The low-down on food allergy/sensitivity testing..

They’re everywhere you look, if you have any kind of symptoms driving you to seek answers. Everlywell, for one, offers food testing that you can order yourself without any kind of prescription or recommendation from a medical professional. But is it worth the effort? 

More importantly, is it worth the money?

The short answer is no. To date, there aren’t really any food sensitivity tests that are completely accurate. There is no single food allergy/sensitivity/intolerance panel that is going to yield a comprehensive and fully accurate list of all foods that might be causing inflammation and/or discomfort.

An IgG food antibody panel that measures “sensitivities” (which can progress to officially be “type 3 hypersensitivity”) and are a marker of the adaptive immune system’s reactions to foods is not as targeted of information as we might think. Essentially, the test is measuring when the immune system is reacting to a consumed (and perhaps quite healthy!) food with hypervigilance.

In addition, IgG antibodies are only one type of reaction that the body can have to a perceived threat (e.g. a food). We can also have an IgA-mediated response (which happens in the mucous membranes of the body, such as the gut lining). Similarly, someone may have an outright (even violent) allergy to a food and thus generate significant IgE antibodies in reaction to that food, but there may be no IgG or IgA antibody generation. Food intolerances such as lactose or fructose intolerance are not reactions from the immune system at all, but you can still experience very real and bothersome symptoms from consuming these foods.

The body can also react to lectins, mycotoxins, chemical additives, and other triggers in food which will not show up on a typical food antibody panel. And going back to Total IgG measurements, note we can have high levels of these antibodies simply due to high consumption, and there may be little/no complement activation to trigger an inflammatory response. Bottom line: this complexity can make it hard to “nail down” food sensitivities/allergies clearly via a lab test. And it’s one of the reasons why the “gold standard” of identification of these issues is through 100% food elimination followed by a reintroduction challenge.

The real question at this point is WHY is the immune system overreacting to healthy, natural foods? We must shift the overall environment that our immune and nervous systems are responding to if we wish them to have a more tolerant response to our foods. Just eliminating the foods is not enough!

Root causes of immune hypervigilance may include

– enhanced intestinal permeability
– microbiome imbalance
– poor sleep quality
– physical deconditioning
– insufficient nutrients (especially Vitamins D and A and zinc)
– high stress levels
– toxic exposure/overload

The most likely root cause often tends to be discord in the gut itself. Enhanced intestinal permeability, also referred to in layman’s terms as ‘leaky gut,’ is one of the most likely factors contributing to multiple significant food sensitivities. In the case of leaky gut, people tend to develop sensitivities to the foods they consume most often (simply due to more frequent exposure). It’s important to heal the excessive permeability while eliminating the foods, or an individual is likely to develop sensitivities to the new foods they are choosing. Therefore, healing the gut becomes my number one priority when treating my patients. The good news is, many food sensitivities are temporary and will not persist after sufficient gut healing has taken place.

If you have interest in discussing your symptoms further and a potential customized healing plan recommendation, please contact me at sara@empoweredhealthforlife.com, or visit my website at www.sarajhernandez.com and submit and application.