Food Sensitivity / Food Allergy Testing
A food sensitivity or a food intolerance is caused by an inability to digest a food and occurs in the digestive tract and not the bloodstream, like a food allergy. Symptoms are “delayed onset”, where symptoms do not appear for hours or even days. Food sensitivities are not fixed, and can come and go during the course of one’s life.
Strangely, people often crave foods to which they are sensitive to. Some researchers suggest that our bodies can become addicted to the chemical messengers.
Messengers such as histamine or cortisol, which are secreted by immune cells in response to allergens in the body. The body may experience a soothing response from the presence of the chemical messengers, increasing the desire to eat more of that food.
Note that food sensitivities and allergies can change every year. Just because you’re diagnosed with a food sensitivity or allergy one year does not mean it will hold true for the rest of your life. This is why we encourage people to get tested at least once a year.
Food Sensitivity VS Food Allergy
Food Allergy:
A food allergy is an exaggerated immune response triggered by eggs, peanuts, milk, or some other specific food. A true food allergy triggers the IgE portion of the immune system. This is the IMMEDIATE reaction. A patient might eat strawberries and get an immediate rash on their face. The reaction is so fast that testing is unnecessary because it's easy to determine the "culprit."
Food Sensitivity / Intolerance:
Food intolerance or non-allergic food hypersensitivity is a term used widely for varied physiological responses associated with a particular food or compound found in a range of foods. This is the IgG portion of the immune system. It’s important to recognize the difference.
We are testing for the DELAYED sensitivity response…not the immediate response. We’re testing the 10-12 hour...sometimes up to 72-hour immune response that clients cannot figure out on their own! The time frame is simply too much to do any sort of elimination diet, which is why it's important to test objectively.
Here is a sample report. We test roughly 100 foods to determine exactly how you react!
Nutrient Deficiency Testing
While maintaining a balanced diet and taking multivitamins are great ways to be healthier, they’re not enough to achieve OPTIMAL nutritional balance. You are NOT what you eat, you are what you ABSORB and we're finding more and more people with GI challenges (IBS, leaky gut, Crohn's, gluten intolerance etc.) that aren't absorbing the key nutrients needed for optimal health.
With our nutrient deficiency test, we can accurately and OBJECTIVELY assess what YOUR body needs, and what your diet is failing to provide. Everybody has different nutritional needs and we encourage clients NOT to guess about their health.
Deficiency testing identifies these "shortages" so we can work to compensate for them, either by making changes in your diet or by taking nutritional supplements.
By testing for nutrient deficiencies we can help you design a personalized plan for maintaining your overall health and increasing your level of wellness or finding an underlying ROOT CAUSE that's causing a health challenge.
Our nutrient deficiency testing looks at 34 different vitamins & nutrients.
Do You Have Cravings?
Cravings generally point to a nutrient deficiency! For example, if you crave SWEETS! This is typically a B-Vitamin deficiency. If you crave SALT...Zinc. If you crave CHOCOLATE...Magnesium!
However, cravings also happen during dips in your blood sugar!
Remember, the Standard American Diet (SAD) is very processed, inflammatory, & toxic! Too much sugar and too many things to turn into sugar!
When you consume that sub sandwich for lunch...or pasta etc...this spikes your blood sugar, followed by the crash! It's during the crash when you crave more carbs/sweets / SOMETHING to get you through the day!
Sound familiar?
But what happens to the excess carbs? Well, if you're not strenuously exercising daily to burn it off...it GETS STORED AS FAT!!
Where?
Tummy, hips, thighs, triceps, & face!
This is where your body abnormally stores fat!
So we need to shift you OUT of the standard way of doing things.
