Sharla Race - The Food Intolerance Handbook: Your Guide to Understanding Food Intolerance, Food Sensitivities, Food Chemicals, and Food Allergies

Sharla Race

Copyright 2013 bySharla Race

SmashwordsEdition

Change Your Diet and Change YourLife

Food Intoleranceand Food Allergy Handbook

Second edition(revised and updated 2012)

Smashwords EBookISBN: 9781907119095

Paperback

ISBN:978-1-907119-08-8

Copyright SharlaRace

All rightsreserved

No part of thiseBook may be reproduced or reprinted, stored in a database or otherretrieval system, transmitted in any form, by any means, includingmechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording or otherwise,without the prior written permission of the publisher.

You do have theright to copy this eBook onto any reading device of your choice aslong as it is for your own use only.

Publisher: TigmorBooks

www.tigmorbooks.co.uk

This book is dedicated to you thereader.

It is my sincerewish that the guidelines in this book help you find the diet thattruly works for you.

May you findhealth, happiness, and serenity.

You are unique -never doubt this.

Table ofContents

Are you fed up of being ill?

Have you, for aslong as you can remember, been plagued by minor health problemssuch as headaches, skin rashes, cold and virus type symptoms,fleeting pains, bloating, sleeplessness, stomach upsets?

Have you never hada fully healthy skin?

Have you tried tolose weight and never succeeded or if you have lost weight have youput it on again?

Do you getrecurring problems like joint and muscle pains, restless legs,fatigue, headaches, tics, rashes, depression, anxiety,tinnitus?

Have you had longperiods of coping with everything and then suddenly becomeexhausted and has this happened more than once?

Do you feel tiredafter a full night's sleep?

Do you feel as ifyou have never totally been yourself?

Have you felt asif your life goes round in circles? You have periods of feelingokay when you get on with your life, make plans, see friends...Then you find the pace is speeding up, it seems that there's toomuch to do but you're still okay, coping. Then suddenly, or so itappears, everything seems too much and you descend into feelings ofdespair and not coping - all you really want to do is withdraw.And, when it finally passes, do you feel confused and unsure ofyourself?

Have you ever madea major change to your diet and, after an initial high, feltworse?

Do you frequentlyhave stomach problems - wind, indigestion, constipation and/ordiarrhoea?

Have you had boutsof anxiety, nervousness or depression for no apparent reason?

Does your visionfluctuate over the day - at times cloudy and then clear?

Do you have blackshadows around your eyes or a feeling of grit beneath youreyelids?

Has a doctor, morethan once, told you he can find nothing wrong or that there'snothing to worry about (the rash, pain, etc will go away in time),or has he suggested your problem is stress related when you know itisn't?

If you haveanswered yes to more than one of the above questions then there isa strong likelihood that something you are eating is making youill. You are in good company...

We change ourdiets, take supplements, exercise more and still we feel no better.So what is going wrong? It is my belief that the focus of mosthealth care is fundamentally flawed. Rather than looking for thecause of our problems, doctors usually focus on treating thesymptoms. We have come to accept this approach and to expect it,even demand it. We want the quick fix that will remove the pain,the rash or the depression but, sadly, without sorting out thecause the symptoms usually return.

If your diet isnot the right one for you then you will not be as healthy as youcould be both mentally and physically. By finding the diet thatworks for your body and mind you will change your life - you willexperience fewer health problems, have more energy, an increasedsense of well being and a return of hope and joy.

If this soundsfar-fetched, I simply ask for your patience and time. Read on andyou will discover for yourself the truth about how food can makeyou ill.

Being constantlyplagued by minor health problems had become a way of life for me.The crippling joint pain, the yo-yoing weight, the skin rashes,headaches, sinusitis, and tinnitus had become so usual that I hadstopped seeing them as illness and accepted them as normal forme. What else could I do?

My diet was packedfull of healthy fruit and vegetables. Visits to doctors invariablyresulted in diagnoses of a virus, stress, wear and tear, ortiredness. There was, apparently, nothing wrong with me. I knew Iwasn't as healthy as I could be but no matter what I did nothingchanged. During this time I pretty much became an expert onrelaxation techniques, meditation, healthy eating, stressmanagement, alternative therapies and creative visualisation. Life,at times, did get easier but I was never fully well.

By the time I wasin my late thirties, the problems had become serious. I wasconstantly ill and began experiencing episodes of severedebilitating tiredness and illness. According to the medicalprofession, there was nothing wrong with me that some fresh air,exercise and maybe a drop in weight wouldn't cure. But thesemeasures did not work and my health got worse. I stopped being ableto work and my life began to unravel.

Thankfully, I am afighter and thankfully I had helped my husband cure his migrainesand depression by identifying problems with grains, yeast, sugarand tyramine. Looking back I can only smile at how throughout thatprocess it never once occurred to me that my own problems, mentalas well as physical, could have their foundation in the food I waseating.

It was on a,sunny, day out in York that I finally made the connection. Sittingon the steps of the Minster exhausted after a very short walk andnursing a migraine, I watched people closely and came to theconclusion that the bloating I was experiencing and the translucentmottled skin I had developed were most definitely not normal. Butwhat was wrong with me?

Biting into anapple my migraine raged even more ferociously and then recededleaving me with a severe low blood sugar problem. It was at thatmoment that I thought to myself that maybe, just maybe, some of myproblems were being caused by food.

Within a few weeksof following an elimination diet I had made enormous progress. Theweight began to disappear, the headaches stopped, my skin began toclear, my joints were mobile, my ears stopped ringing and mysinuses cleared. But what surprised me most of all were the changesin my behaviour and feelings.

The manichyperactive energy followed by extreme fatigue, the mood swings,the inexplicable anxiety, tension, disorientation and confusion,the memory problems, and the extreme need to be alone all began tofade into the background. I had long ago decided that I had apersonality defect probably caused by some event that was locked inmy memory that I couldn't access. I was wrong, seriously wrong.These psychological and behavioural symptoms were all being causedby the food I was eating.

To cut a very longstory short my health improved and I returned to work but a fewmonths later began to re-experience problems. At this point itseemed that I was intolerant of nearly everything I ate and my dietwas very restricted. I decided not give in but to carry out moreresearch and eventually I discovered the information on foodchemicals, salicylates in particular, which I needed. At last I hadfound the cause of my problems. The journey had been long, painfuland extremely lonely but at last I had arrived at a reason and acure. I became far healthier than I had ever been.