Being intolerant of most foods means relying heavily on the few foods you have left. Unfortunately, eating excess amounts of one food type leads to an increased risk of sensitivity. The very real fear of starvation, coupled with possible malnutrition, places an even bigger burden on the immune system so at the same time as having no foods left to eat, sufferers commonly experience a worsening of existing allergies and chemical sensitivities.

What Can be Done?

There are several options available, as described below. The majority of people with total food intolerance find they can eventually reintroduce most foods and some even return to eating normally, but it does depend on the underlying reason for the initial intolerance.

Food Substitutes - Artificial Nutrition Support (ANS)

Reintroducing Foods

Dealing With the Underlying Cause

Food Substitutes - Artificial Nutrition Support (ANS)

If you have no foods left to eat, see your GP immediately to discuss food alternatives. If they cannot help they should refer you to a dietician, allergy specialist or gastroenterologist. Under the Patient's Charter you have the right to ask for a referral to an allergy specialist, for a second opinion from another consultant, or for a referral to a teaching hospital that specialises in intestinal malfunction and management.

Drinks

There are several types of drinks available that can be used either to supplement the diet or to completely replace foods. In a few circumstances (such as bowel disease), the drinks are available on prescription, but most people with food sensitivity end up having to buy them. Costs vary according to the type of drink. The most common (and cheapest) forms of nutrition support are ready-mixed cartons such as Ensure Plus, Entera and Enlive. Each drink contains varying amounts of preservatives, colourings and sweeteners, so check ingredients carefully to avoid triggering known sensitivities. Some hypoallergenic baby milk powders could also be considered. A dietician can help you find something suitable and make sure your diet is not lacking in essential nutrients.

Another group of drinks are formulas such as Vivonex, Pepdite and Elemental 028. These types of nutrition support consist mainly of amino acids and essential fats. They contain fewer food ingredients than the ready-mixed cartons so may be more easily tolerated. The formulas come as powders to mix with water, with or without flavourings. They can be taken alongside food or as a complete substitute although are more expensive than the cartons. A GP should be able to advise you.

Both types of drinks are very useful as a temporary measure, especially while reintroducing foods on a rotation diet, or to restore weight. However, even the powdered formulas do contain small amounts of food substances so it is possible to become intolerant of them, especially if you are consuming the same one at every meal. As there are so many to choose from, this should not be a problem, but if it is, you could consider getting a specific homeopathic remedy made up to antidote the drinks and neutralize intolerance reactions. See Complementary Therapy.

Enteral Feeding

If you have difficulty drinking nutritional supplements, some types (such as the Elemental 028), can also be delivered directly into the stomach or small intestine through a thin tube inserted either via the nose (a naso-gastric tube) or through the skin, (a Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy or PEG). Once the tube is in place, feeding can be carried out at home. See your GP for details.

Parenteral Nutrition

Individuals who become intolerant of all oral nutrition formulas may wish to consider Parenteral Nutrition. This involves intravenous feeding directly into a vein through a catheter. This type of nutritional support consists of very basic nutritional elements that can be absorbed directly into the bloodstream. Because there are no recognisable food substances, these formulas are highly unlikely to provoke sensitivity reactions. Many people have their nutrition 'fed' to them at home during the night so it doesn't interfere with daytime activities. Parenteral Nutrition (PN) is also referred to as 'Total Parenteral Nutrition' (TPN) and 'Home Parenteral Nutrition' (HPN).

Related Pages:

Medical Practitioners Complementary Therapy Dieticians & Nutrition

Reintroducing Foods

As your body chemistry changes so will your intolerances. It is sensible to be a little cautious, but you may well find that foods which previously provoked horrendous reactions 3 months ago will now be absolutely fine. Before you start reintroducing foods, it would be sensible to see your GP to make sure none of your intolerances are true food allergies.

Your Basic Diet

If you only have one or two foods left in your diet, it is wise to consider some form of artificial nutrition support (ANS). Eating the same foods every day increases the likelihood of becoming sensitive to them, so it is a good idea to have a nutrition back-up plan. ANS can be taken with or instead of your remaining foods and takes very little energy to prepare. Knowing you have something available to eat (or drink!) at every meal will remove a lot of mental stress and improve your levels of nutrition - all factors that will help your body to heal.

