Maggie Holloway

“I feel like a new woman!”

• 51-year-old Maggie Holloway suffered from intense pain in her inner ear, dizziness and nausea for a year
• The company director was in pain daily and found it difficult to work out and complete daily tasks due to waves of nausea
• Maggie sought advice from her GP and was referred to an ENT specialist who prescribed her medications for the excess fluid in her ear
• Determined to find the route of her symptoms, a friend recommended YorkTest to see if a food intolerance* test may hold some answers
• Maggie’s food intolerance* test revealed she was intolerant to yeast, beef, chickpeas, and rapeseed oil
• After eliminating her trigger foods, her symptoms alleviated within 4 days. She now feels like ‘a new woman’

Maggie Holloway had been suffering from an intense pain in her ear which led to a dull pressure in her head. On top of this, she also felt dizzy and nauseous.

“I was in pain daily and found it hard to do most daily tasks due to dizziness and waves of nausea [including] anything physical that involved sharp head movements, [like] workouts in the gym, running,” Maggie explains.

The 51-year-old’s symptoms were impacting on her daily life so much so that she decided to consult with her GP to see if there were any underlying conditions. She was then referred to an ENT specialist.

“My ENT specialist diagnosed symptoms being caused by mucus blocking my sinuses and spilling into my inner ear,” Maggie says. “The specialist wanted to prescribe medication for symptoms, [but] I wanted to address the cause”.

It was at this point that her friend recommended YorkTest to Maggie. YorkTest are the UK’s leading provider of food intolerance* testing and have been named Food Intolerance Company of the Year 2018.

The process, which involves sending a finger-prick blood sample to the company’s laboratories to be analysed for reactions to over 200 food and drink ingredients, revealed that Maggie had reactions to yeast, beef, chickpeas, and rapeseed oil.

The next step for the company director was to eliminate her trigger foods from her diet. Following her results, she was able to book in her first 30-minute phone consultation with one of our registered nutritional therapists. The consultation allowed her to find equally nutritious alternatives and gave her a stepping stone between awareness of her intolerances and actioning her results.

It wasn’t long until the 51-year-old saw an improvement. “My symptoms disappeared after 4 days,” Maggie exclaims. She found the Customer Care team and her nutritional consultation “very helpful. I feel so much better than I have since becoming perimenopausal,” the company director explains.

She is now able to work out and complete daily tasks which she found a struggle before coming to YorkTest. “I’m back to normal. It was amazing! I also had [a] sore stomach regularly and this disappeared too,” she announces.

Though Maggie has continued with her elimination diet, she has noticed a return in her symptoms when her trigger foods sneak back into her diet on the odd occasion.

Maggie has found the elimination process “pretty easy, even though some of these foods I had previously eaten on a daily basis,” she says.

“Eating out can be difficult but worth it to feel this good. I feel like a new woman!”

Maggie followed a Premium Food Intolerance Test

Nutritional Therapist Sarah Hughes helped Maggie to optimise her diet following her results.