Do you often find yourself feeling sick after meals? Do you dread eating out because you never know which meal, which day, what time will trigger unpleasant symptoms? You're not alone. You could have a food intolerance - a condition similar to a food allergy, but not as severe.

Certain enzymes are required to break down different types of food; if your body lacks them, it can cause a food intolerance. Unlike food allergies, the response to the food in question may be delayed. This can make it rather difficult, at times, to identify the "trigger food" for an intolerance.

Some common intolerances, which you may have heard of before, are lactose intolerance (the inability to process dairy products) and gluten intolerance (the inability to process gluten, or wheat products), but there can be several other types, and all will produce unpleasant symptoms.

Diarrhea, flatulence, constipation, IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome), pain and fatigue are among the possible symptoms of food intolerances. The best way to really prevent these symptoms to occur is to refrain from eating the foods in question, and the best way to find out which foods these is to undertake a food intolerance test.

The elisa (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) food test is a common food intolerance test, which involves having blood collected-usually from the fingertip-either at home or in a doctor's office. A lab then analyzes this sample for reactions with certain foods. A strong reaction will cause many IgG antibodies to be present in the blood; the more antibodies there are, the stronger the reaction will be.

The results of the food intolerance test will reveal how much was produced, and from what type of foods. Different providers use different scales, but they all measure basically the same thing - the production of antibodies. It should be apparent which, if any foods were causing intolerance reactions; studies have shown this sort of test to be quite effective in tracking down the source.

There are several things that can be done if you find you have food intolerance. The first step to take is to remove the problem food from your diet. Removing the food from your diet can be an easy or difficult step depending on the nature of the food. Manufactures are now making substitute for some common intolerances, such as those with reactions to dairy products. Other intolerances can be avoided by carefully reading the manufactures label for the list of ingredients. Depending on the severity of your symptoms, a few minutes spent reading a label can be worth the time spent.