Like most folks with a chronic ailment, you may not suspect that the very foods you are eating could cause your symptoms. Why not? Because you don’t feel an immediate reaction. Food allergies and sensitivities can be quite tricky and sometimes difficult to figure out. But when you do, what a difference you can experience in your health.
For example, you may eat something you’re sensitive to and have a reaction as long as 3 days after consuming it. Or it may just add to ongoing chronic inflammation causing your symptoms. Headaches, sinus infections, fatigue, irritability, depressed mood, asthma, arthritis, eczema, obesity…and the list goes on and on. Such was my case with my newly discovered bread (wheat flour) allergy I mentioned in my previous article.
Doesn’t it make you wonder why 75% of all healthcare costs in America are still being spent on chronic disease? It’s because we have not been looking to causes and ways to prevent or reverse illness. Instead we are focused on treating illness (with a prescription drug or surgery). Wouldn’t you like to find the root of your chronic problem? It is estimated that 95 percent of us have food sensitivity.
If you have never been tested for a link between what you eat and how you feel, then please consider what I’m telling you: food intolerances (a.k.a. food sensitivities) trigger a wide range of chronic symptoms, and you will likely not even realize it. It could be well worth it to have a comprehensive food allergy testing from a reliable lab. Two commercial labs I have chosen to use for my patients are Genova Diagnostics (www.gdx.net) and Immunolabs (www.immunolabs.com). But if you have a doctor you trust, you could talk to him or her about the tests I’ll describe here.
IgG food allergy tests
Immunoglobulins are the microscopic antibody proteins of your immune system. When you ingest, inhale, or absorb (via skin) something that is unhealthy for your body, your immunoglobulins will react in an attempt to protect you. The result is inflammation somewhere in your body tissues. The main immunoglobulin (Ig) in your blood is IgG (and IgG subtypes). Therefore, food allergy blood tests detect your IgG antibody response to various foods. They use the modern process known as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA).
What foods do they test for? Basic testing will check for your reaction to common food categories such as milk, corn, wheat, eggs, and foods processed with molds. If you are found to have antibodies to certain food types, you can then exclude these from your diet and watch your symptoms fade away over 4 to 6 weeks.
More in-depth testing, such as Genova’s IgG4 antibodies food allergy test checks for “delayed” food reactions known to worsen many health conditions. This profile done from just a drop of blood (instead of tube of blood obtained by venipuncture) measures IgG4 antibodies of these 30 common foods:
| Almond Aspergillus Mold Beef Cantaloupe Cashew Chicken Corn Crab Egg, whole Garlic | Lobster Milk Mustard Seed Oat Orange Pea, Green Peanut Pinto Bean Pork Rice | Salmon Shrimp Soybean Strawberry Sunflower Tomato Tuna Turkey Walnut, English Wheat |
The Immunolabs BloodPrint is similar but even more extensive. Because every food you eat has its own unique set of natural (or man-made) chemicals, you will react differently to each food you consume. Immunolabs claims that 95 percent of subjects tested show a positive reaction to one or more foods they are consuming on a regular basis. These can even be nutritious foods such as corn, soy (these two are very likely to be genetically modified by-the-way), egg whites, green pepper, whey, or even chicken. This is to say, the foods you test positive for are very likely causing chronic low-grade health problems—and you don’t even realize they are contributing to you illness.
Here is what they test for in their 88-item food allergy BloodPrint test:
| Almond Amaranth Apple Avocado Banana Barley Bean, Green Bean, Kidney Bean, Lima Bean, Mung Bean, Pinto Bean, Yellow Wax Beef Beet Broccoli Brussels Sprouts Buckwheat Cabbage Cantaloupe Carrot Cauliflower Celery Cheese Cherry Chicken Cinnamon Clove Cocoa Coconut Cod Corn | Crab Cranberry Egg Ginger Grape Grapefruit Halibut Herring Lamb Lemon Lentil Lettuce Lime Lobster Milk, Cow’s Milk, Goat’s Millet Nut, Brazil Nut, Cashew Nutmeg Oat Olive Orange Oregano Papaya Pea Peach Peanut Pecan Pepper, B/W Pepper, Green | Pineapple Plum Pork Potato, Sweet Potato, White Pumpkin Quinoa Rice Rye Safflower Sage Seed, Rape Sesame Soybean Spinach Strawberry Sugar, Cane Sunflower Tangerine Tea Tomato Tuna Turkey Walnut Wheat Yam Yeast, Baker’s Yeast, Brewer’s Zucchini |
However, if your test is negative does this prove the foods tested are not involved in causing your chronic symptoms? No, and let me tell you why.
It’s because sometimes more subtle reactions occur to foods which do not cause your immune system to produce antibodies. Antibodies are generally produced only when the allergy is prominent. It will take food elimination to identify these.
In my next article I’ll take up elimination diets and other safe and inexpensive allergy treatment methods. I’ll also look at several other allergic causes of chronic illness and how to test for them too.
To healing and feeling great,
Michael Cutler, M.D.
Sources
Allergix® IgG4 Food Antibodies — Bloodspot 30 — Genova Diagnostics
Bloodprint™ diagnostic testing and nutritional program — Immuno Laboratories
