Hi everybody, it’s Dr. Fleury. I wanted to spend some time talking to you about our food sensitivity testing that we offer here at the clinic. You may have seen an information video that Dr. Pihowich and myself did a while back. I decided to record an updated video, because we have been getting so many inquiries about the food sensitivity testing.
In this video, I walk you through what a report from one of these tests looks like. I also wanted to address a common question that comes up, which is what the difference is between a food sensitivity and a food allergy.
Recently I listened to an interview with Dr. Steven Gundry, a well-known cardiovascular surgeon who authored the book The Plant Paradox. Dr. Gundry has done a lot of work in the field of leaky gut, and here at True Potential we have been working with that concept for many years. I’ll take some time here to explain what a leaky gut is and how a food sensitivity test can help us to determine whether or not you might be dealing with leaky gut.
Understanding Food Sensitivities
If you have a food allergy, you typically know it because you will have an immediate response to that food. For example, if you have a peanut allergy or a shellfish allergy, you’re going to eat the food and your throat will swell closed, or you may break out into hives, and you may or may not require the use of an epi pen. This is a type one or an IgE-mediated immune response. It’s an immediate immune response, and it is an actual allergy. These can be identified through antigen testing done by an allergist.
A lot of people have never been diagnosed with actual food allergies, and yet they may have sensitivity.
A food sensitivity is a delayed hypersensitivity reaction.
This means that you might not react to the food immediately. There may be no throat closing, no breaking out into hives, no acute inflammatory response, but there may be a delayed hypersensitivity reaction.
It can take hours to days before you manifest the symptoms of a food sensitivity. That’s why it can be really tricky to decide or to determine whether or not you have a food sensitivity. You may eat a food on Saturday and not realize that you’re having a reaction to it because your body may not respond to that food for days. It might be Monday or Tuesday before there’s a low grade response, and you may or may not be aware that that response has happened.
That’s where the value of these food sensitivity tests come in. These tests can help illuminate possible food sensitivities that you may not be aware that you’re dealing with, especially if it’s a sensitivity to a food that you think is healthy.
Eggs are an example of a food that we typically think is healthy and a good source of protein, but there may be a sensitivity that you’re not aware of. Nuts and seeds are another common one. We often think about dairy and gluten when we think about food sensitivities, but there are many foods that you may be sensitive to that you’re just not aware of.
What Will My Test Report Show Me?
The food sensitivity tests are organized in two ways:
- By food group
- By reactivity
Foods that show up on your report in red or yellow indicate a higher level of reactivity. Foods that are shown in green indicate very little to no IgG reaction. When interpreting a report, we will also look at whether the person is reacting to specific food groups or whether the reactivities are scattered all over the place.
A report that shows many foods in red that a person is reacting to may be a clue that this person has a leaky gut. In a leaky gut, proteins and food molecules that shouldn’t be getting out into the circulation are doing so and stimulating the immune system. We then see an amplified immune response to these foods. Every time you eat the food, it’s triggering that response again.
What Is the Process of Testing Like?
It’s a quick finger poke. We do it here in the clinic, then it takes us about two to three weeks to get the results back. When we receive your results, you will come in for a follow-up visit, where we sit down and we help you understand and interpret your results. From there, we put together a plan for you.
The good news is that even though you don’t ever really completely eliminate your food sensitivities, you can significantly decrease your reactivity to foods over time.
When this happens, you can generally experience an enhanced degree of wellness around your digestive tract and your ability to digest and absorb foods. This helps you get a better clinical effect from the healthy foods that you eat and improves your overall health and well-being.
If you’re interested in learning more about this test, or if you’d like to come in and have a food sensitivity test done, any of our doctors here at the clinic can do that for you. We will also help you understand the results and come up with a plan to move forward.
