Do you find that you feel ill after eating? Do you avoid social settings and restaurants because you dont know what, when or where you might have unplesant effects from food? You are certainly not alone in your concerns. A food intolerance, similar to an allergy but not as powerful, might be the reason for your discomfort.

Food is broken down in the body with differing enzimes. Without them, your body would develop a food intollerance. With intolerances, the food might not cause a reaction in your body for some time. Because the reaciton can be delayed, it is often difficult to find the food for which a body has developed an intollerance.

Some usual intolerances - some of which you may already have heard of before - are lactose intolerance (i.e. the inability to process dairy products) and gluten intolerance (i.e. the inability to process wheat products or gluten). However, there are more types of intolerance than these, and most of them will produce unpleasant symptoms.

Food intolerances may cause bowel problems, such as diarrhea, constipation, flatulence, and Irritable Bowel Syndrome, as well as fatigue and pain. The most effective way to avoid the symptoms of food intolerances is simply to avoid eating the foods that cause them, and the best way to discover what foods cause intolerances is to take a food intolerance test.

The elisa food test - meaning enzyme-linked immunorbent assay - is a very common type of food intolerance test. After collecting blood - usually from a fingertip - either at home or at a doctor's parlour - it is then analysed at a lab for possible reactions with specific foods. Strong reactions will produce many IgG antibodies in your blod: the more there are, the worse the reactions.

The results of the food intolerance test will reveal how much was produced, and from what type of foods. Different providers use different scales, but they all measure basically the same thing - the production of antibodies. It should be apparent which, if any foods were causing intolerance reactions; studies have shown this sort of test to be quite effective in tracking down the source.

There are several things that can be done if you find you have food intolerance. The first step to take is to remove the problem food from your diet. Removing the food from your diet can be an easy or difficult step depending on the nature of the food. Manufactures are now making substitute for some common intolerances, such as those with reactions to dairy products. Other intolerances can be avoided by carefully reading the manufactures label for the list of ingredients. Depending on the severity of your symptoms, a few minutes spent reading a label can be worth the time spent.