Clare Ruck

1st March 2008

To kick off our brand section “Your Story”, where readers share there experience with Lactose Intolerance, Clare Ruck, the financial director of Outside Line, the company responsible for creating our new website offered her own. Read her story, and then submit your experience for a chance to win great prizes and be our next feature!

Clare Says:
“For 18 years of my life I suffered from bouts of acute intestinal discomfort on a near monthly basis and didn’t know why. It all started when I was a baby, and was stricken by acute colic, though doctors didn’t know what was bringing it on. I had those same episodes of colic all the way into my teens. Especially when I was busy with things that induced stress like exams, and the various pressures teenagers experience, it would hit me especially badly. I’d be laid low by stomach pains (and all the symptoms that Lactose Intolerance sufferers know goes along with a bad bout, which I’ll refrain from writing here.) Sometimes, I’d actually be sick.

What I learned about food intolerances is that unlike an allergy (where an allergic person would have an immediate reaction if they ate a trigger food) they’re cumulative. That is, it builds up over time to the point where your body just can’t take it. At least for me, it took a while of eating foods with lactose until I’d start to feel really unwell.

That explains why I for all those years I didn’t make the connection between eating dairy with lactose in it and how my body reacted to it. Aside from feeling minor discomfort – a “gummed up” feeling in my sinuses, tummy aches – I wouldn’t immediately have a major episode.

It was only when I started to have itchy eyes from an unrelated allergy and went in to a specialist for allergy testing that I discovered incidentally the root of my chronically bad tummy. During the course of the testing I gave up dairy products entirely, and practically overnight my symptoms went away!

20 years later I am very conscious of what I eat. Concentrated dairy like butter and strong cheese really set me off, so I avoid foods like that when I go out. It’s become easier: These days it’s normal for people to have dietary restrictions, so I don’t find it a problem to tell a friend I’m Lactose Intolerant if I’ve been asked over for dinner. It’s still a bit uncomfortable to remind old friends who’ve forgotten though.

I keep a weather eye out for new products all the time. Luckily they’re developing quickly nowadays. For me, LactoFree is particularly useful when I have friends over. We’re a nation of tea drinkers and Brits take their cuppa with milk, and only milk – if you try and serve them something else (like for instance, soy milk) they think you’re trying to poison them! Previously I had to buy milk for guests, and would end up throwing it out. It was a real waste. LactoFree tastes like milk, so I can serve it to them, and then drink the rest myself.

What I’ve learned above all is how to handle Lactose Intolerance so that it doesn’t stop me from living my life, though the one thing I regret is that I can’t eat too much of my favourite treat, ice-cream. But I think one of my most important bits of advice to not let Lactose Intolerance get you down is that if you are really having a craving for something, just have it. Have just a little bit and then move on.”

Clare Ruck, Financial Director

 

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