Have you ever wondered what blood food allergy tests actually mean?
When you order an IGE or IGA test, to test your blood for food allergies – what exactly is being tested, what do the results mean, and how reliable are they?
This is NOT a cheap test to have done (around $250-$300), so if you’re thinking about ordering it, or if you’ve already had it done, I encourage you to listen to my teleseminar with Dr. Wendy Ellis where we discuss all the aspects of food allergies and testing:
- Why are some foods that cause undesirable gut reactions showing up as OKAY on my blood allergy test?
- My blood allergy test shows a strong reaction to a food that causes me no discernible adverse reactions – how can this be and what does it mean?
- Do homeopathic and allergy desensitization treatments like NAET actually work?
- How do emotions and stress affect food allergies?
- Is there any difference in allergic reactions between pasture-raised and factory-farmed foods?
- And so much more!
I’m even going to show you the results of my own IGG4 and IGE test, so you can follow along and see exactly what we’re talking about.
DOWNLOAD Jini’s Food Allergy Blood Test Results (so you can follow along)
Now click the PLAY button below to listen in…
*Note: The typed Transcript of this teleseminar is available here.
Now that you’ve educated yourself on a doctor’s position/experience with blood allergy tests – are you left with even more questions? Did certain things just not ring true for you? Are you wondering if there’s more to this story than docs realize?
I sure did!
So I organized another call with 2 other experts with lots of experience – one sees patients, tests for allergies and guides them in dietary modifications and the other is a PhD in Immunology and Experimental Medicine. I thought, ‘Let’s bring both sides of this investigation together and throw all our questions and observations on the table and see if we can’t come up with some meaningful guidelines in this arena!’
Come join us for this Food Allergy Roundtable discussion!
Hello Jini Associate,
Please tell Jini that I (as a listener and Jini follower) thoroughly enjoyed this interview. Jinis line of questioning was totally spot on. Every question was exactly the kind of question I would have for this kind of Allergy tester practitioner. I, myself, as a child, had an extensive environmental and food allergy panel testing done. My twin sister and I both had allergy testing done. We had numerous food and environmental allergies and had to be on restrictive diets as children and our mother had to remove our rugs from our bedrooms and the rooms had to be dusted often (because of allergies to dust), etc. I have probably erroneously thought that we had outgrown our food and environmental allergies as we grew older, but perhaps (now after this discussion), they have NOT really been eliminated. My twin suffers from extreme GERD symptoms and colitis (IBS) secondarily. I suffer from IBS/Colitis primarily and GERD very rarely. I suffer from gastritis more frequently now, however, which makes me want to hide from all humanity. This is a private hell that I would very much like to eradicate from my life. Ugghhhhh!
Having wondered if I should as an older adult (59 now) spend the money to get allergy tests done once again, I was intensely interested in exploring this matter.
And healing the gut IS a very complex matter. Its not just allergies. Its not just ones emotional make up. Its not just a need for digestive enzymes and probiotics. Its not just an intestinal infection. Its not just Candida. It can be all of this or some of thator a matter of what your mothers health state was when she carried you in her womb.
My twin sister and I, for example: Were born in the 7.5 month, had a mother who smoked prior to conceiving us, smoked for the first two – months of pregnancy before extreme nausea encouraged her to stop smoking for the duration of the pregnancy, then resumed after we were born. We grew up with many emotional stressors, numerous food and environmental allergies. We grew up getting antibiotics like it was candy and continued to get treated with antibiotics through till I was in my early forties). Ive had IBS since I was sixteen years old (off and onmostly on).
Add to all of this, that we ALL live in a world where our food supply is being progressively and systematically poisoned through GMO, pesticide/ herbicide, fungicide chemicals and its any wonder that any of us have healthy guts anymore even if we did have healthy guts earlier on in our lives. And the matter of healing our guts IS highly complex. Any one of us who suffers from digestive complaints (as I do), can have candida, bacterial imbalances, gut permeability (leaky gut syndrome), food allergies or food sensitivities, chemical sensitivities some or all of these factors competing or co-existing together to cause us to be just miserable.
But please tell Jini that I do appreciate reading or hearing these kinds of discussions even if they pose more questions and further research rather than definitive answers.
Thank you.
Kind regards,
Sheryl Sankey
Jini, I was interested in listening to this teleseminar because we use a lot of it at our office (my pediatrician husband Roy and I probably interpret a handful a week) and so I just wanted to geek-out with you for a minute about what I’ve seen over 10-15 yrs.
I personally have not seen a big clinical improvement with my clients when removing IgG foods in IBD symptoms. The ONLY time I do is when a client is eating gluten and dairy and this test gets them off of it. But for a client already off at least gluten, I have personally found that avoiding their IgG foods (and I say avoid for 3 months to my clients!) results are slight, if any. And you know IBD clients — most are super perfectionist and avoiding 100%! However, Roy uses this with kids and generally they come back reacting to less foods and he believes he has seen significant clinical improvement.
So, for me I have pursued Cyrex (as Wendy mentioned) as well as MRT (Alcat) testing. I have done all of these on myself if you want to look at them. They all say different things (and some on my Cyrex said equivocal — not pos/not neg!) and so its fairly confusing and not super helpful, again, in my opinion.
