Intolerance or sensitivity?

I am writing prompted by something that happened this week. A client of mine, who had been for one colonic, came back for a second.

In between these two visits to me she had been to the hospital for a consultation about her bowel. When I saw her the first time I suggested that it might be dairy that was causing her to be constipated,  and recommended she try to be dairy free for a few weeks,  and see if it made a difference. She went to the hospital shortly after seeing me,  and mentioned that I had thought she might be intolerant to dairy. The doctor she saw immediately said, “Oh no! If you were intolerant you would be suffering from loose urgent stools – not constipation.”   And so my client – who loves dairy – very sensibly returned to her dairy rich diet.

And so I am now on a mission!! To try and let people know that one can be completely intolerant of dairy products – which does indeed lead to loose urgent stools – as the digestive system is unable to process dairy products at all. But one can also be sensitive to dairy – which is much more likely to lead to constipation. And I also want to highlight what seems to be a correlation between gynaecological problems and hormonal issues and sensitivity to dairy – I see this again and again – after it was pointed out to me by someone who had been working in this area for a couple of decades.

So there it is – food intolerance is different to food sensitivity – and produces different symptoms – and both of them are completely different to food allergy – but that’s for another post 🙂

 

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Emily MumfordView all posts by Emily Mumford