How to recognize a food intolerance?

Let’s see what a food intolerance is, what its main symptoms are and how to recognize it.

Food intolerances are an increasingly common disorder, so much so that they have been called “the disease of the third millennium” . Furthermore, recognizing a food intolerance is not easy because, unlike food allergy, its symptoms do not appear immediately . There are numerous tests and tests to diagnose intolerance, but it is also possible to resort to simpler methods, such as the exclusion diet, used since the times of our grandmothers. Deepen!

Food intolerances: symptoms

As we have anticipated, the symptoms of food intolerance are less evident than those of food allergy and usually do not appear immediately, but only after exceeding the maximum tolerance threshold that our body has for a certain food.

To put it more simply, intolerance appears when we eat too high quantities and for too long periods of time a food that our body cannot digest .

The main symptoms of intolerance are: physical and mental fatigue, nausea and vomiting , constipation and / or diarrhea , canker sores and stomatitis, cystitis and recurrent infections, joint and muscle pain , headache , tachycardia, drowsiness, anxiety, depression, disorders sleep and skin problems (dryness, rash, eczema).

How to recognize a food intolerance?

There are several tests for food intolerances. One of the most used is the cytotoxic test , which is performed on a blood sample and is very reliable. Two other tests are the Dria and the Vega test , which are based on the principle that taking a food to which you are intolerant causes a decrease in muscle strength (Dria test) or skin resistance to electricity (Vega test).

However, there is also a simpler method for detecting intolerance: the exclusion diet . According to this method, to identify the element to which you are intolerant, just remove suspect foods from your diet one at a time, and then gradually reintroduce them. In this way, understanding which food is causing the ailments should not be difficult.

Photo source: https://pixabay.com/it/cibo-foodie-cuocere-in-forno-865102/