July 20, 2010

The Big Test

Hej!
I’m just back from Sweden and the ball is rolling! I have eaten all the food that I’m allergic or intolerant to. It was hard and continues to be hard. It always seems easy in theory and even gleefully bold in the beginning (Herräng’s famous brownies and banana bread and ice cream, Stockholm’s amazing array of pastries, the best creamy vegetable soup ever, brown breads, pizza and sour cream, cheeses, Kek chocolate bars, etc, etc, etc..) but I feel SO bad by the end of it that I can’t WAIT to get back on the band wagon... I miss my band wagon…
You may ask Why Did You Do It? Especially when I am always preaching how you should stick to your food intolerant/allergic diet at all costs but I promise I have a genuine and useful motivation: After many food allergy tests with their differing and sometimes confusing results I have decided to bite the bullet and get the ‘big one’. After doing my research (and not having €1000s of euro to contribute to a personalized consultant –least of all a car to bring me to their obscure locations) I have settled on the somewhat cheaper alternative of £265, ‘FoodScan 113 Food Intolerance’ test supplied by YorkTest, http://www.yorktest.com/ which tests for allergies and intolerances to 113 foods. I have seen wonderful results in friends and I have read similar reports. The main attraction is the means of communicating the results. It seems that you take a blood test (supplied through the post by YorkTest) and return it to their laboratories in a specified time frame after which they send you a breakdown of the level/intensity of intolerances to each food tested. Personally I feel that the varying intensity of the intolerances will be hugely beneficial in my day-to-day life and I’m QUITE excited about the results! In addition they supply two phone consultations and are the only food intolerance test endorsed by Allergy UK!
Anywho, back to the deal: to get the most accurate results I have read that it is important to be consuming all food types (if possible) before taking a food allergy test in order to get the most accurate results. Supposedly if you haven’t consumed a problem food in a long time it might not register on your test and seeing that I don’t have any life threatening allergies I opted for obtaining the most accurate results and have been ‘indulging’. However, the outcome of this is currently a sore throat, coughing, mucous and headaches, oh those damn sinus headaches! Not to mention the lethargy and muscle pains, stomach cramps and grey face and general lack of motivation and personality dullness and disturbed sleep patterns and ‘yuck’ feeling in my mouth…
BUT, I have been at this for a few days and on Sunday night officially ordered the test. I’m expecting the test to arrive on Wednesday or Thursday and then I think that I will complete and return it on the following Monday to ensure that it gets back in the required time frame. I just can’t WAIT to get it because once that blood is in the post I can go back to my ‘regular diet’ until I get the big results and kick this wee illness in the be-hind!
Well that’s it for now – Talk soon!
Hej Hej ;)

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