Re: Food Intolerance Testing

[Guest guest]

>

> I asked him his views on the blood type diet, and it was interesting

> that he said that he had found that the people it works really well

> for and helps, are people whose parents both have the same blood

> type.

>

My mother is an A and my father is an O and the diet works just fine

for me.

[Guest guest]

> My mother is an A and my father is an O and the diet works just fine

> for me.

**Maybe I wasn't clear enough, he didn't say it didn't work for

others - it clearly does because my parents are the same as yours, and

he could see it was helping me - but he said that he had found that

the ones with both parents of the same blood type found it the 'most'

helpful - probably because if you have both parents the same blood

type with the same lectins, maybe your intolerances and symptoms are

worse and compounded ?

)

[Guest guest]

>>He suffers from acid reflux (chest and throat pain), and

> occassional asthma.

Sorry, I don't know anything about that lab/test. However, for my

kids, these were symptoms of food intolerance [not allergy].

Dana

[Guest guest]

What is the best way to test for food intolerances? Thanks for your

help.

> >>He suffers from acid reflux (chest and throat pain), and

> > occassional asthma.

>

>

> Sorry, I don't know anything about that lab/test. However, for my

> kids, these were symptoms of food intolerance [not allergy].

>

> Dana

>

[Guest guest]

>

> What is the best way to test for food intolerances?

The best way is to remove foods, and rotate foods, and keep a journal

to determine which days [and therefore foods] are better and which are

worse.

There is testing you can do, which is about 80% accurate. This lab

has a good list

http://www.greatplainslaboratory.com/

Many times, a test will come back indicating a food is a problem, but

there will not be a problem if you give it with enzymes. But some

foods cause problems, even with enzymes.

Dana

[Guest guest]

There is also an IgG finger prick test available from U.S. Biotek

http://www.usbiotek.com/

that you can do at home (I did it on my son while he was sleeping,

as he can't handle any sort of lab like that). It measures as many

allergens as you want to order. You need a doctor to order the test

for you and they don't accept all insurance, but even without

insurance, the basic test of 96 foods is only $115.

You can still be intolerant of a food even if you don't get an IgG

reading, but it is very enlightening. My kids scored off the charts

on things like almonds, chicken and blueberries, which I NEVER would

have suspected (and was using in place of more obvious allergens.)

I think reflux is usually associated with either an intolerance or

yeast. For asthma, wheat, dairy, soy and cane sugar are the most

congesting foods, and enzymes can't help with the congesting

properties of foods; you might need to consider eliminating those,

at least when his symptoms flare up, if you haven't already.

Amy

>

> What is the best way to test for food intolerances? Thanks for

your

> help.

>

[Guest guest]

I always order the IgG allergy test from directlab.com. It is from

Metametrix.

I try to keep notes, and rotate food but it is just too hard for me. My

kids react differently depending on the food and the amount they eat. I

just could not figure it out. I run that allergy test once a year for

my two children and it helps tremendously (no more stomach pain,

reflux, constipation, mood swing, eczema....).

>

> Has anyone tried and gotten accurate results from Optimum Health

> Resources? They send you a kit were you prick your finger for blood,

> you send them the speciman by mail, and they'll send you a report

that

> indicates any food intolerances. I recently had my son tested (skin

> and blood) the traditional way by a allergist. The both results were

> negative. He suffers from acid reflux (chest and throat pain), and

> occassional asthma. He also complains of aches and pains throughout

> his body at differenct times. Thanks!

>

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

I will cut and paste a recent reply to someone else who asked about this. Read

it and see what you can use from it. To summarize, none of the alternative

integrative food intolerance testing, treatments, supplements should be done on

your own even if you could potentially get the labs to do it. You really need

someone expert to interpret results and lead you in the right direction.

Sometimes tests don't give you a clear picture and it's the cluster that must be

interpreted or you will miss something very important. It's really all by trial

and error, adjusting things for each individual's metabolic profile and it's a

lot more work for the doctors who practice biomedicine and a lot more work for

the patient and more lab tests, but it's all worth it because that's the only

way to even begin o understand what goes on with our immune system and

neurological functioning. That's just how biomedicine is, very individualized,

but the expert need to interpret is actually just as great as ever if not

greater, but you also need to be a full participant in the process, not just the

patient who goes to the doctor to be " fixed' by a magic pill the way the

traditional medical model functions most of the time--, and with sometimes

tragic results I might add.

