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For some people, despite exercising and a good diet, they are just unable to lose excess weight. In nutritional medicine, we find that one of the causes of this is food intolerance.

Food intolerance is a reaction to a food that is not as obvious as a food allergy but can still cause harm to a person. The most common foods that cause food intolerance are dairy, wheat, corn, eggs or yeast. Typical symptoms may be fatigue, headaches, irritability, water retention, abdominal pain or depressed mood. Very often the food will that the body reacts to as a food intolerance is one that the person craves “I couldn’t live without bread” or “I must have cheese” etc are typical of what I hear people say who are the shown to react against these foods. This is believed to be due to release of enkephalin within the brain after eating an intolerant food. Enkephalin is an opioid and causes addiction to that food.

When a person has a food intolerance, eating that food may cause inflammation – in my practice I often see this causing abdominal pain or even arthritis as well as not being able to lose weight despite trying very hard.

Various tests can be done to help to determine if you react to a food and a food diary can also be very helpful to work this out. Seeing someone trained in nutrition or nutritional medicine may also be of benefit.

Dr Kim Hayes
General Practice
Complete Healthcare International