How to discover your food suspects with AIRE’s logging features
AIRE is a breath analysis device that tracks how well your body digests different foods, but there are several other things you should be tracking in the app to help you narrow down your food suspects.
The AIRE app allows you to track five things: your breath readings, the foods you eat, your symptoms, stress levels and sleep quality. Ideally, you should do a breath test before each meal, and two to three tests over the two hours after eating. But the real breakthroughs happen when you track your foods and symptoms too. Sleep and stress can also affect your digestion, so you should track them if you can, but food and symptoms are critical.
Was it Professor Plum with the polyols in the afternoon snack?
When food isn’t fully absorbed and reaches the large intestine, the bacteria there start to break it down in a process called fermentation. This can cause a build-up of gases, such as hydrogen, which is what AIRE measures. However, fermentation is not always bad, so a single high reading doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a problem. This is where your other logs come in.
Digestive symptoms don’t always happen immediately after you eat something that doesn’t agree with you. In the case of food intolerances, discomfort like bloating, pain, constipation or diarrhea can often occur hours later, or even the next day. If you do a breath test after every meal, then later have digestive symptoms, you can look back through your breath readings and see where fermentation levels spiked. The spike itself may not be a problem, but if you later find yourself feeling unwell, it’s likely the foods you ate before the high fermentation score that were not fully digested.
That’s why it’s important to log all meals and symptoms, as well as doing breath tests after you eat. You don’t always know when symptoms will strike, but if you’ve kept your logs up to date you can look back to find the most likely culprit.
Once you’ve identified a food suspect, that’s where Food Challenge and the Food Library can help you investigate your suspects and look for alternatives!
AIRE is a pocket-sized breath analysis that helps people with chronic digestive issues determine the foods that work best with their digestive system. To learn more about AIRE, visit www.foodmarble.com.
