Best/worst gluten and dairy substitutes?

[OakLeaf]

Try a challenge diet.

The tough part is that I think you have to eliminate ALL common food allergens, not just one, because you may be sensitive to more than one, and just a decrease in the allergic load might not noticeably decrease your symptoms. And if you've never tried to live without wheat, corn, rye, oats, soy, dairy, eggs, yeasts or molds for four days (let alone long term) ... it's not as easy as it may sound. Make sure you have a good reference, which will help with recipes as well as identifying foods (e.g., any processed fruit product, and certain fresh fruits, is likely to contain yeasts or molds; corn products can be found just about everywhere).

I'm honestly not sure that gluten is even the protein that sets off people who are allergic to wheat but who are not celiac. Or why it should matter ...

Anyway, start by keeping a food and symptom diary for a week. Everything you eat, when you eat it, every symptom you have (fatigue, edema, palpitations, itching, asthma, hives, grogginess, poor sleep, digestive issues ...) with the time of onset and the time it goes away, if any.

Then eliminate the potential triggers for four days and see if you feel any better (keeping up with your symptom diary so you can compare it to what you had before). If so, then reintroduce the foods one at a time. If you get a "positive" on anything but the last food you try, you'll have to do it over again to test for the remaining foods (but on a repeat test, you don't have to eliminate foods that you reintroduced without a reaction).