Which food sensitivity test will help you get the results you're looking for?
Keep watching to find out.
If you're new here, hi there, my name's Amanda Malachesky, I'm a Functional Nutrition Health
Coach and a Digestive and Allergy Detective, I help you figure out what foods and lifestyle
habits are going to help you improve your gut and allergy health.
So if you'd like to find out more about this and hear when I release new videos, go ahead
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Food sensitivity and food allergy tests are kind of all the rage right now, people are
really into using them, but I find that a lot of people misunderstand how to use them
properly, so today I want to talk about how to choose the right test based on your circumstances.
Choosing the right tests can help you get the kinds of results that you'd like to with
your digestion and allergies to reduce your symptoms, like they did for my client Mary,
who used a food sensitivity test to figure out which specific foods were aggravating
her IBS symptoms, her bloating and diarrhea.
So you can do this too, so let's get started.
The first thing I need to share with you today is something you may or may not know, but
it's that there are different types of food allergies.
I'm going to say that again.
There are different types of food allergies.
A lot of my clients come to me saying that, "Oh yeah, my doctor already ran an allergy
test, a food allergy test, and I didn't have any food allergies."
But usually what's happened is that their doctor has run skin pin prick allergy tests,
and these test for only one type of allergy, which is the IgE-mediated allergies, which
are kind of what we think of as traditional allergies.
So if you have IgE allergies, you're maybe getting hives, runny nose, runny eyes, and
worst case scenario, anaphylactic shock and death, from ingesting things like peanuts
or shellfish, or these things that people are often highly allergic to, but there are
other types of food sensitivities, and these are the kind that are much more interesting
to me as a nutrition practitioner.
So I want to get clear together about what the different types of allergies are that
are possible, so that we know exactly what we're looking for when we decide what kind
of testing to use.
So the first type of allergy, like I mentioned a moment ago, is an IgE-mediated allergy,
and these IgG things are the different antibody clusters that attach to an allergen in your
body to tag them for destruction by the immune system.
So the IgE allergies are the type, like I said, that are sort of a histamine, anaphylactic
type reaction to an allergen.
You probably already know if you are severely allergic to something like this, so only a
small percentage of people actually have this type of allergy.
The second kind of food allergies or sensitivities are IgG-mediated allergies, so again IgG just
means it's a different branch of the immune system that's tagging things for immune system
destruction.
IgG sensitivities often cause a delayed response, they can be as many as three to four days
after ingestion, so this makes them kind of challenging and difficult to track, and may
be a reason why you have odd reactions at odd times that you can't necessarily track
back to a particular event.
This type of reaction is often involved with low-grade inflammatory conditions and autoimmunity.
The third type of allergies or sensitivities that I often see are reactions to a naturally
occurring component of a perfectly healthy food.
So, examples of these are things like gluten, FODMAPs, which are types of starches in particular
kinds of foods, or something like lactose, which a component of dairy products.
So now that we've talked about the different types of allergies, let's talk a little bit
about testing.
So if you're someone who deals with sort of a traditional hay fever style of allergy,
or you really strongly react to certain foods within the first 30 minutes after ingestion,
I highly suggest that you go get a skin pin prick allergy test from a traditional allergist
if you haven't already done this.
This can definitely be a life-saving measure to take, and it can also just help you understand
which kinds of things you're reacting to.
It tests for various kinds of foods, environmental allergens like molds and pollens, and also
things like pet dander, pet hair and stuff like that, cats, dogs, those sorts of things,
so it really does help to understand which things you're reacting to, and that can help
you manage your home environment for better health for your allergies.
If you're someone who seems to have delayed food responses that kind of occur on a rolling
basis, and you can't seem to pinpoint exactly where or when they're starting or where they're
coming from, I suggest using either an IgG food sensitivity test, or what's called a
mediator release test.
These are typically blood tests, some of them are done at home, some of them you have to
go to a lab to have drawn, and they test for a wide variety of foods.
Some of the labs you might choose are Immuno Laboratories' IgG panel, Neurogistics' IgG
panel, US BioTek's IgG panel, the Mediator Release Test from Oxford Biomedical Laboratories,
and also the Cyrex Array Number 10 food sensitivity panel.
The costs for these different tests vary a bit, and they all test for slightly different
foods, but largely they cover the sort of most commonly consumed foods, including greens,
dairy products, meats, vegetables, fruits, oils, et cetera.
The trick with these results is to understand how to use them properly, and I'm a pretty
big advocate for having someone professional to help you read the results and figure out
what you need to do, but generally if you are showing a reaction to these foods, you'll
want to remove them for a period of time, the time will depend on the severity of the
reaction to the food, and then you'll reintroduce them one at a time to assess for a reaction,
so it's like a...
You kind of use the test as a tool to figure out your strategy for how to see, am I really
reacting to this?
Am I having a reaction that I can notice?
For the third type of food sensitivity, which is sensitivity to a particular component of
a natural food, the best form of testing truly is a true elimination and reintroduction diet,
sometimes with a lab assist to get additional information.
So for example, if you suspect you have gluten sensitivity, a FODMAP sensitivity, or lactose
intolerance, then you want to do a thorough elimination diet for three to four weeks,
and then reintroduce the foods that you eliminated one by one to see if you can notice a reaction.
If you do have a reaction, then those are foods that you should probably continue to
avoid for a little while, while you then do investigation underneath to figure out why
is my body reacting to this food?
If you'd like a little more specific information about how to do an elimination and reintroduction
diet, you can check out my earlier video called How to Do an Elimination Diet for IBS.
But then in some cases, lab tests can be an additional support to this process of investigating
what's going on.
So a particular example here is with gluten sensitivity, so two lab tests in particular
can be really valuable here, one is the Cyrex Array Number 10, which tests for sensitivity
for gluten proteins and antibodies to gluten, as well as foods that the body commonly cross-reacts
to with gluten sensitivity, including certain gluten-free grains and dairy products.
The other test is called the Wheat Zoomer from Vibrant Wellness, and this test also
tests for antibodies to gluten and various pieces to that puzzle, but it also can test
for the celiac genes.
It can help you understand if you're actually at risk for celiac disease based on your genetics.
So I'm curious, have you ever used a food sensitivity test, and if so, what did it teach
you?
Go ahead and leave us a comment below.
As you can see, each of you is totally unique and probably needs a really unique approach
to figuring out what exactly your food sensitivities are.
I hope this video helped clarify some things for you and sort out which food sensitivity
tests might be valuable for you to investigate further, but if you're still confused and
you need a little bit of additional help figuring out which tests might be right for you, I
encourage you to schedule yourself a free 30-minute assessment session with me.
You can schedule that by visiting me at confluencenutrition.com/contact.
Investigative lab testing is just one piece of the puzzle I use to help my clients sort
out their digestive and allergy challenges.
To find out more about the other six steps on my Roadmap to Gut Recovery, you can grab
your free copy at confluencenutrition.com/roadmap.
That's all for this week, and I hope that this video was helpful for you.
If it was helpful for you, please go ahead and click "Like" down below and leave us a
comment.
Thanks for watching everyone, I'll be here next week.
In the meantime, if you have any questions about what you saw in this video, or if you
have a question that you'd like answered in a future video, please be sure and leave me
a question down below in the comments, I really do read those comments, and be sure and share
this video with your friends and family if you feel it could be useful for them.
All right, I'll see you next time.