My thyroid doc in AZ highly encouraged me to do another IgG, so I just did one as well. It looks remarkably similar to yours and I am also about 2-3 weeks into no eggs, almonds, etc. I keep joking with Roy that instead of my super clean nut bars I used to carry around, the ONLY bar I found that accommodates my new allergies is a coconut bar dipped in chocolate. So… chocolate at 11am is better than almonds and cashews?! As a Holistic Health Counselor I already spend my life in the kitchen — I just need an easy store-bought bar for my purse from time to time!
A few more things you may be interested in: I know of at least 2-3 docs who have done split samples to look at how reliable IgG markers are. Some have drawn their own blood, and given it to the same lab under 2 different people/names to see what result consistency would be like.
Some have given the blood from the same draw to two different labs to see how similar the results would be (two labs utilizing IgG of course).
One doc we know found it so inconsistent that he lost faith in IgG. Another (my thyroid doc) said he prefers to use only a specific lab because he got the same results after submitting under 2 different names (he uses US Biotech).
We also see green beans and kidney come up all the time! Even in kids who have never eaten one yet in their life. We ignore. Wendy may have given us a feasible explanation for this….
Lastly, you can get cheaper testing then $250-300 for sure. IgG 95 $149 at US Biotech — and has a 16 vegetarian food sample to add on if you wish (I did this because of cashews, brown rice, etc that I was curious about) for maybe $50ish more. We also use Genova and they do full IgG, IgE, inhalants, etc for $199 TOTAL for people with most health insurances (its called Pay Assure or Easy Pay).
Just thought you might like to know some of this from Roy’s and my clinical experience.
oh my gosh Debbie!! I am SO interested to read what you’ve written! This is fantastic… but unfortunately just leaves me with more questions! Hmmmm… perhaps another teleseminar is in order soon…
Sheryl, thanks so much for posting your thoughts and experience. I hope you’ve also read Debbie’s comment just below yours as she sheds yet more light on this VERY complicated topic.
I also have another friend who has a PhD in Immunology and she has been deep into the research and hard data on all this testing – along with a much greater understanding of how all these factors work together (as you pointed out).
I am currently trying to arrange a “PART 2” teleseminar about this topic with both Debbie and my scientist friend Shirin and hopefully we can hash this out into some take-away practical applications!
So hang in there and if you have any other questions, or suggestions for discussion, please post them here.
I am so looking forward to this Part II when you are able to get to doing it, dear Jini. Also, as you talk to those “in the know,” can you investigate how being exposed to a parent or two who smoked can or cannot complicate the emergence of IBS/IBD. Also, my mother HAD Cron’s disease and then developed ovarian cancer…but the death certificate said that the doctors weren’t sure if the origin of her cancer was in her bowel or in her ovaries. I’ve already gotten from reading your information that if you weren’t breast fed as a baby (my twin and I weren’t…plus we were born prematurely), that we come into this world without the proper digestive flora we need to properly thrive. Then many of us out here have been ridiculously overdosed with antibiotics throughout our childhoods and early adult lives and this has damaged our intestinal well being as well.
Added to the idea of being children of one or two parents that smoked in the home, being exposed to pesticide spraying on our lawns and breathing that in as the wind blew (parents didn’t know any better…they just wanted daisy free lawns), taking in all of those antibiotics, plus a life time of poor eating and drinking habits…is it any wonder why many of us are developing leaky gut syndrome, poor immune responsiveness, and a slow and insiduous downward spiral in our health and overall well being? Now my twin suffers terribly from GERD more than IBS, although she suffers from IBS as well…and she is taking meds to help her with this problem (which I am so against…I’m more aligned with natural holistic approach to healing…she’s conventional in her approach).
Suffice it to say, I think that this topic is an important one and one that many of your followers (not just my sister and I) will be interested in hearing this discussion.
Thank you so much.
Kind regards,
Sheryl
Hello I have a digest problem with my stomach I can’t gain weight I was 168 pounds now I’m down to 116 pounds my doc won’t help me plse need help can’t get my doc to listen to plse thanks
Hello trishanfranksrswitzer,
If you do not have a specific diagnosed condition and simply want to find a way to gain back healthy weight without aggravating your digestive problem, you might want to look into an elemental diet. Here are some links with more information:
https://blog.listentoyourgut.com/how-to-gain-weight-using-absorb-plus/
https://blog.listentoyourgut.com/easily-tolerated-weight-gain-shakes/
https://blog.listentoyourgut.com/healthy-weight-gain/
We also carry a product called Absorb Plus which many people with digestive issues have used to maintain or gain healthy weight. It was formulated to be very easy on the digestive tract so it is also an option if you are finding it difficult to digest regular food. For more information about Absorb Plus, check out the link below:
https://blog.listentoyourgut.com/healthy-weight-gain/
Another resource which might be of interest is Jini’s Listen to Your Gut book in which she talks about how she healed her Crohn’s disease using natural methods. Check out this link for more info:
http://www.listentoyourgut.com/why-ltyg.html
Kind regards,
Justin
Customer Care
Hi Sheryl – we did it! Come listen in and hope this is as helpful to you as it was to me:
https://blog.listentoyourgut.com/food-allergy-testing-exposed/