immunologically mediated, the other not.
As a traditional Scot - I make my porridge with only water. And put salt on them. Though I do like cold milk to dip it in...
paul75665 EileenH
Posted
Thanks for the reply Eileen.
I agree it could've been a coincidence, but I doubt it due to the reason that since I started an elimination diet my symptoms had improved quite a lot. I've been on this diet for a couple of weeks now, being very strict with it and staying on foods that I knew I could tolerate easier. The only difference I had made in my diet was the change to almond milk from rice milk on Friday, and I find it strange that on the Saturday I had a really bad flare up. I've had every test under the sun, scopes, scans, blood, urine and stool tests and nothing out of the ordinary was ever found, so I'm sure food intolerances are a major contributing factor with regards my symptoms.
Interesting information supplied about food intolerance and inflammation, I have also heard of a couple of other theories that relate to inflammation with food intolerance. One being due to high levels of antibodies in our blood that are produced when eating suspect foods. After eliminating suspect foods our antibody levels stay elevated for an amount of time and still attack the area aggravated by the intolerance, effectively working against our body until these antibody levels decrease. The other piece of information I heard is that eliminating suspect foods can actually give you withdraw symptoms, and can actually make you feel worse before you start to feel better. I don't know how valid these claims are, but to me they do sound justified.
Thank you again for your comments, I really do appreciate them.