Anyway, here's my experience with food intolerance tersting and supplements and

I can tell you that our insurance covered most of the doctor visits and testing.

The supplements are covered by the flexible spending/or medical deductions at

the end of the year and some may even be covered by some insurance plans, it all

depends on the exact diagnosis and plan you have.

So this was written earlier:

Allergy testing is tricky and there is no sure test but rather a cluster of

symptoms and tests that at some point all point in one direction. My daughter

is actually the classical gluten intolerant child without digestive symptoms

therefore not a true Celiac and regular doctors would have told me to relax and

go home because she is not intolerant to gluten, and interestingly enough the

blood test done also did not signal gluten but casein and other food items she

was eating at the time. So they are not 100% accurate and in fact no tests ever

are, but we've just somehow learned to assume that when the reality is that the

more sensitive the test, the more complexities it has, the more chances for

false negatives and false positives, though those are not as frequent I think.

It's pretty much a collaborative trial and error process guided by a good

integrative health practitioner and tests as needed to clarify. Supposedly the

elimination diet is the best at identifying food

intolerances but that can't really be done with a child for obvious

reasons--it's hard top do, and they can't really tell us all their symptoms,

especially our kids with apraxia.

My daughter was apparently only affected in her skin outbreaks (scalp psoriasis

and eczema on hands, legs, thighs, diaper area +yeast as well, and all of this

started when we introduced wheat and dairy when she was weaned at around 1 year)

But at the time I was not aware of her neurological dysfunction and the regular

pediatrician I was seeing was just treating the separate symptoms without any

success. She also had minor SID in her upper lip and a slightly protruding

tongue when in relaxed play or concentrated on something plus slight on and off

toe walking, but again, since her apraxia had not been identified yet, the

pediatrician assured me this was all perfectly normal and the lip/tongue issues

we didn't even pay attention to. And in fact aside from the severe speech

disorder we now know about she is a happy, healthy little girl thankfully--but

the affected neurological profile is there and should be looked at as a whole to

fully understand what her disorder amounts

to and what the possible treatment options are.

So I suspected the gluten intolerance because my husband has issues with his

skin too and scalp and he even has some digestive stuff on and off, but he does

not test positive for the gluten test--just borderline normal and neither did my

daughter. Also his grandmother who was reportedly intolerant to milk in

childhood, outgrew it--so they thought-- and developed schizophrenia in her

thirties after a flu shot that affected her very badly. So all these are

related, some people are just more sensitive to environmental and other toxins

from food. Some doctors were treating schizophrenics with a gluten free diet

back in the 60s some improved some didn't, Big Pharma with the meds won out in

the end and as you know the diet is not that easy to keep if you don't cook from

scratch and eat out, so my guess is a lot of those that did not go into

remission may have been getting some gluten without knowing it in sauces,

vinegar etc. Minute amounts can affect the brain--there's no

fooling it.

Anyway, I took Ziana to an integrative pediatrician wanting to rule out the food

intolerances and get to the bottom of her skin disorders, I didn't even think

too much about the speech being connected at the time. Boy did I have a lot to

learn!!! We did the tests --blood, urine--fecal--and some food intolerances

were clearly present though not the gluten apparently but the casein yes and the

doctor said it is rare for the casein test to be positive without a gluten

intolerance being present as well, plus we had all the other clues. Very often

the gluten is really the main problem and casein gets added on plus soy and corn

often enough since the proteins are similar somehow or just further inflame a

problem area caused by the gluten peptides. So tests are not always conclusive

and must be interpreted by someone who knows and looks at the complete picture.

But they tests did provide clues and all the clues added together showed us she

had some major malabsorbancy issues and also some difficulties with

detoxification. So far for us I would say the B12 has had the greatest effect

and I have yet to try a higher does of vitamin E.

Anyway, I told you all this to show you that the best way to do all this is

under the supervision of an integrative pediatric health care practitioner--not

your run of the mill allergy specialist or gastroenterlogist because they either

just work with allergy shots and I feel most of them are really clueless about

the true implications and complexities of these intolerances and only treat the

symptoms when they are severe enough to meet their prestablished criteria, .

They generally dismiss the idea of a " leaky gut " and the other allergies that

develop, or the neurological symptoms. Anyway most integrative pediatricians

have MDs as well, they are regular doctors with added specialties because they

too feel that drugs and surgery are not the only means to address health. These

integrative/alternative MDs, also known as DAN trained doctors are your best bet

to be sure you're not missing anything, misinterpreting results and effects, or

not staying enough with them when

effects can be slower to show up sometimes. or it could be your child has

different issues, different intolerances and a different set of supplements may

help.

