Traci Clarke

“I feel like I have helped myself be the best I can be”

55-year-old sole trader Traci Clarke, was dealing with a range of unpleasant symptoms since she was 15 years old. Traci had suffered with pain, unpredictable diarrhoea, massive weight loss and felt tired and ill frequently. Her symptoms were severe enough to hospitalise her at the end of July 2021.

When asked about how these symptoms affected her everyday life, Traci said: “I was not eating, I would not venture outside, I had no social life and I was sleeping all the time. If I did manage to go out, it was because I hadn’t eaten anything that day or the day before, but then I would get so tired and the pain would bring me back home.”

“I was struggling with work and I gave up everything, I wouldn’t even go out unless we had a plan of where the toilets were and if I could get to them. Everything had to be planned and I would not eat.”

Traci decided to get some answer after she’d had enough. “I was at my wits ends and I wasn’t getting any quick answers. I was waiting for appointments for the hospital and they were just taking so long. My life was getting smaller and smaller, I was losing weight and feeling so unhappy.” Then, Traci’s son, Michael, recommended YorkTest after he had also taken a food intolerance test.

That’s when she ordered the Premium Food Intolerance Test, with her results indicating that her body was reacting to to cow, sheep and goat milk, wheat, egg white, gluten, crustacean mix, egg yolk. Traci was very surprised as they were all in her diet. In addition, Traci found out she was also allergic to milk, apple, crab and wheat after taking a Food and Environmental Allergy Test.

When we asked Traci how she felt after removing these trigger foods, she said “it helped tremendously, without long winded diets to follow. The elimination wasn’t hard to keep up as the consequence of not eating that food was life changing but what was hard was finding other foods to eat what I maybe would like. It took a few weeks to see an improvement, I think it’s not easy when food producers hide ingredients and it’s hard to sort it all out at first and mistakes can happen.”

Our test analyses your IgG reactions to over 200 food and drinks – from common ingredients like gluten and cow’s milk, to health superfoods like kale and quinoa.

The process involves sending a finger-prick blood sample back to YorkTest. Traci then received her results within 7-days through the Wellness Hub, in an easy-to-read traffic light-based format.

Eliminating the trigger foods and sticking to her diet plan has helped clear Traci’s symptoms and enabled her to reclaim her life back. “I have now started to rebuild my personal life slowly. It takes a long time for the confidence to come back.” When asked about her appointment with our nutritional expert, Traci said: “The nutritional consultation was a great help, so friendly, helpful and informative. To have someone to talk about the results was very helpful.” Also remarking on the Customer Care Team, Traci found them “amazing”, helping her get a follow-up food allergy test done when some of her symptoms persisted.

We asked Traci how life had changed since taking the test and how she would summarise her experience with YorkTest. In response, Traci concluded: “I feel like I have helped myself be the best I can be. I was so low and nearly gave up on my life being any better.”