Our dietitians can help you to identify and manage your food intolerances
- Natural food chemical sensitivity (salicylates, amines, glutamate)
- Sensitivity to food additives and preservatives
- FODMAPs (Fructose malabsorption)
- Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)
- Coeliac disease
- Lactose intolerance
While FODMAP issues tend to produce only stomach and bowel symptoms, natural food chemical intolerance can affect:
- The entire gut: stomach and bowel symptoms, reflux, mouth ulcers, nausea
- The nervous system: headaches, migraines, mood disturbances, fatigue, sleep issues, muscle and joint aches and pains, brain fog
- Skin: eczema, hives, itchy skin
- Airways: sinus issues, hay fever, asthma, cold and flu like symptoms
Zoe has been working as a food intolerance dietitian for over 20 years, helping adults and children (all ages) with both the RPAH (or failsafe) elimination diet and the low FODMAP diet when it’s necessary.
If you have IBS, or are experiencing on-going bloating, excess wind, gas, abdominal discomfort, constipation or diarrhoea, it is possible food may be playing a role.
If your symptoms involve more than just the gut, then you may be intolerant to one or more of the natural food chemicals along with certain food additives and preservatives. Book here to organise your appointment for a full assessment.
When assessing you for food intolerance, we will also consider your overall mental health, including your relationship with food and any trauma or eating disorder history, as these can significantly impact gut health and symptoms. Our experienced dietitians will discuss the mind and gut connection and how any anxiety, especially anxiety around your relationship with food and body image, can be a key cause for gut symptoms.
Many of our clients are relieved to discover that though addressing their relationship with food and establishing a calm and consistent eating pattern, that many of their gut symptoms settle right down. This can also be true for non-gut related symptoms, where certain eating behaviours can lead to over-dosing on known food triggers, and if those eating behaviours are resolved, the food is no longer a trigger for symptoms. It is a much better outcome to find you aren’t as food sensitive as you thought and that you can eat more freely, especially with social eating!
We also consider the health of your gut microbiome and how this can impact your symptoms and we use evidence based Mediterranean diet principles to help you feel confident that you are feeding your gut microbes the good stuff.
You can read more about FODMAPs here Low FODMAP diet
You can read more about the natural food chemical sensitivity here RPAH elimination diet
You can read more about the Mediterranean diet approach here Managing IBS without dietary restrictions
PLEASE NOTE: contrary to information on many websites, there are no scientifically reliable tests for diagnosing food intolerance. Please read this document for information from the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy (ASCIA).
Despite these tests often being advised by some health professionals, the European Academy for Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI) states that IgG antibody tests are not recommended as a diagnostic tool for food intolerance.
Guiding you with a healthy and balanced approach to managing your food intolerances
We can help you to work out the specific foods that are the problem and show you how to remove them from your diet without compromising your nutritional intake. You may have already tried eliminating some food groups such as wheat or dairy and be feeling a little better but not 100%. Eliminating whole food groups from your diet is unnecessary and can also be dangerous. By correctly identifying the problem foods, your diet will be less restrictive, easier to follow and your symptoms may fully resolve.
“Food intolerance is all about moderation in the long-term, not complete restriction. You only need to restrict initially to work out what you need to moderate…”
