Today I'm going to talk about whether food sensitivity tests deserve to be part of
your IBS management strategy, so stay tuned. If you're a returning viewer, welcome back.
I'm so glad to see you here again. And if you're a new viewer, welcome for the first time. My name
is Amanda Malachesky. I'm a certified functional nutrition health coach and a digestive and allergy
detective, and I'm also the host of The Calm Digestion Method online program. For weekly
videos on how to find your personal diet and supplement plan for IBS and SIBO, please consider
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This week, I wanted to take a few minutes to answer a question that I've heard from a lot
of my clients and people in my online community, which is, "Should I use a food sensitivity test
to figure out what I should or shouldn't eat for IBS?" I've previously run several of these tests
on myself, and I used to recommend them for my IBS and SIBO clients, so let's dive into whether or
not this is a viable strategy to help you figure out what you should and shouldn't be eating.
So to evaluate whether or not food sensitivity tests should or shouldn't be used for your IBS,
let's first talk about what exactly they are and what they test for. Most food sensitivity tests
like the Everlywell test or the ALCAT panel or the CRX panels or the MRT test, test for one possible
type of your body's reactions to potential exposures in the environment or your food
called IgG. Also called IgG immunoglobulin, this IgG response is one arm of your immune system.
It's one potential way that your immune system can react to an outside invader. However, IgG
antibodies are typically markers of things that you have been previously exposed to in your past.
IgG food sensitivity tests typically use some kind of blood sample. Sometimes they can use saliva to
check for your reactions to an assortment of foods and beverages, typically two to 400 items, and
then they give you a color coded result showing how reactive your sample is to those particular
foods or beverages. A high level of reactivity is typically shown in red, while a medium reactivity
is shown in yellow, and a low reactivity is shown in green. Common advice from practitioners
who offer this kind of testing is typically to avoid foods that are red or yellow for up to two
to three or even four months, just to give your body a break from being exposed to those things.
So let's now dive into a little bit more about what I think about these tests.
So here are three reasons that I don't recommend IgG food sensitivity testing for IBS. The single
biggest reason I no longer recommend IgG food sensitivity testing for IBS clients is that the
IgG test is only looking for one possible cause of food reactions in your IBS, and in reality, there
are many possible causes and it's really important for you to figure out which specific cause of food
reactions is actually happening for you. This test only rules out one of those possible causes.
In my experience, working with clients, the most common food mediators of symptoms in IBS clients
are fermentable carbohydrates, otherwise known as FODMAPs, followed by high histamine foods
as a close second. In addition, there's other potential kinds of foods that could be causing
some kind of IBS reactivity, and this includes things like high oxalate foods,
high fat foods, high protein foods, or even things like nightshades or lectins. I mean, these are
kind of farther down the list, but they're still possible. But again, the most common causes are
high FODMAP foods or high histamine foods. But regardless of what the underlying food
symptom triggers are for you in your IBS situation, the IgG food sensitivity test
really only gives you an answer to this one question about whether or not it's IgG
sensitivity. And honestly, I typically see it as a much less common problem than some of the other
FODMAPs or histamine foods or other potentially reactive foods. To add insult to injury,
often when people remove the foods that turn up on their IgG food sensitivity tests,
they actually don't really see any positive results from that. So if you take the test
and then do this lengthy elimination diet to get rid of all the foods that the test shows you're
reactive to and you don't see any results, this is a pretty expensive and lengthy experiment that
doesn't really give you any results. In the end I think that focusing your food experiments on
more likely potential causes is a much better investment of your time and money.
The second reason that I don't recommend IgG food sensitivity testing is that there isn't really
very much evidence to suggest that it actually is very useful. Now there are a couple of
limited studies about the connection between IgG sensitivities and IBS symptoms. In fact,
here is a screenshot of one of those studies. This one makes the connection between an IgG
based elimination diet and migraine symptoms and irritable bowel symptoms, and for some
of the participants in this study, there was a significant reduction of pain from bloating and
also migraine pain from people who followed the IgG sensitivity diet. And then this other study
showed a correlation between an increase of IgG sensitivity popping up on a food sensitivity test
and major depressive disorder and IBS symptoms. However, both of these studies are very small.
