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.

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.

You may have heard of two of the common food intolerances, lactose intolerance (in which the body cannot process dairy products) and gluten intolerance (in which the body cannot process wheat products, also known as gluten). Several other types of intolerances exist, as well, and all of them are associated with 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.

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.