This home page provides information about food sensitivity.
Food Sensitivity is any adverse reaction your body might have to any number of different foods or chemicals in foods.
Reactions can include Ecezma, Headaches, Migraine, ADD, ADHD, Irritability, Tummy aches and Irritable Bowel Sydrome.
The ideas have been developed over twenty five years of research and practice by
Joan Breakey - B Sc, M App Sc, DNFS, Cert Diet, TTTC,
Dietitian / Nutritionist, Researcher and Teacher - About Joan Breakey
This home page provides -
1) General
information:
introduces you to the basics of food sensitivity, so that you can
work out if you might be food sensitive.
Food
sensitivity does exist
Diet
and ADD - A summary for Parents
The
story of high Spirit foods
Reports
of additives reactions
Is
your baby food sensitive?
The
Role of Diet in Mood
What's become of the Feingold diet? Ockham's Razor Nov 2001
Diet in ADHD - the position in 2001
2) Practical
Information:
If you decide you may be food-sensitive and need how-to
information, then you can contact a dietitian, or purchase
"Are You Food Sensitive?", a self-help book for those
wanting to investigate diet on their own.
Who might
find this book useful?
Order
"Are you Food Sensitive?"
"Are
you Food Sensitive?" Book
Reviews
3) Further
Information:
For those who are familiar with diet investigation, or who have
followed the process in "Are you Food Sensitive?",
up-to-date information and research articles are provided.
Summary
of a study of food tolerance in infants
Recipes
More
information on Commercial Foods
My
First Research
Study
of 500 families using diet
Master
of Applied Science Thesis Summary
References
on the role of Diet in Behaviour 1999
Amines
- an update
Probiotics
and Prebiotics - do they change food sensitivity?
Ask
Food Industry and Government for "Full Ingredient
Labelling"
4) New Information 2002-2007:
Diet can have a role in chronic ear infections
Ockham's Razor "Food – What’s smell got to do with it?"
Is Food intolerance an Inborn Error of Metabolism
Development of thinking in food intolerance from 1975 to2005
Links to relevant organisations
It can be a mixture of food allergy and chemical food intolerance. This book outlines who is most likely to respond to diet, and which problems diet might help change.
The diet detective method allows you to investigate your own food sensitivities to find foods that you can eat. The process shows you how to use information from your own family to find out if you might be sensitive to whole foods or inhalants. This is combined with "the usual suspects" - additives and natural chemicals in foods - to provide your initial test diet.
Next the diet detective method shows how to methodically reintroduce various foods and chemicals to confirm your sensitivities.
This results in an individually tailored diet that you can be confident covers everything that may be suspect for you, yet does not exclude any more than is necessary.
Key ideas:
Many people ask how can they be food sensitive, if they get a symptom such as migraine or hay fever. They find that it is not there all the time, even though they have not changed their diet.This is possible because of the TOTAL BODY LOAD idea. Symptoms will only appear when enough factors add up to the threshold level. These can include suspect foods, inhalants, especially in springtime, stress, or after some infection. Diet is the factor you can change. The good news is that the diet can then be relaxed when the stress is over, or spring pollens have faded away.
The other often asked question is "Why has this symptom come on now when I never had it before?" The idea to understand here is that allergic-type people can change in what is called their TARGET ORGAN SENSITIVITY.They may have had eczema in infancy, asthma till their teens, and develope Irritable Bowel Syndrome in their 40's.
People who suspect they or someone in their family are food sensitive but need up to date information to create an effective diet;
People who want a manageable enough diet that can be used within their own busy schedule or implemented with a fussy child who has behavioural problems;
People who have done some diet investigation and want more detail, perhaps they have been careful about certain single foods, such as milk or sugar, but wonder if there is something else to consider;
People who have been preparing all food from scratch and want to use some commercial foods so cooking is not so time consuming;
People who saw a food-behaviour role in a child when young and wonder if diet could still have a role.
Joan Breakey has been a practising Dietitian, Home Economist and Teacher for over thirty years. In 1975 she began her first work on Diet and Hyperactivity, investigating the effects of the Feingold diet on children's behaviour. For the last twenty years Joan has been publishing and presenting the results of her on-going research in this area.
She has worked as the Adviser in Nutrition and Dietetics to the Department of Health in Queensland and as a Dietitian for Community Child Psychiatry in the Division of Youth, Welfare and Guidance.
In 1983 Joan began conducting clinical research with families using dietary treatment for behaviour, learning and activity problems. In 1991 she published the results of a follow-up study of over five hundred families.
Since then she has worked with hundreds of families in private practice investigating the role of diet not just in behaviour, but also in treatment of physical, allergic and food intolerance symptoms such as eczema, asthma, hay-fever, migraine and abdominal pains.
In 1995 she received a Master of Applied Science degree for her research in this field. Copies of this thesis are available.
This site was last updated on: 29 September 2007
