Living with food intolerances can be painful. Even when you try to avoid foods that cause you problems — stomach pain, bloating, gas, diarrhea, or nausea — it’s easy to eat something accidentally and end up miserable.

Here’s what you need to know about those symptoms and digestive issues, followed by six strategies to help alleviate them.

What Are Food Intolerances?

Food intolerances, also called food sensitivities, are different from food allergies, even though people sometimes talk about them as if they’re the same. The two can occur together, but they’re separate conditions.

Food allergies involve an immune system reaction to a food or ingredient that your body mistakes for a threat. The symptoms can affect your whole body and may be fatal.

Food intolerances, on the other hand, affect only your digestive system. They occur when your body can’t properly break down certain foods. The symptoms of food intolerances aren’t life-threatening.

Technically, you could be intolerant to many foods, but some intolerances are more common than others. The human body most commonly has trouble breaking down these substances:

• Histamines — Found in certain aged, fermented, or spoiled foods such as cheese, wine, sauerkraut, and some fish
• Alcohol
• Monosodium glutamate (MSG) — Often found in cured meat and very ripe fruit
• Caffeine
• Gluten — Most common in pasta and bread. Note that gluten intolerance is different from a wheat allergy or celiac disease.
• Salicylates — Usually in spices and herbs and in some fruits and vegetables
• Sulphites —Commonly found in beer, cider, and wine
• Lactose — Present in all dairy products. Lactose intolerance is one of the more commonly discussed food intolerances.

Symptoms of Food Intolerance

Food intolerances can have a number of symptoms, but most involve the digestive tract. Common food intolerance symptoms include:

• Stomach or abdominal pain
• Gas and bloating
• Heartburn
• Diarrhea
• Nausea or upset stomach

These symptoms can have many causes. If you’re wondering about food intolerance, talk to your doctor. You may need to keep a detailed food journal so you can see what your body reacts to and how long it takes your symptoms to develop.

What To Do When Your Stomach Hurts

The best way to deal with a food intolerance is to stop eating the specific foods that cause your symptoms. If you can tolerate a little of what makes you feel ill, you’ll need to figure out your threshold so you know how much you can safely eat.

Sometimes, you might get exposed to a particular food by accident. Someone else might make a meal containing this ingredient or you might eat the food without thinking. When your symptoms occur, you can try these strategies to feel better.

1. Use an Over-the-Counter Medication

Many symptoms associated with food intolerances can be treated by over-the-counter (OTC) medications. You can get products such as antacids, antidiarrheals, and lactase enzymes to help with gas, bloating, diarrhea, nausea, and more, all without seeing a doctor. Buy a medication specific to your symptoms. If you’re not sure what to choose, ask a pharmacist for recommendations. You can also ask your doctor what OTC medications they recommend. Be sure to follow the instructions on the label.

2. Wait It Out

Some people with food intolerances choose to simply wait out their symptoms, which can last anywhere from several hours to several days. After that, the symptoms should be gone for good unless you’re again exposed to the problematic food. If your symptoms don’t interfere with your life or you don’t tolerate OTC medications well, then living with symptoms for a little while may be the best way to get through them.

3. Walk It Out

If you feel OK moving around a bit, light exercise such as walking or stretching might help you feel better. Movement can nudge your digestive system to work as well as possible, so your body can move the poorly tolerated food through your digestive system faster. Exercise is particularly good when you need relief from bloating or gas.

4. Apply Heat

When your stomach hurts or feels uncomfortable, you might clench the muscles around it. This can add to your abdominal pain while making your digestive tract work even harder to move food through. Placing a heating pad against your stomach can help these muscles relax. Heat won’t necessarily make your stomachache better, but it might ease additional pain from clenching muscles. It might also help your system move food through faster, so you won’t have symptoms for as long.

5. Sip a Cup of Tea

Some herbs may help alleviate your symptoms. If you have cramped muscles or bloating, tea might be particularly useful. Try a brew with chamomile, peppermint, and ginger, or pick one and start there. Both ginger and peppermint may help your stomach relax and may relieve nausea, and chamomile has anti-inflammatory properties. The warmth of hot tea might also help you relax and feel more comfortable.

Some members of MyFoodAllergyTeam have had good luck with these ingredients in tea. One told another with significant stomach pain, “Here are a few things you can try. Digestive enzymes or activated charcoal and chamomile tea.” Another member, in response to someone asking for help with nausea, said, “Try ginger tea.”

6. Get Some Fresh Air

If you’re feeling nauseated, try to get some fresh air. Sometimes, this helps people feel better. If nothing else, the change of scene might distract you from your stomach pain or other gastrointestinal symptoms.

Check With Your Doctor

If you have a food intolerance or think you might, talk to your doctor. They can help you figure out what is making you uncomfortable and what you need to do to feel better.

If your health care provider is concerned about food allergies, they may send you to an allergist. This person will help you figure out why you’re experiencing symptoms and offer solutions. They may test you to see if you’re experiencing an allergy rather than an intolerance.

You can also talk to your doctor if you have a known food intolerance that causes symptoms you can’t manage well. They may be able to give you stronger medications that will help when you’re accidentally exposed to a food you can’t tolerate.

Talk With Others Who Understand

MyFoodAllergyTeam is the social network for people with food allergies and their loved ones. On MyFoodAllergyTeam, more than 41,000 members come together to ask questions, give advice, and share their stories with others who understand life with food allergies.

How do you deal with stomach pain from food intolerances? Share your experience in the comments below, or start a conversation by posting on your Activities page.