One of my favourite clients happens to be a lady who suffers from multiple food chemical intolerances. I saw her recently, and we were discussing her amine intolerance and the food challenge for this. Amines are a chemical which is naturally found in food, in particular ripe bananas, chocolate and cheese. Something interesting came up. In the week prior to her period, in the past, like many women, she has snacked on chocolate. During this time, she would also get awful, what she thought, was PMS. As so happened, throughout the course of doing the low chemical diet, she did not have the chocolate she would normally eat, and noticed an interesting phenomenon- her PMS was not only no where near as bad, but it was nearly non-existent! Then when doing the amine challenge, which includes consuming a large amount of chocolate, her PMS like symptoms reappeared.
Now I am not saying that everyone who gets PMS actually has a food chemical intolerance, but I do think this is a very interesting case study!
Chloe McLeod is a dietitian at BJC Health.
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