Puzzled by sporadic bouts of dizziness and nausea, Hayley Gyllenspetz tries a food intolerance test.

AFTER a year of not feeling well and refusing to believe that my dizziness and nausea were down to stress, I decided to try a food intolerance test.

With a family history of Coeliac Disease - a severe allergy to gluten - I had convinced myself I might be a sufferer and wanted some hard evidence before I turned my back on bread and pasta for good. The current fad for blaming all sorts of medical problems on food intolerance made me sceptical, but I decided to give it a go.

The test itself, from the YorkTest company, was easy. You make a tiny pinprick in your finger, mop up the blood with a swab and then send it back to the lab. It's a fairly painless process.

It took two weeks for the results to come back by which time I was quite intrigued to see what foods I would be told to give up. Every food imaginable was put into one of three categories: Avoid, Rotate and No Reaction. Foods in the Avoid category were graded one to four to show how intolerant the patient is.

To my surprise every food tested, from corn to chicken and celery to cashew nuts, was in the No Reaction category - except one. According to the test, I had a low, grade one intolerance to cows' milk and nothing else. The reaction was so small and milk plays such a small part in my diet that the results have made no difference to my life except to show that my bouts of illness are unlikely to be linked to what I eat.

Hypochondriacs the world over will love the YorkTest as it can give you an excuse to change your daily habits to help your health and every meal-time can become a drama deciding what foods can and cannot be eaten.

For someone who likes her meals too much to give up anything on a whim, the YorkTest was an interesting exercise. It's a relief that I can continue to eat everything with gusto knowing it's not affecting my health.

* Contact Yorktest on 0800 0746185 or visit the company's website at www.allergy-testing.com