One of them had a total of 21 patients and the other study had a total of 65 patients. So
though the quality of this evidence is fairly good and it showed some correlation, it's still
only like 70 people over the entire body of research available on this topic. Furthermore,
the study only really assesses whether or not there's some correlation between these symptoms,
but it doesn't specifically tell us that yes, in a majority of cases following this diet is going
to improve constipation, diarrhea, or bloating. The only evidence we really saw was with pain
from bloating and that's it. Basically the tests show an increased association between
people with IBS and these higher scores on the IgG tests, but it doesn't make the next logical leap,
which is by following the diet you're likely to see a serious reduction in symptoms. So again,
sticking with more evidence based diets like the low FODMAP diet or the low histamine diet
are much more likely to help you than following this list of results from these tests that aren't
scientifically validated and don't have good evidence to suggest that they really work.
Now the third main reason that I no longer recommend the IgG food sensitivity test for people
is that they tend to lead to a lot more confusion and frustration for clients. So let's face it,
people with digestive challenges like you often are really overwhelmed and frustrated with all
of the conflicting information out there and are also confused about the various changes
that you may need to be making in order to feel better. So the results that come up on these IgG
sensitivity tests are often quite random. They sometimes don't make sense. People say, "Well,
I've always been eating that and it doesn't seem to be a problem." And the specific changes that
they're recommending can be kind of difficult to manage, and this difficulty of making those
changes combined with the lack of evidence and the lack of often effectiveness at all can just lead
to even more frustration for people like yourself. I experienced this very thing myself. Early on in
my IBS journey, I ordered an IgG sensitivity test for myself, and when the test came back
it showed that I was sensitive to a bunch of foods that I was eating a lot of after I
had already adjusted and adapted my diet to what I thought was helpful for my symptoms.
So this led me to feel honestly, really pretty pissed off and it was a really big undertaking
for my family to again overhaul everything that we were eating together, and even worse was that
after I made all those diet changes, it didn't really result in a tangible difference in my
symptoms. They were kind of the same. So now I was out $250. I went through this very long period of
being frustrated and overwhelmed with all of the diet changes that I was having to make, and I
didn't really have any results to show for it. So as a coach, I'm really concerned with this
level of frustration that people are experiencing as they're trying to
really find a way to help themselves feel better, but they keep striking out with the experiments
that they're doing and not seeing good results. You really don't need more of that in your life,
what you really need are just doable solutions, step by step strategies that really incrementally
change your habits and help you understand the underlying mechanisms of your symptoms so that
you're really truly addressing what really needs to happen and not wasting all of this time and
effort on stuff that's just not going to help. So yeah, I don't really recommend these tests
anymore. Number one, because there are lots of potential food causes, not just IgG causes. And
we need to evaluate that whole picture. Number two is because there isn't really evidence to suggest
that there's a clear correlation between changing those IgG things that turn up on your test and
results, meaning less symptoms. And number three, because the process can be really overwhelming
and frustrating for clients, and again, it often doesn't provide meaningful results.
So now that I've said all that, I'm sure I might hear from some of you who will say that, "Well,
I did that test and I changed the foods and it made a huge difference with my symptoms."
I don't discount that it can happen, but I am curious to hear from you have you run one
of these IgG sensitivity tests and what were the results? Did you get meaningful results or did it
kind of end up being a waste of time? Tell me about it in the comments.
So I hope this video helps you make an informed decision about whether IgG food sensitivity
testing is right for you and may or may not be helpful for your particular IBS situation.
So I do want to take a minute to let you know that if you've been feeling frustrated or
confused with what to eat or what not to eat to help manage or control your IBS symptoms,
I want to let you know that this is exactly what I help my clients with inside the Calm Digestion
Method online program. But if this is something that you're needing help with, your first step
could be just to grab a free copy of my online resource called The Roadmap to Gut Recovery,
and inside this free guide, I share the exact strategy that I share with my clients
inside the Calm Digestion Method. And you can download a free copy of this by going to
confluencenutrition.com/roadmap. I've got that link here on the screen, and I'll also leave a
link for that down below in the description box. All right, please let me know if this video
was helpful for you by clicking like or subscribing or leaving me a comment about it.
And next you might want to check out this video about my personal IBS failures where I
tell you a little bit more about my personal troubles with my IBS diet over the years.
I'll leave a link for that here on the screen, and I will look forward to seeing you next time.