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Do you often feel sick after meals? Do you fear eating out just because you can't tell which meal, which time, which day will trigger unpleasant symptoms? You're not the only one. You may experience a food intolerance: a condition which is similar to food allergy, although not as much severe.

To break down different types of food, your body needs certain enzymes. The absence of these enzymes can cause a food intolerance. A reaction to a food your body does not tolerate can come later than a reaction caused by a food allergy, so the identification of intolerance "trigger foods" can be difficult.

Some usual intolerances - some of which you may already have heard of before - are lactose intolerance (i.e. the inability to process dairy products) and gluten intolerance (i.e. the inability to process wheat products or gluten). However, there are more types of intolerance than these, and most of them will produce unpleasant symptoms.

Fatigue, pain, diarrhea, constipation, irritable bowl syndrome, and other gastro-intestinal problems are some of the symptoms of food intolerances. The easiest way to avoid these symptoms is to take a food intolerance test to discover which foods you are intolerant of, and then avoid these foods.

A common test for food intolerance is the elisa (this stands for enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay). In this test blood is normally collected from the fingertip, either at home or at a doctor's office, and then a lab analysis is done to test for reactions with certain foods. A strong reaction can produce a large amount of IgG antibodies in the blood stream; the more that there are, the worse the reaction will be.

The food intolerance test will show the extent of the intolerance and the type of foods that cause it. While different testers use different scales, all food intolerance tests measure the same thing -- the body's production antibodies. The results of the test should make apparent which foods (if any) are the cause of intolerance reactions; studies have shown that measuring antibody production is an effective means of discovering the source of food intolerances.

If you find out you have a food intolerance, there are several steps you can take. The most obvious step is to remove said food from your diet - this can range from simple to quite difficult, depending on the food. For the more common intolerances, such as dairy, manufacturers have marketed 'safe' products, but for others you'll simply have to read ingredient labels and ask questions. This may be inconvenient at times, but it's certainly better than the symptoms. In the end, a food intolerance test is well worth the cost and effort.

The body can often be intolerant to certain foods, as in the case of lactose and gluten intolerance. A common test used to determine food intolerance is the ELISA food test (which stands for enzyme linked immunosorbent assay). This test is done by testing a blood sample for reaction to certain foods, if a large number of IgG antibodies is found this indicates a food intolerance. Should the test determine you have a food intolerance it means your body lacks the enzymes necessary for that food type. This can cause many problems such as fatigue and stress to the body, which makes the test worth the cost.