Food can provoke the most important alteration in the organism that the human immune system can face. The most common foods that can provoke food intolerances are sugar, milk, eggs, yeast, barley gluten and wheat gluten.

Difference between food allergies and food intolerances

A distinction should be made between allergy and food intolerance.

The first occurs when our defence system identifies a food as foreign and harmful and generates a very rapid attack response in the form of a rash, nausea, stomach pains, gas, gastric inflammation, vomiting, heartburn, diarrhoea, headache, and irritability or nervousness. Sometimes a more severe and dangerous reaction, anaphylactic shock, can occur, with a risk of a very negative outcome. Food allergy is measured by immunoglobulin E.

On the other hand, food intolerances is measured by immunoglobulin G and have less severe but annoying symptoms such as ezcema, hives, headaches, migraines, asthma, rhinitis, etc.

In either case, it is necessary to know which foods we are intolerant to. To do this, there are a number of tests, some of which have been shown to be unreliable.

Validated tests for food intolerances

The tests measure blood intolerance and some of the most widely used and validated tests are:

• Alcat test - conducted in a laboratory, it analyses a list of 100 foods. There are now more expensive tests that examine up to 200 foods.
• Tests sold in pharmacies - Analyse a list of essential foods by taking a drop of blood. One of the most common tests is the FOOD-DETECTIVE

Regardless of this, once we know which foods are harmful to us, it is advisable to go to a specialist who can guide us in the process of avoiding these foods and ensure that we do not ingest the component of the food that causes the food intolerance in our body.

At Biosalud we have a reliable method of detection and sufficient professional experience to treat food intolerances.