Let’s look at a holistic approach to treating gastrointestinal complaints.

Rather than simply treating symptoms, a holistic approach searches for the underlying cause of problems and then supplies the body with the raw materials it needs to rectify those problems.

The first step to diagnosing and treating digestion complaints is obtaining a detailed history from the patient. This history should include a dietary analysis of what the patient is eating.

One of the most common causes of bloating and poor digestion is food allergies, which are impossible to diagnose without a good dietary history. That’s why I ask every new patient I see about what he or she eats.

Unfortunately, medical schools place little or no importance on taking a dietary history. In fact, we were taught that food allergies are uncommon, and that it generally doesn’t matter what patients eat.

When I think back about what I learned — and didn’t learn — in med school, it makes me angry because food allergies are a very common cause of gastrointestinal issues. After all, we’ve all heard the old saying: You are what you eat.

The two most common food allergies are dairy and gluten — with dairy far outweighing gluten.

Any patient complaining of bloating and poor digestion should consider going dairy-free for at least two months. That is the minimum time necessary to help clear out antibodies to food.

And going dairy-free means avoiding all sources, including milk, cheese, and yogurt, as well as milk chocolate, butter, and others.

Oftentimes, dairy sensitivity can be determined with a blood test for IgG antibodies to the dairy protein casein. I have found that more than 70 percent of patients have high levels of casein antibodies, which indicates that ingesting dairy products will cause inflammation — and possibly bloating and poor digestion.

If avoiding dairy doesn’t help, you might try going gluten-free for a while.

Gluten is the protein found in wheat and other grains. Today, our food supply has a much higher gluten content than 40 years ago because of the use of genetically modified foods.

A minimum of two months off gluten will be needed to ascertain if a person suffers from an allergy/sensitivity to the protein. But sometimes it can take a patient as much as 6 to 12 months of avoiding gluten to see positive results.

Other foods can also cause gastrointestinal issues. In fact, any food source can potentially cause an allergy or sensitivity resulting in abdominal complaints.

In cases of food allergies, I suggest working with a healthcare practitioner skilled in an acupressure technique called NAET, which was designed to diagnose and treat both food and environmental allergies and sensitivities.

You can find an NAET practitioner by visiting www.naet.com.