YORKTEST Newsletter
YorkTest Saved My Wedding
YorkTest saved my wedding
WITH only months to go before her wedding, Rebecca Dykes wondered if she would
ever have enough strength to even walk down the aisle. Nine months on and the
couple have just celebrated the birth of their first child. In 2005, the 29-year-old
Edinburgh woman felt so tired and weak she had to take week after week off work,
spending much of the time in bed. Even walking from her home to local shops was
a struggle. "My legs were like jelly and I felt absolutely knackered," said the
marine biologist, who works for Scottish Natural Heritage in Edinburgh.
To make matters worse, she started developing severe stomach pains. Doctors sent
her for tests to see if there was anything seriously wrong with her digestive
system, but the results proved negative. Doctors seemed to have no suggestions
for curing her worsening condition.
It was such a contrast with her childhood, when Rebecca was so fit and well she
never had to take a single day off school. "I used to swim for a club and did
the Duke of Edinburgh award, and I played a lot of hockey when I went to university,"
she said.
Her marriage to Ben James, 32, a Scottish Executive employee, was due to take
place in April 2006 at a chapel near Loch Lomond, with the reception at romantic
Culcreuch Castle. But she was so unsure she would be well enough to go ahead with
the ceremony she took out insurance on the wedding.
However, by the time they were due to tie the knot, Rebecca's health had been
transformed - after discovering that all her problems had been caused by her food.The
transformation came about after a friend handed her a leaflet she had picked up
in a pharmacy, promoting the foodSCAN, a food intolerance test conducted by YORKTEST
Laboratories in York.
Rebecca sent a pin-prick of blood off to the lab last October, and the results
came back showing she was intolerant of half a dozen foods including turkey, lentils
and dairy products.
She rigorously altered her diet - and quickly started feeling a lot worse. "I
had very bad aches in the chest, slight wheeziness, headaches down one side of
my head and flu symptoms. They were like severe withdrawal symptoms." Within a
couple of weeks of altering her diet, she started feeling better. Her stomach
pains and other digestive problems subsided, and her energy levels started to
return to normal.
She suffered a temporary relapse on one occasion, however, after dining in a
restaurant and accidentally eating some of the rogue foods. "I felt very tired
the following day and had severe stomach pains on the second day."
But she recovered before the wedding and at the reception, she made sure she
only ate the right foods, so as to prevent their honeymoon on the West coast of
Scotland being spoilt by a return of the old problems. She now feels completely
back to her old self - and says she thanks her lucky stars that her friend walked
into a pharmacy one day and spotted the YORKTEST Laboratories leaflet.
Rebecca is just one of thousands of people in Britain who are taking the YORKTEST
foodSCAN food intolerance test, and changing their diets in accordance with the
results - often with spectacular improvements in their health.