Reintroducing Food

Once you have found some sort of sustenance to keep you going, you can begin to consider reintroducing foods. Use the nutritional support, the foods you have left, or a mixture of the two to form your basic diet, and slowly re-introduce new foods at the rate of about one a day. If you cannot obtain nutritional support, you may need to introduce foods at the faster rate of one per meal. Try not to eat the same food again for at least four more days.

Identifying 'Safe' Foods to Reintroduce

Your body is likely to take a minimum of 6 weeks to forget its reaction to a particular food, so it is sensible to start by re-introducing foods that you've had the longest break from. It is vital to keep a detailed food/ symptom diary to help pinpoint any potential new problems.

There are two types of food intolerance. 'Cyclic intolerances' are those foods that you become intolerant of simply because they are eaten too often. 'Fixed intolerances' are foods that your body reacts to even if you only eat them once or twice. Cyclic intolerances can be gradually reintroduced on a rotation diet (more details below), and as long as the food is not eaten too often, you shouldn't become intolerant of it again. Fixed intolerances simply need to be avoided for the time being, and retested every 6 months.

The only way to establish which intolerances are cyclic and which are fixed is through trial and error (ie keeping a detailed diary), or by dowsing. Non-medical tests such as Vega machines and Kinesiology can also be a good starting point in helping to narrow down a list of foods to which you are least likely to react. Remember that no test has proved to be 100% accurate for everyone, so whichever strategy you try, ultimately it is up to you to keep a detailed diary of your food and symptoms to pinpoint any new sensitivities.

How Often Should Each Food Be Eaten?

Unfortunately there is no straight answer to this. It depends on both the food and your body chemistry at the time. The basic principle is to make sure you only have one dose of each food in your body at a time. A healthy digestive system takes about three days to process food ie. in on day one, and out on day three. Allowing an extra day for your body to have a rest from that food, this means you should aim to have each food only once every four days.

Most people with food intolerance find their bowels are a little sluggish, especially if they have been surviving on ANS drinks without any fibre to push things through. Any illness, stress or bowel disease can also slow things down, so initially it is sensible to eat each food no more frequently than every 6-8 days. This means drawing up a menu that lasts about a week, and then repeating it. As you grow more confident you may be able to shorten this down to a 4 or 5 day rotation. You will probably find you have some individual foods that you can only tolerate on an even longer schedule such as once every 2 or 4 weeks. You will only learn this through keeping a really detailed diary.

Rotating your menu every 4 to 8 days is called a Rotation Diet or Rotary Diversified Diet. It is possible to become intolerant of ANY food substance, so remember to include all seasonings, fats/ oils and sweeteners in your rotation plan. Herbal remedies may or may not need to be rotated as they are taken in such small quantities. You will need to experiment and see.

However you structure your rotation diet, you will probably end up only having enough different foods to be able to eat one thing at each meal, ('mono meals'). This will change when you either have more food in your menu or are confident in switching to a 4 or 5 day rotation plan. Even though you are only eating one type of food, it is important that you eat enough to feel full. It is a good idea to consult a dietician or nutritionist to make sure that your temporary diet isn't lacking in too many vital nutrients or calories; you may need to schedule in lots of small meals rather than three large ones.

Food Families

Once you have reintroduced several new foods into your menu, it is wise to try to eat botanically related foods on the same day. Although they may not look similar, foods from related plants (and related animals) share similar types of chemical structure. This means that if you become intolerant of one food, you run the risk of also becoming intolerant of foods that are botanically related to it. For example, potatoes, tomatoes and aubergines are in the same botanical 'family'. Although they do not look similar, they share certain types of proteins. So if you are sensitive to tomatoes, there is a chance that you will also become sensitive to potatoes and aubergines. Having each 'family' on the same day, or even at the same meal, reduces this risk.

