Tag: food sensitivity testing

Could Your Migraines Be From What You’re Eating?

February 27, 2013

I’m very excited to share a testimonial from my client who ended her lifelong migraines by doing the MRT food sensitivity testing together with LEAP dietary management protocols. She is a smart, successful, 29-year old attorney, but without the MRT test results it would have been almost impossible to deduce that one of her main sensitivities is the additive fructose, as in High Fructose Corn Syrup. Here’s her LEAP story:

I was diagnosed with migraines at the age of 13 and have been suffering with them for over 16 years. It has been a long a tumultuous journey in discovering the root cause of my migraines. I became fed up with the lack of answers from doctors who just wanted to prescribe medication to me rather than discover the cause of the migraines. My journey led me to eliminating many daily activities as well as food. I am a very active and healthy person by nature, but I began suffering from a migraine every other day. Work suffered, social activities suffered, everyday was an anxiety roller coaster riddled with worry of the next migraine. After continuous research, I discovered hypersensitivity testing and the options available to me to finally discover the root cause of my migraines. I found Elizabeth’s website during my research and contacted her immediately. She was extremely prompt and informative and was genuinely interested in helping me with discovering the root of my problems. Needless to say with her help and counseling I was able to discover the root cause and avoid the foods triggering the migraines all together. At the time of this writing I have been migraine free for over a month and my quality of life has drastically improved. Thank you Elizabeth! ~Abby H., New York

It is amazing how many chronic conditions can be helped by switching to a customized anti-inflammatory diet! If there’s inflammation where it shouldn’t be at the root of your distress, then an anti-inflammatory diet will help. Let’s just rattle off a few inflammatory-based issues that are helped by simply changing your diet: irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, Multiple Sclerosis (MS), eczema, rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s Disease, diabetes,… and on and on. So many of our modern health issues can be traced back to unwanted inflammation. I’ve even had success working with a Parkinson’s patient who, after changing his diet, was able to regain motor skills and memory.

Wanna see a few more stories of people who’ve used this scientific protocol to personalize their diets and are now feeling better?

Contact me to schedule a free consultation to see if a customized anti-inflammatory diet would work for you.

LEAP Customized Anti-inflammatory Diet Testimonials

December 14, 2012

If you’re wondering what a customized anti-inflammatory diet can do for you, and you’ve checked out the LEAP blogs I mentioned yesterday, take a look at the testimonials collected by the lab that runs the Mediator Release Test (MRT) on this Facebook Page.

If you’ve been looking for a new path to take to relieve your discomfort and physical distress, a customized anti-inflammatory diet might be your solution. Don’t shoot darts in the dark when changing your diet; use sophisticated, state-of-the-art blood testing to see exactly what causes inflammation in your body to design the right diet for you.

Mom’s AutoImmune Disorder Increases Risk of Autism in Babe

August 28, 2012

While we might suspect vaccinations are contributing to the alarming rise of autism in this country, Moises Velasquez-Manoff, the author of An Epidemic of Absence: A New Way of Understanding Allergies and Autoimmune Diseases, thinks autism might be related to immune responses stretching farther back into the womb. Perhaps even to the mother’s autoimmune disorder.

In a recent New York Times column on autoimmunity and autism, Velasquez-Manoff points out that Danish research studying over 700,000 births shows a mother’s immune dysfunction can raise the child’s risk of autism by 350%.

As a mom with an autoimmune disorder, multiple sclerosis, I am particularly interested in learning about this link. Although my kids have aged beyond the autism zone, both show food and chemical sensitivity reactions (inflammation) and I’m certain there is a connection.

Velasquez-Manoff says: “The theme here is maternal immune dysregulation. Earlier this year, scientists presented direct evidence of this prenatal imbalance. Amniotic fluid collected from Danish newborns who later developed autism looked mildly inflamed.”

It all comes down to inflammation.

It all comes down to inflammation, yet again, but this time it appears to be the mother’s inflammatory response during gestation that influences the amniotic fluid that sensitizes the developing child, who later manifests as autistic. Perhaps autism is what it looks like when unwelcome swelling interferes with brain development.

The Feingold Association has a lot of research showing that autistic kids manifest behavior changes from ingesting chemical additives like the petroleum-based, FDA-approved Food Dyes & Colors (FD&C) in so many of our food (or food-like) products.

