Food allergy tests: what’s your poison?

I really recommend everyone get these tests, in order to inform and empower yourself about what foods you are sensitive to. I work in an office with 20 women, and quite a few are faddy eaters: vegetarian, vegan, gluten, egg and lactose avoiders. They do this because they’ve heard it’s ‘bad’ for you, and somewhere along the line decided they are ‘intolerant’ themselves. As far as I can tell – not one of them knows for certain they are intolerant of anything!

I know vegetarianism is a moral choice and that’s fine – but to fill up the fridge with lacto-free, coconut and soya milk and nibble rice cakes – for why? Some of them impose this regime on their kids too. What if you’re a vegetarian and intolerant of soya? It might explain all the strange illnesses they’ve been trying to cure by avoiding certain food.

I’m at risk of becoming a gluten-free bore myself – but at least I have good scientific evidence now. Time for me to spread the word on testing!

Cindy: Think you may have answered that question with your scepticism of the source

http://www.healthiertalk.com/sorry-vegetarians-4182

“It’s plant protein, not animal protein that leeches calcium from your bones and causes lower bone mineral density.

A study focused on 572 women and 388 men from 55–92 years old living in Rancho Bernardo, California. Sorry to vegetarians who think they are eating healthy but facts are facts. For every 15-gram per day increase in animal protein intake, overall bone mineral density increased, especially in the hip, neck and spine.

Yet the opposite happened with vegetable proteins. The more vegetable protein, the lower the bone mineral density.(3) The study also showed that high calcium intake did not seem to protect those who ate a lot of plant protein. The women who took in the most calcium lost bone mineral density.

The simple fact is that your body can’t build bones from plants because they contain incomplete proteins.”

And…

http://www.powerofmeat.com/Study_Red_Meat_Okay.htm

“Contrary to the popular belief that protein is harmful to bone density, Roughhead says, the opposite may be true, that protein and calcium may be synergistic. She speculates that the correlation between protein and calcium loss came from early work, using purified protein. Meat protein, on the other hand, contains substantial amounts of potassium and phosphorus, which reduce urinary calcium loss. In addition, protein is one of the building blocks of bone, so it stands to reason that it’s essential, says Roughhead.”

Finally, possibly my favourite study ever done…in 1930, two men volunteered to live ONLY on meat for an entire year:

http://talktomejohnnie.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/651.full_.pdf

“At the end of the year, the subjects were mentally alert, physically active, and showed no specific physical changes in an system of the body…Vitamin deficiencies did not appear”

Brilliant! (Of course the fact that it was only a sample of 2 and also sponsored by the Institute of American Meat Packers has to be considered!)

I never comment on the website, but this has me so wound-up, I just can’t help myself. As a life-long Atopic guy, who has during some some seasons runs IgE levels so high that they are usually only found in individuals suffering from parasitic infections, I have read extensively on this topic and had numerous and lengthy conversations with allergy and immunology specialist in the UK and US.

Please don’t waste your money on mail-in tests. This is pseudo-science at it’s worst. The only way to know for sure if you have an allergy is to do an experiment. A skin-prick test is the most accurate experiment, where you are injected with a small amount of the suspected allergen just under your skin, you wait, you see if and/or how severe your symptoms are, etc. Every experiment needs a control. In this case, when you are tested, you will be injected with saline solution (to benchmark the negative response), and histamine (to benchmark the positive response). The problem with at home/mail in tests are that there are no proper controls, and the test is done OUTSIDE your body. Not all allergies are IgE mediated, and even the best IgE RAST test, performed in a laboratory, frequently give false positives for particular allergens. If you really want to be scientifically tested for a particular allergen, you need to have skin-prick test, and it needs to be done in hospital because if you’re right that you are allergic, your allergic reaction may be bad enough to KILL YOU without an immediate injection of epinephrine. If you decide to be skin tested, you will be asked to stay off antihistamines, prednisone and a ton of other meds for at least a week before testing. Do the mail in kits instruct you to do the same?

Common sense is probably the best approach when dealing with non-life threatening allergies. If you are allergic to tree pollen, avoid exposure to tree pollen by exercising indoors, or by wearing a mask. Check the pollen count on the weather: I find that when tree pollen concentrations are high and my hay fever symptoms are bad, I need to avoid eating tree fruits like apples and cherries because they cause my lips, mouth and throat to itch. Eggs, fish, shellfish, peanuts, milk, soy, wheat and tree nuts are the most common food allergens. If you think that something makes you feel sh**y don’t eat it for a month (one thing at a time, please!) and see if you feel better. If you feel better not eating something, it may be for any number of reasons, but you don’t need to spend £200 to figure out it’s not for you.