Food Intolerance and Elimination Diet

Food Intolerance and Elimination Diet: What is it and how does it work in the body?

• Detecting and eliminating specific antagonistic foods, and designing a nutritionally sound diet to ensure the optimum health of the food-sensitive person, is the ultimate aim in food sensitivity management. This process is often tedious and time consuming, and requires tremendous knowledge, skill, commitment, and dedication..... However, when a person who has been chronically sick suddenly feels well for the first time in many years, as so often happens, the rewards for both practitioner and client more than justify the time and effort of the endeavor.

• Indian Ayurvedic healing for centuries has emphasized the elimination of certain foods and the use of others. Foods, like drugs, can have both helpful and adverse effects. Pesticide contamination, the use of growth hormones and antibiotics in meat production, genetic engineering of food sources, and the health risks associated with fast and processed foods are topics of concern that can arise in an integrative medicine visit.

• For many disorders, identification of adverse food reactions and recommendation of elimination diets can be of potential benefit. This chapter describes various classes of adverse food reactions. An overview of the state of the research on the elimination diet as a clinical tool is provided. Tips for prescribing elimination diets, pitfalls to avoid in their use, and resources for further information are also pro-vided. A Patient Handout on elimination diets appears at the end of the chapter.

• Indian Ayurvedic healing for centuries has emphasized the elimination of certain foods and the use of others. Foods, like drugs, can have both helpful and adverse effects. Pesticide contamination, the use of growth hormones and antibiotics in meat production, genetic engineering of food sources, and the health risks associated with fast and processed foods are topics of concern that can arise in an integrative medicine visit.

• For many disorders, identification of adverse food reactions and recommendation of elimination diets can be of potential benefit. This chapter describes various classes. of adverse food reactions. An overview of the state of the research on the elimination diet as a clinical tool is provided. Tips for prescribing elimination diets, pitfalls to avoid in their use, and resources for further information are also pro-vided. A Patient Handout on elimination diets appears at the end of the chapter.

Important points to consider

• There are many types of adverse food reaction. Keep in mind diagnoses such as eosinophilic

  esophagogastroenteritis, histaminergic food reactions, and reactions associated with psychological or structural disorders. Keep lactose intolerance and celiac disease in mind as two of the most commonly

  encountered disorders.

• Aside from certain tests for IgE-mediated food allergies, most tests for adverse food reactions remain controversial. Remember that an elimination diet can serve, in and of itself, as a useful diagnostic tool.

• The clinician must be mindful of the potential pitfalls of prescribing elimination diets. Patient compliance, nutritional status, and the psychosocial impacts of such a diet must be given consideration. When judiciously used, elimination diets are associated with minimal risk.