Food Sensitivity Testing - The Dirty Secrets
Food sensitivity testing has become quite the thing lately with all sorts of companies marketing tests on what to eat and not to eat. Most of these tests are pretty cheap and usually use IgG and IgA markers to determine immune response.
If you speak with a bunch of different functional, integrative, or naturopathic practitioners, each has their own favorite test, beyond the recent marketing hyped tests it seems (Cyrex, MRT, ELIZA, etc). Some of them get quite price $500-$1,000 with comprehensive panels.
My own healing path of course involved gut issues: SIBO, Candida, parasites, pathogenic bacteria like klebsiella pneumoniae, and pseudomonas aeruginosa (which have been linked to Parkinson's and Alzheimer's). And food sensitivities joined the party too. A decade ago i cut out gluten and dairy with very positive results. However when i got really sick , my diet shrank dramatically. Sulfur sensitivity popped up too. Between sulfur, oxalates, histamine, and glutamate sensitivity, i was down to a pretty narrow list for a while. Like many, i was just begging for answers, what can i eat, it was all so confusing. My own experience taught me great empathy and care for folks that come see me who are now in this boat. Food is one of the great pleasure producers in life, and when you are sick, it stinks if this is taken away too.
For food sensitivity testing there are basically two sides to the equation. On one side is our bodies immune reaction to the food, and is measure by a variety of means (e.g. IgA, IgG, size of white cells, etc) - most of the marketing that goes on centers on this. Each company claims they measure the immune response more accurately, more appropriately, more complete, etc, etc. However, no company really speaks much about the other side of the equation - how do you take samples of the food protein to be tested. Almost every company takes the protein, and uses a water soluble assay, and guess what, half of the peptides in the protein are water soluble and half are not! I have always had major side effects from gluten, and peanuts, yet no standard test ever picked it up.
The new Vibrant Food Zoomer panels do just this (they test all the water soluble and water insoluble peptides with their assay techniques) - its been a godsend for my clients stuck with food issues, and sure enough they showed my gluten and peanut issues clear as day. Hopefully the rest of the industry follows suit - but sometimes these things are slow to change. Right now Vibrant offers the following Food Zoomer Tests: Dairy, Egg, Lectins, Grains, Peanuts, Nuts, Seafood, Soy, Mammalian Milk, and Corn. Hopefully they will add some more in the future.