All chronic degenerative illnesses, neurological especially, if there is no

known cause like a bullet through the head or accident or identifiable stroke,

must be carefully investigated from a metabolic perspective. There is increasing

evidence of this, the British Medical Journal of Neurology has an interesting

article urging all neurologists to consider food intolerances, and gluten and

casein in particular whenever there is unexplained pathology. The link

gut/environmental toxins and the brain is much greater than we could have ever

imagined, and even if it is not the initial cause or absolute cure of some of

these disorders, optimizing neurological functioning is the best way to ensure

that speech therapy and all our other efforts will have a maximum effect.

My daughter improved behaviorally right away, and the her skin some and her

speech some and her speech really took off once we started the B12 which she was

clearly deficient in. And BTW, I recently discovered so am I, either a

malabsorbancy of similar nature or some other factor, I'm investigating too. So

maybe it's not just from my husband side of the family, she may have had the

gluten intolerance stacked up against her with both parents have gluten issues.

Alzheimer's also has been linked to gluten peptides and my father has had a

rather early onset around 67 yrs. The point is a lot more people than was ever

suspected should not be eating gluten sugar is another big inflammatory

substance and of course all the other refined starches and processed foods.

So it's very clear that some kids and even adults are more susceptible than

others. Just to give you an idea, after the B12 shots first weeks or so, I

learned I was doing them wrong, too deep and she was peeing it all out too soon,

so the effects were not continuous. When I started doing it more under the

skin, she had a panting like experience, almost as if she had trouble holding

her tongue in her mouth for a few days. I believe she was probably for the first

time just getting some feeling in that area and she kept touching her tongue

like it was something she had never felt before. We were concerned of course

and the doctor told us this is not uncommon, just as going off gluten made her

upper lip sensitivities more intense. Again, she was now feeling things she'd

never felt.

And very often when kids do not show improvement on the diet it really can be

because of co-existing factors like corn, soy and other temporary food

intolerances that occur as a result of the leaky gut and these too must be

addressed. A good probiotic given daily, all foods to which there's a definite

immune response avoided until the leaky gut heals. So you see it's not that

simple and it's easy to overlook things if you're just doing it on your own

without guidance and supervision and tests that can tell you more about what

other issues may be present.

We're just about to test to see if she still has antibodies to the foods she was

eating while on gluten (almonds, eggs, melon, avocado bananas, pineapple,

walnuts etc.) I know she still responds pretty severely with the corn on her

skin, we just tested that recently and she broke out in rashes all over her

body. of course the corn was at preschool, which means not organic = GM since

all corn is now genetically modified if not organic--thanks to Monsanto.

And corn wasn't even a food she showed a strong response to, but wee noticed it

made her really hyper so we avoided it as we did the soy for the same reasons

and my husband has noted a strong reaction to soy in his case. These things

take a lot of investigation and patience. And it's unfortunate that a lot of

the gluten replacement items contain soy and corn--both known to produce

reactions in many gluten intolerant individuals. It's really all trial and

error. And indeed not all autistic or apraxic children may be intolerant to

gluten or respond well to fish oil. But so many of them seem to, and it really

is a metabolic issue in many cases that it is worth trying--the right way, under

the care of a knowledgeable physician as I've said, to be sure nothing is

overlooked or the whole thing aborted prematurely before the effects can be

noted.

Good luck and let me know if you have any questions.

Elena-mom to Ziana -age 3.8 severely apraxic, but progressing wonderfully since

on the right diet/supplements/speech therapy techniques and frequency

<smoore9@...> wrote: Has anyone had food intolerance testing

done? If so, what lab did

you go through? Did you have a doctor involved or did you do it yourself?

I'm not talking about allergy testing. I'm talking about intolerances.

One lab I know about is the York test. http://www.yorktest.com/

Thanks for all the information I get from all of you on this site.

------------------------------------

[Guest guest]

Oops...I meant $150 for the test.

Tina

>

> Has anyone heard of the Carroll Method Food Intolerance Testing? I

> recently heard about it and there is a doctor in Vancouver that does

> it and only charges $100. Here is his site:

>

> http://www.jaredzeff.com/dietary_information.html

>