This was an interesting read:
"Novak Djokovic, the number-one ranked tennis player in the world defeated Roger Federer in an epic Wimbledon final on Sunday — but he nearly didn’t get there at all. Here, in an exclusive excerpt from his book, Serve to Win, Djokovic explains how going gluten-free took him from second tier to the top of the rankings — and shows how you can do it, too.
“THIS IS A TEST THAT WILL help us see if your body is sensitive to certain foods,” Dr. Cetojevic told me.
We were not in a hospital or lab or doctor’s office. He was not drawing blood. There were no scanning devices or big, scary pieces of medical equipment. It was July 2010, at a tournament in Croatia, and Igor Cetojevic, M.D., a holistic practitioner from my native Serbia, was explaining to me that he thought he knew why I’d fallen apart so many times in the past, and how I could change my diet, my body, and my life for the better. Then he had me do something very strange.
He had me place my left hand on my belly, and put my right arm straight out to the side.
“I want you to resist the pressure,” he said as he pushed down on my right arm. After a moment, he stopped. “This is what your body should feel like,” he said.
Then, he gave me a slice of bread. Should I eat it?
“No,” he said, and laughed. “Hold it against your stomach, and put your right arm out again.” Once more, he pushed down on my arm, explaining to me that this crude test would tell me whether or not I was sensitive to gluten, the protein in wheat, barley, rye, and other common bread grains.
This seemed like madness.
And yet, there was a noticeable difference. With the bread against my stomach, my arm struggled to resist Dr. Cetojevic’s downward pressure. I was noticeably weaker.
“This is a sign that your body is rejecting the wheat in the bread,” he said. I had never heard the term “gluten intolerant,” but I had just taken the first steps in learning how big a role food had played in my life, how much my wheat-based diet had been holding me back — and how much was in my power to change. Dr. Cetojevic then explained to me that there were other, more scientific and more accurate ways of testing my sensitivities to certain foods. The best and most accurate is the ELISA test, which stands for enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. It’s a common blood test that’s used for everything from drug testing to diagnosing malaria and HIV to testing for food allergies.
The ELISA test can teach us very specific things about our bodies’ sensitivities to food. The most common sensitivities are to gluten, dairy, eggs, pork, soy, and nuts. Some of us have unusual sensitivities, or unexpected combinations of them; for example, my trainer, Miljan Amanovic, tested sensitive to pineapple and egg white. But once you know what you’re sensitive to, you can make dramatic changes almost effortlessly. (By eliminating just these two foods, Miljan lost 10 pounds in only a few weeks.)
When my blood test returned, the results were shocking: I was strongly intolerant to wheat and dairy, and had a mild sensitivity to tomatoes as well. “If you want your body to respond the way you’d like it to, you will need to stop eating bread,” Cetojevic said. “Stop eating cheese. Cut down on tomatoes.” “But Doctor,” I replied. “My parents own a pizza parlor!”