Diary Intolerance Treatment – How to Treat Dairy Intolerance

Treatment for Diary Intolerance

If a dairy intolerance is suspected, it’s time to start reading labels! Look for ingredients that are milk or components of milk such as whey, casein and lactose. Those words bear repeating: Whey. Casein. Lactose.

Products Containing Dairy

Don’t think that just because a product is not commonly known to be even slightly associated with anything concerning milk that it doesn’t actually contain milk or its components. Whey and casein are used in so many processed food products that the list would be too big to include here. Look on the label for anything that sounds like it is milk-related, including words such as “butter,” “cream,” or “heavy cream,” as well as the three red-flag words mentioned above; whey, lactose, and casein.

Eliminating or Avoiding Dairy

Now, you don’t have to read every label of every product in the store nor do you have to learn every ingredient of every food available on a menu in a restaurant. Just read the labels and lists of ingredients for the foods that you actually consume. When dining out, be sure to let the server know of your dietary restrictions and even ask if there is a dairy-free menu available. Many of the larger restaurant chains will have dairy-free options. After you begin your elimination diet as it’s called, continue to look and learn what is in the food being eaten on a daily basis.

How to Test for Dairy Intolerance at Home

There are three caveats that many fail to consider when testing whether or not they are sensitive to a certain food. Many embarking on an elimination diet of avoiding a possible offending food will try to determine whether they are feeling better or not after just a few days. In order to truly give it a chance, a minimum of a full month on the elimination diet is needed to see whether there is a real improvement in symptoms.

Second, many will try out some alternatives to dairy during the elimination. While trying to find out if there truly is a specific food sensitivity, this is not the time to introduce new foods into the diet. New foods and especially alternatives to dairy that may be soy-based, which is another food that many folks are highly sensitivity to, may cause sensitivity issues in individuals already susceptible to sensitivity to dairy products.

An elimination diet to discover the truth about whether or not you are really sensitive to a suspected offending food product should be based on maintaining your regular diet, minus the suspected offender. If symptoms begin to subside as dairy is eliminated from your diet, there is a very good chance that dairy is the culprit.

Lastly, many people have multiple sensitivities, such as dairy and egg or dairy and gluten, so sometimes the elimination diet will not give the improvement that was hoped for even when indeed there is a dairy sensitivity. It’s just in conjunction with another food sensitivity.

The Elimination Diet Treatment for Dairy Intolerance

It is a good idea to take a total and complete inventory of symptoms prior to beginning the elimination diet and assess symptoms every 1-2 weeks for changes.

After several months on an elimination diet, the gut begins to heal and some dairy-sensitive individuals can reintroduce dairy slowly and over time. Remember though that after years of being sick with symptoms, it takes time to heal so that should be done only after a fair amount of time on an elimination diet (at least 3 months) and slowly and cautiously as well.

Reintroducing dairy to a sensitive person may or may not cause a recurrence of symptoms. If symptoms recur, then eliminate the dairy again. If symptoms do not reoccur, it is still wise to limit dairy intake indefinitely so as to not risk creating the sensitivity all over again.

The Risks of Consuming Dairy

For those who just have to eat dairy, even though there are times that symptoms are almost unbearable, the choice is still yours. Sometimes symptoms are quite bearable depending on what type of dairy product is consumed and at what time. If the beloved cheese on the pizza is a must-have, and if the symptoms are just a tiny bit of nausea and a bloated feeling, then maybe the joy of eating the pizza, for some, is worth the discomfort. Just be aware that the discomfort is caused by something going wrong inside your body, and maybe the mild digestive symptoms are only the tip of the iceberg of what is really going on from the inside out.

Sensitivities can manifest in seemingly unrelated disease processes such as eczema and asthma. There is also research to show that consumption of an offensive food over time causes trauma to the body that results in a variety of diseases and dysfunctions down the road.

Blood Test for Dairy Intolerance

Milk is such a common food sensitivity that many people suffer needlessly for years because they do not consider that milk is the offender. Or worse, people are commonly diagnosed as lactose intolerant and take a supplemental lactase enzyme, never to discover that they were sensitive to another part of what makes up milk such as whey or casein. If it is just lactose intolerance, the supplemental form of lactase taken when eating dairy often resolves the symptoms.

There are blood tests that can be performed to test whether there is a true dairy sensitivity as well. Many opt for the elimination diet first before embarking on blood work simply because it can be done “right now” with no needles or doctors involved. With blood tests, there is always the possibility of false negatives and really the only way to be one-hundred percent certain if there is a sensitivity to dairy is by eliminating all dairy for a long enough time to see if symptoms of sensitivity subside. If they do, despite what any blood work may say, there indeed is a sensitivity. If the symptoms go away after dairy is gone from the diet, it is also easy to confirm the suspicion by reintroducing some dairy to see if the symptoms come back.

So, during your elimination diet be sure to read the labels. Don’t substitute with new foods that may contain components that also trigger symptoms while testing the dairy sensitivity, and be sure to give it time. You know your body better than anyone. And remember, nothing tastes as good as HEALTHY feels so it’s best to get some dairy intolerance treatment now after testing.