All and elimination diet is is eliminating dairy from your diet completely.  It can be a great way to diagnose yourself by eliminating dairy and then monitoring whether symptoms improve.  It is also the only treatment for a dairy sensitivity.  Before you go full throttle on an elimination diet, however, there are three caveats that many fail to consider.

(1)  Many embarking on an elimination diet of avoiding dairy will try to determine whether they are feeling better or not after just a few days.  In order to truly give it a chance, a minimum of a full month on the elimination diet is needed to see whether there is a real improvement in symptoms.

(2)  Many will try out some alternatives to dairy during the elimination diet.  While trying to find out if there truly is a specific food sensitivity, this is not the time to introduce new foods into the diet.  New foods and especially alternatives to dairy that may be soy-based, which is another food that many folks are highly sensitivity to, may cause sensitivity issues in individuals already susceptible to sensitivity to dairy products.  An elimination diet to discover the truth about whether or not you are really sensitive to a suspected offending food product should be based on maintaining your regular diet minus the suspected offender.  If symptoms begin to subside as dairy is eliminated from the diet, there is a very good chance that dairy was the culprit.

(3)  Last, many people have multiple sensitivities, such as dairy and egg or dairy and gluten, so sometimes the elimination diet will not give the improvement that was hoped for when indeed there is a dairy sensitivity, but it’s just in conjunction with another food sensitivity.

It is a good idea to take a total and complete inventory of symptoms prior to beginning the elimination diet and assess symptoms every 1-2 weeks for change. After several months on an elimination diet the gut begins to heal and some dairy-sensitive individuals can reintroduce dairy slowly and over time. Remember though that after years of being sick with symptoms, it takes time to heal so that should be done only after a fair amount of time on an elimination diet (at least 3 months) and slowly and cautiously as well. Reintroducing dairy to a sensitive person may or may not cause a recurrence of symptoms. If symptoms recur, then eliminate the dairy again. If symptoms do not reoccur, it is still wise to limit dairy intake indefinitely so as to not risk creating the sensitivity all over again.

And remember:  Nothing tastes as good as HEALTHY feels!