The term FOOD ALLERGY is used to describe those cases in which the food reaction occurs almost immediately, usually within an hour. The reaction is obvious and quite often violent, for example developing a swollen lip or tongue after eating peanuts or becoming violently sick after eating shellfish. Such foods can never be eaten again. True food allergies are quite rare and affect only a small percentage of the population and most often develop around childhood.
The term FOOD INTOLERANCE, on the other hand, affects a great number of people and can develop ay any time of life.
The symptoms of food intolerance rarely occur immediately after the food is eaten. In fact, the reaction is usually delayed by many hours or even many days. For example, the cheese eaten on Monday could be the cause of Wednesday’s Asthma attack. It is these delayed reactions which make the detection of the culprit foods a very difficult task without the help of expert laboratory testing.
Food intolerance is primarily caused by a spasm of the stomach and intestines. The digestive system is unable to digest food when it is caught in such a spasm. It is like a clenched fist which is unable to relax. This results in undigested foods arriving in the intestines. It is these undigested foods which ultimately become the intolerance foods.
These undigested foods begin to interact with the normal intestinal bacteria and the end result is the production of many harmful toxins. These toxins eventually begin to seep into the blood stream and are carried throughout the body. These foreign invaders are challenged by the immune system and eliminated.
If we carry on eating our intolerance foods the immune system is challenged continuously, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week and eventually becomes fractious and irritable and this causes it to over-react. This results in the immune system being activated by innocuous triggers such as house dust, pollen, paint fumes, etc.
If this chronic irritation of the immune system is allowed to continue it eventually begins to attack its own tissues leading to arthritis, sinusitis, irritable bowel and all other such auto immune diseases.
The objective of the food intolerance test is to find the foods which are causing this toxic state.
The big advantage with the new IgG food intolerance test is that it is able to pinpoint those one or two primary culprit foods. This simplifies the whole approach to treating food intolerance associated illness. Compared to older less sophisticated tests which often recommend long lists of food to be avoided, this new test limits the number of foods which a person has to avoid but still provides all of the benefits.
The laboratory analysis uses specially designed test plates which have small wells on the surface. Foods considered most likely to cause a food intolerance response are cultured in these wells, and the patient’s blood is spread across the plate. If the blood contains antibodies which are antagonistic to a particular food, they will attach themselves to the inside of that well. A special coloured dye is then added which binds with the attached test antibodies on the plate. The deeper the resulting colour, the greater the amount of food-specific antibody present in any particular test plate well. By using sophisticated instrumentation which can interpret the depth of colour, it is possible to measure the precise antibody level.
The test is a simple pin prick to the finger and a sample of this blood taken and sent to the lab for analysis.
93 food test £210
200 Food test £295
Susan Evans is happy to take your blood test. The test is a simple finger prick test and the results are available in 2 weeks.