Note: not everyone reacts to the 'family' classification of foods. For more information on this, see Food Families.

Not Enough Food to Rotate!

Rotating foods on a 6-8 day menu sounds all well and good, but few people have enough foods to spread out that far! You have several choices:

1) Fill in the gaps with an artificial nutrition support drink.

2) Fill in the gaps with a couple of foods that up until now you have been eating very frequently anyway. (By the time you become sensitive to them, you should have enough new foods available to fill in the space in your menu.)

3) Temporarily shorten the rotation down to a four day plan.

4) Try eating each food twice on the same day until you have enough foods to only have them once.

5) Read the 'Available Foods' section of this website to see if there are any new foods you haven't tried yet.

If it all goes wrong and you find you become intolerant to foods eaten too often, don't panic, just re-plan your menu and start the whole process again, scheduling foods to be eaten less frequently. Once you have enough foods to fill in your rotation schedule, you can save your nutritional support for emergencies only.

Being Able to Eat Food Again Mentally it is extremely difficult to start eating foods that have previously provoked horrendous reactions. You should get a fairly good guide as to what is making you ill if you listen carefully to what your body is trying to tell you. Food that makes you feel good, food that suddenly tastes or smells unpleasantly strong, or food that tastes unusually delicious can all be warning signs of a developing intolerance. However try to differentiate between actual reactions and psychological aversions (e.g. feeling sick just because that's what happened last time). Remember, that your food intolerances will change as your body begins to heal.

Rotating foods will lessen the chance of developing new sensitivities, but it is not foolproof. To begin with you may be able to identify problem foods just by keeping a detailed diary, but once you are eating several foods a day symptoms can become more difficult to pinpoint. It can be very useful to have a non-medical test every 4-6 weeks, to keep track of things.

Related Pages: Rotation Diets Food Families Food/ Symptom Diary Testing (Includes non-medical tests) Elimination Diets

Dealing With the Underlying Cause

A rotation diet can help to manage food intolerance, but it is not a cure. At the same time as reintroducing foods or taking artificial nutrition, it makes sense to try to improve or overcome the underlying cause of your food intolerance. It is useful to rule out any diagnosable illnesses or true food allergies, and to get tested for bacterial, viral, parasitic or yeast (candida) infections. Leaky gut, digestive enzyme deficiency, malabsorption or malnutrition may all be exacerbating intolerance. Your GP or dietician may be able to help you with some of these, or you might need to find an experienced nutritionist. (Details are given in the section on Practitioners and Therapies.) A nutritionist can also advise on appropriate vitamin, mineral or herbal supplements to reduce sensitivity, or aid digestion. Remember to check supplement ingredients carefully for known allergens -capsules and powders are likely to have the least number of non-essential ingredients. It is possible to become sensitive to herbal remedies just as easily as any other food or seasoning, so include details of supplements in your food/symptom diary.

If you are hypersensitive to foods, there is a strong chance that you are also reacting to other allergens, including household chemicals. (Likewise, people who suffer from chemical sensitivity may also have multiple food intolerance.) It makes sense to try to reduce the number of toxins and allergens in your home, to give your body a chance to recuperate. If your body is always in a state of high alert because it is reacting to environmental allergies, it is more likely to overreact to foods - increasing food intolerance. To lessen food sensitivity reactions, reduce the number of toxins and environmental allergens in your home environment. Rotate all toothpastes and moisturising oils and regularly change brands of washing powder, washing up liquid and soaps, so you don't build up an intolerance to one particular brand. Details of how to reduce environmental and chemical allergens are given in the section on Chemical Sensitivity.

To speed up recovery, do all you can to boost and heal your immune system and make sure you are not sitting or sleeping in a geopathically stressed place. Most importantly, set aside time for periods of deep relaxation or meditation at least once a day. No matter what your energy levels, make sure you have something positive to look forward to and if necessary, consider counselling to help keep everything in perspective. More information is given in Improving Health - A Summary.



Related Pages: Improving Health - A Summary Complementary Therapy Unmasking Allergies Geopathic Stress Relaxation