My goal, in both my own life and in my clinical practice as a naturopath, always focuses on reducing and eliminating inflammation through customized dietary strategies. Autoimmune disorders, like multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, and rheumatoid arthritis, respond so well to personalized anti-inflammatory menus that I started the Fight MS with Food project to gather data about the efficacy of this approach.

Velasquez-Manoff might advocate intentional parasitic infection as a way to combat hypersensitivity that manifests as autoimmunity, but personally I’d rather change what I’m eating than choose to host a colony of parasitic hitchhikers. My theory reverses his: I think that sometimes parasitic infection can cause the inflammation that leads to autoimmune disorders, not cure them.

What are IgE allergies?

May 2, 2012

As I’ve discussed previously, food allergies are different from food sensitivities. Food allergies occur when exposure to a food causes your body to create IgE antibodies, which then cause an immediate and often severe reaction to occur at the next exposure.

People with food allergies often experience serious, life-threatening symptoms within minutes to an hour of eating the offending food that may include hives, respiratory distress, and even anaphylactic shock leading quickly to death.

The eight most common IgE food allergies according to the Mayo clinic are:

milk
eggs
peanuts
tree nuts (such as almonds, cashew, and walnuts)
fish (such as bass, cod, and flounder)
shellfish (such as crab, lobster, and shrimp)
soy
wheat

Even though IgE testing is the standard food allergy testing procedure, using either a back-scratch test or by examining the blood, it might not tell the whole story. Allergist Dr. Robert Wood, Pediatric Allergist and Professor of Pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, and author of Food Allergies For Dummies, explains that IgE antibodies may or may not be a reliable indicator of a food allergy, and in fact IgE testing is not entirely accurate as sometimes people will react to a substance and not have any IgE antibodies while other times there will be a large number of IgE antibodies but the person is in fact non-symptomatic to that allergen.

Food sensitivities, on the other hand, are dose-dependent and may be delayed by up to four days after ingestion. They do not create IgE antibodies and can cause symptoms ranging from migraine to fibromyalgia to irritable bowels, ADHD, fatigue, mood swings, digestive issues, and even autoimmune diseases. Food sensitivities will not show up in IgE tests because, again, they do not cause the creation of IgE antibodies in the blood.

If the results from IgE testing leave you still experiencing symptoms, consider getting tested for food sensitivities. The Mediator Release Test (MRT) together with interpretation by a Certified LEAP Therapist (CLT) is the gold standard for food sensitivity testing and successful dietary management to eliminate symptoms.

Dr. Lipman’s FAQs on food sensitivities

April 19, 2012

Dr. Frank Lipman, a South African-trained medical doctor who practices a combination of western and holistic medicine at his Eleven-Eleven Wellness Center in New York City, offers some good information about food sensitivities and how to relieve them. In Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop newsletter, Dr. Lipman gives Gwyeneth on breakfast ideas that work around her sensitivities to dairy, gluten, wheat, corn, and oats.

His FAQs on food sensitivities offer a good overview of what food sensitivities are, but I had a little trouble with his advice to follow an elimination diet to identify the culprits. Here was my response:

This is a great post about food sensitivities, but the problem with doing an “elimination diet” is that you can’t be sure that you are not sensitive to whatever you continue to eat. When we eliminated wheat, soy, and dairy from my son’s diet for a year it didn’t make any difference because there were almost 40 other foods he was still eating that were causing him to react.

Now I work with the Mediator Release Test (MRT) which does an amazing job of identifying food sensitivities. Using the scientifically-based results we design a “safe diet” out of the foods with low reactivity rather than an “elimination diet” based on guesswork. The MRT is the next-generation of the ALCAT and includes dietary management protocols to increase the rate of recovery from symptoms. I have found it to be very effective in helping my clients eradicate their symptoms and lead normal lives.

If you suspect you might be suffering from food sensitivities, you’ll want to check here to see if you’re a good candidate for Mediator Release Testing and a LEAP dietary protocol. Like Dr. Lipman, I work hard to create delicious recipes and exciting menus that avoid your personal allergens so that your new way of eating is sustainable and does not make you feel deprived. Simply changing your diet can be life-changing if done correctly.

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