A few reminders….
- When you introduce foods or drinks back into your diet which were a problem to you before, be careful not to overdo it. You will start reacting to them again if you just go back to your previous patterns of eating. Once or twice daily will be safe for most things apart from orange, cheese and cocoa. which you should keep to a twice weekly restriction.
- When you wish to reintroduce a food or drink after 3 months exclusion, be very careful if you do not like the taste. Wait another month before you try again. This is especially common for tea or coffee.
- if you are too far away from me to get a test done, remember……frequent daily foods are your most likely suspects. So What do eat / drink EVERY day twice or more? It is highly likely to be this.
- AND if there is anything that you would feel is impossible to give up, that is the MOST likely problem for you.
If your testing showed that you are cow’s milk intolerant, or if you are trying to be dairy free, because you have suspicions that dairy products are a problem for you, be very careful not to have too much of these foods.
SOYA
Although there are now a multitude of dairy free products available, the mindset is still for most people…’can’t have milk….must have soya’. If you then use soya milk in every hot drink, use a soya margarine, soya yogurts, soya ice cream, and without realising consume bread which nearly always contains soya flour, not to mention edamame beans, vegan cheeses and soya mince, SOYA then becomes your most frequent daily food, and a new intolerance is born, for many people within the first week or two of being dairy free.
For a while I advised the client to use a sunflower based dairy-free margarine instead of a soya based one. But that path can also be fraught with difficulty…
SUNFLOWER
If that person uses sunflower oil for cooking, likes crisps [nearly all use sunflower oil) like to sprinkle sunflower seeds on salads, or cereals, eat cereal bars or seeded breads, you can see how sunflower then becomes a new intolerance through frequency of use. On top of that, quite a few of the alternative milks have sunflower oil or sunflower lecithin in them.
A new frequently consumed food!
GOAT’S, SHEEP’S and BUFFALO products.
According to my figures 50% of cow’ milk intolerant people also suffer adverse symptoms from other animal milks, but 50% are fine. However, if you change all your cow’s milk allegiance to goat’s, sheep’s, buffalo, it will not be long before you start reacting to those too.
COCONUT
It is only in the last eighteen months or so that I have found that a few people, (apart from Thais and Sri Lankans) have started to become intolerant to coconut.
Coconut milk is a popular cow’s milk alternative taste wise. It is not overtly coconutty ( only 6 or 8% content,) and it goes well in hot drinks and heats well. But the thing that has really had an affect on intolerance to coconut is the increasing use of coconut oil. It is very trendy at the moment, so I need to warn such people that an intolerance to coconut is a possibility for them.
SO WHAT SHOULD A COW’S MILK INTOLERANT PERSON DO?
- Use a variety of cow’s milk alternatives.
- Read labels on everything that you eat.
- Try not to exceed twice a day for any alternative.
- If you have 4 hot drinks a day, then you need to use 2 different alternative milks.
- Learn to like your hot drinks black.
Over the years I have found that it is not the total amount of a food drink consumed that leads to an intolerance, but the frequency with which it is used….even if the amount consumed is only ever very small.
So my advice to you is after three months exclusion
- Re-introduce dairy products and check whether they still give symptoms
- Keep using alternative milks for cereal and hot drinks, or drink hot drinks black, and save your milk consumption for your favoured foods ( eg eating out, a bar of chocolate sometimes, a cheese sandwich, pizza, lasagne, a curry, cake, a normal yogurt), rather than ‘wasting it’ on milk in hot drinks.
ITCH BUT NO RASH?
Think products… Stop using fabric conditioners. Change to non biological clothes washing products. Stop using soaps, shampoos and shower gels which are coloured and fragranced. Go for the brand ‘Simple’ or ‘Aveeno’, which suit most people. If that does not work for you please email me to discuss.
ALCOHOL
Many of my clients suspect or fear that their favourite drink might be a problem for them.
I rarely find anyone has a problem with all alcohol. In my 2015 survey there was only one person out of 345 adults, who reacted adversely to every form of alcohol. This one person had all the symptoms of an overgrowth of a fungus called Candida, a condition called Candidiasis.
However, many people develop a problem with their favourite wine, bitter, lager, spirit or mixer simply because of frequently drinking their favourite tipple! Sometimes a certain sort of wine, even if not often used, can be a problem. It can happen that someone who shares a bottle of wine without enthusiasm with a partner, because it is the partner’s favourite, may be better off with a wine they actually enjoy.
But booze is complicated. It is a gastric irritant. Many people have suspicions of alcohol because it affects their gut adversely. Think about how a hangover can make you feel sick! However, sometimes, this can just be a red herring, and when you find the underlying food intolerance , the gut settles down, and is not irritated by the alcohol.
Here are a few small case histories.
Melissa has always enjoyed pinot grigio, but found that it was her favourite wine that was causing her headaches. She was unaffected by any other drink.
John loved drinking bitter. Every evening on his way home from work, he would have a couple of pints of Young’s beer. He’d had this routine for twenty years. His wife was convinced that beer was at the root of all his health problems, but he didn’t want to know! And in fact had put off being tested because he did not dare to find that he could not drink beer any more. Amongst other symptoms he was struggling to get a good night’s sleep, and his tummy felt very unsettled, windy and bloated. I tested many different bitters and lagers, and found that the only one that was a problem was Youngs! Poor John…
Paul was sure that something around alcohol was a problem for him, because he felt unaccountably hungover after even one drink. It turned out to be the monosodium glutamate in the dry roasted peanuts that he usually ate when he had a drink. He ate these at home when friends came round for a meal and also when he had a beer in a bar after work.
My book ‘Food Intolerance Solutions’ was launched and published on Tuesday. So far it has been very well received. If you would like to buy one, you can buy it from my website for £12 + postage and packing. It is also available from Amazon, but I get less than half what they charge! I have copies at my home, at a discounted price of £10, so if you can collect a copy, please do so. Just email me in advance to make sure I will be here. So if you, or friends or family wish to increase your knowledge about food intolerance do please buy one. the information therein is based on 21 years of experience testing adults children and babies. I have collected data for the last 13 years, and the details of this are in the book. I hope to debunk all the myths and anecdotal, plagiarised information which is available on the internet.
Please, if you buy one and can find the time, do a review for me on Amazon.
Many thanks
That is all for now.
Mary