Food Sensitivity Testing

Taken From a Health Talk Given Recently

I've been practicing alternative health care over the last twenty-five plus years and we do a lot of functional health care testing in our office to help people get well from chronic conditions that they have been suffering from. In a variety of conditions, we will rely on information from food sensitivity and food allergy testing as part of our protocol for helping these individuals get well. These difficulties with food sensitivities can be found in the most obvious situations such as reflux disorders, digestive disorders, colitis and irritable bowel as well as in other less obvious situations where people may have hidden allergies that they are really not aware of, and these may be undermining their immune system and their energy levels such as in adrenal fatigue syndromes and in other chronic health problems where people are worn down over a long period of time and progress to more degenerative processes that spiral-down their health.

There are three major ways of looking at food allergy outside of skin testing that I would like to address. Many people familiar with skin testing where many items are tested at once and this is a valid form of allergy testing and, in my opinion, should be reserved for those who have medically threatening conditions related to allergic responses where they may be at risk for anaphylaxis or closing up of the throat and disorders leading to compromise of the kidney and other grave medical conditions. Those are the kinds of patients that belong with a medical allergist. On the other hand, the vast majority of people with sensitivities and food allergies that are hidden from their awareness would likely be best served from the evaluation by a simple blood test, where your blood is drawn in the usual fashion and then reacted with, let's say, a hundred different foods, to see whether or not certain reactions occur to the blood indicating that there is a problem with that food.

So, in the area of food antibody testing, there is the classic IgE antibody assessment and the blood will be reacted with a number of foods and the laboratory will measure whether or not your blood has developed an antibody to the particular food substance and then measure how severe the antibody response is. The IgE food allergy assessment and IgE assessments in general, such as for other environmental elements like molds and trees, etc., that type of allergic response is more of an immediate response. Sometimes we call it an atopic response. An example would be the classic strawberry and hives reaction where you eat strawberries and some minutes later, you notice that you are developing hives. So these are the types of allergies that very often people would be well aware of and indeed, some authorities state that when somebody has an IgE allergy, that they are generally always aware of it. My experience has been different. There are actually many people who do have IgE allergies to foods and other inhalants and environmentals that are not aware of it, and so that is an important point to keep this in mind.

We do have testing for what we called "hidden allergies" and that would be IgG food allergies where a different type of antibody is produced by the food and this type of response can take anywhere from 72 hours up to a whole week to develop and so the impact on the body is delayed by the timing of the reaction in such a way that it is very hard to track. One cannot usually tell that the sweet potatoes that they were allergic to, that they had at dinner four days ago, is what is impacting their health and perhaps dragging down their energy levels at this point in time. So the finding of hidden food allergies can be a gold mine of value to the person who is suffering chronic health disorders in enabling them to get a hold of a list of foods that is pulling down their health quotient that they did not even know about, and that with that list, they are then equipped to eliminate those foods and avoid that "drag" on their physiology and help open up a new avenue towards healing and improved health.

The third area of food testing that I would like to talk about is leukocyte sensitivity testing and that is where we react your blood samples with the various foods that we are testing and we look to see what happens with the white blood cells. The white blood cells, the leukocytes swell in size, and they are rated as to a level of sensitivity; if they burst open they are considered severe reactions and these are rated for you. This is another form of testing in which we can detect foods that are offensive to your system, actually damaging your white blood cells which would signal alarm reactions in your body as it does in any form of allergic insult.

This alarm mechanism is then distressing to the rest of your system and your body has to deal with this. If you are compromised in one area and you are fighting this hidden allergy at the same time, you are left with less reserve. Solving food sensitivities and food allergies can follow a process to recovery in a variety of chronic health conditions especially fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, chronic digestive problems, and often chronic headaches. There are many conditions in which this can be a very valuable tool.