Reputable food intolerance testing

Roberta1

My 11 year old ds has IBS symptoms which have recently improved greatly by cutting dairy out of his diet.

I would like to get him tested for food intolerances but have given up hope with our G.P. or the paediatric consultant, both of whom seem to have washed their hands of us.

I don't want to see the witch doctor "bark at the moon" type!

I am intersted in a reputable, qualified person carrying out a scientific test (which I believe involves a blood test).

I live in Somerset and am prepared to pay for this. Awful when one's child is in pain....

TIA!

j.e.j.

Roberta1 wrote: »

I don't want to see the witch doctor "bark at the moon" type!

:rotfl:I know what you mean. This reminded me of an old work colleague who went to see an 'alternative' therapist of some sort re.food intolerance. The 'therapist' did things like asked my colleague to put an onion in one hand, while she pressed on the other arm to see if she could feel any resistance.. :huh:??????

As I understand it, testing for a food allergy is relatively easy, but food intolerances are harder to ascertain. Sorry not much help, but I'll be watching this thread as it's something I'd also be interested in, as I think one of my health problems might also be diet-related. I have also tried without success to get help from the GP and hospital, and like you am wary of any quack remedies.

bright_side

When I went to see a GP for the second time regarding symptoms I was having, he suggested cutting out wheat for two weeks as he was pretty sure I had become wheat intolerant. I cut out all wheat (once I realised Quavers contained wheat DOH!!) and the symptoms disappeared. I then returned to see him and he said there was a test I could have done which would confirm wheat intolerance and therefore I would be entitled to wheat free bread on prescription. However to enable the test to work I needed to have been eating wheat for two weeks!! No way was my answer to that!! It may be completely different for dairy though.

tom9980

I have done the Yorktest bloodtests a long time ago but frankly found it useless and had various NHS versions over the years. I have tried every exclusion diet going and none have worked for me.

Of everything i have tried to manage IBS symptoms the best seems to be Manuka honey, its worked well for my partners sister and my mum.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/wellbeing/5979247/The-benefits-of-Manuka-honey.html

Seems to have eased the worst of the symptoms for me since i started using it in early January.

poorly_scammo

I went to the Airedale Allergy Centre.They also have clinics in Oxfordshire and Surrey and was tested for my allergies/intolerances. The doctor (and he is real doctor) in charge is Dr Apelles Econs and he has appeared quite a few times on Channel Four's Food Hospital. Be warned that treating your son will be expensive. Dr Econs does take NHS patients but there is a long waiting list so you'd be better off going private. Here's the website: http://allergymedicaluk.com/ He'll ask lots of questions first using a questionnaire sent to your house and will then call your son for an examination where he will ask lots more and possibly physically examine him. He'll then probably put him on a special diet and ask for him to come back after a period of time.

He may test for allergies and may undertake a faecal parasite test.

I also found this on the NHS website concerning elimination diets. http://www.nhs.uk/Livewell/Allergies/Pages/Eliminationdiet.aspx

bright_side

I find it difficult to understand that a GP would simply give up!! Is there not another one you can try?

poorly scammo, I found this piece from your second link interesting.......

The strange thing about food intolerances is that you can grow out of them. Within a year, you may find yourself able to eat something safely again. But even if this is the case, it's still a good idea to limit amounts.

I hadn't realised you can 'grow out of it' - I hope it means as an adult as well as a child. I'm pretty much used to my intolerance now as it's been almost three years but this gives me a bit of hope that one day I could be able to eat normally again

poorly_scammo

I have grown out of many of mine but that's largely because I have a suppressed immune system and the vitamins I take boost that meaning that some foods don't bother me as much as they did.

Roberta1

karen23 wrote: »

I find it difficult to understand that a GP would simply give up!! Is there not another one you can try?

G.P. said she didn't know much about IBS and food intolerances and referred us to consultant.

Consultant weighed him, measured him, pronounced him "a healthy chap if a little constipated" (G.P. has never said this and has examined my son several times).

Hopeless.

WestonDave

Yorktest was also a waste of space for me, and my wife (in her case CFS rather than digestive issues). Kinesiology (arm bending con) was pointless - I worked out what was going on and it was clearly based on asking the right questions and using them to give a "diagnosis" (which nearly always seems to involve a yeast intolerance!) which they then "discover" by pretending your arm gives different resistance whilst you are in contact with certain substances.

One of the problems of intolerances rather than allergies is that they don't necessarily cause symptoms every time, and your degree of tolerance appears to vary depending on other factors such as your mental wellbeing, other illnesses etc. My personal experience was that I felt at my worst whilst I was in an extremely difficult conflict situation - got worse the longer I was in it, and has got markedly better since I removed the source of this stress, and decided that I wasn't going to allow my life to be defined entirely by some limitations from my symptoms. Of course I still get problems, but I'm now largely able to treat them as a bad day and start again the next day rather than allowing it to become a downward spiral of feeling bad, worrying about feeling bad, that stress making my symptoms worse and so on!

However as a parent and someone who has on occasion been pretty low with this sort of condition, I entirely understand firstly the desire for a quick answer (I personally think it doesn't exist, and exclusion/experiment is the only answer in the case of intolerance - allergy is different as there are genuine antibodies to test for) and secondly that no-one else can get you to a point where you stop descending into "depression" over the symptoms and start coming up fighting. It is really hard when the symptoms are bad to decide that life is not all about those symptoms and that there are still good things in life that are worth focussing on.

For what its worth, I found one issue was simply eating large meals tended to appear to overload my system and get pushed through rather rapidly - often happened when I pigged out on fish and chips (amongst other things) so I blamed the grease, then the fish, until I discovered that if I didn't stuff down the whole portion, I didn't get problems afterwards! Its not just that, but my point is - don't rule out the mechanical whilst searching for the "chemical" reaction to foods.

poorly_scammo

WestonDave wrote: »

Kinesiology (arm bending con) was pointless

Absolutely. kinesology is a load of stitched up dog's c0ck if you ask me. I was told to wear blue for crying out loud as if that would cure my symptoms!

Idiophreak

karen23 wrote: »

I then returned to see him and he said there was a test I could have done which would confirm wheat intolerance and therefore I would be entitled to wheat free bread on prescription.

Does that mean each loaf would cost £7.40?