Great article here for you from Patrick Holford who, like me, has suffered all his life with conditions he was told had nothing to do with food sensitivity. It’s always good to hear it from someone else, and I do think there is a lot more recognition of the food issue possibility in chronic health conditions nowadays, but I certainly recognise his story of suffering until he realised it was food all along! If only we had known…

I note, too, that he went on to develop more intolerances over the years – and this is the most frustrating part of my own case and indeed my work in this area – hence the Barrier Plan and now the Healing Series detailing my non-ingestive healing approach for those of us who can’t tolerate the standard supplementary or drug treatments to calm our over-egged (pun intended) systems down.

The Allergic Denial

Patrick mentions the importance of looking for IgG antibodies as well as the classic IgE. I was pleased that he notes no test for food sensitivity is perfect – I would definitely agree with that because we simply don’t know all the mechanisms involved yet. By a long chalk. You can read my recommendations for food intolerance testing in the Allergy Test FAQ and the full free Allergy 101 factsheet. Trust me: directing people to that has saved me hours on the phone trying to explain the complexities of testing!

In short IgG is the most common antibody involved so is a great way to start looking for obvious food issues. But, other antibodies including IgA, IgM and IgD can be involved, and other mechanisms don’t involve antibodies at all – hence the ALCAT immune type tests. In general, most people start with IgG and then do an ALCAT as a double-check.

It helps some people enormously because they find their most damaging allergens, but it may not find all of them and that’s where elimination & challenge comes in. Anyway, have a read of those resources – and don’t forget there is a great big section on the Purehealth Clinic site for you too here:

Allergy and Intolerance (there are several pages under the main title in the menu on the left!)

Hope that helps. Happy reading.