Centuries ago, Lucretius said that “one man’s food may be another man’s poison”. Such is the case with food allergies. Individuals with food allergies and other types of food sensitivities react adversely to the ingestion of foods and food ingredients that most people can eat with no problems.
For such people, the joy of eating is often diminished by the ever-present concern that they might consume something that will elicit and adverse reaction. For them, food selection can become a tedious task requiring the painstaking reading of ingredient lists on the labels of packaged foods and a ceaseless search for more knowledge about food consumption. Eating out often becomes more hassle than it’s worth and over time, the enjoyment of food becomes a chore that drains the body and the spirit.
The First Step to Enjoying Food: Knowledge
In order to figure out how we can tackle various food reactions, we need to know what those reactions are. While there are no reliable testing techniques to identify most food intolerances (non-immune reactions to foods) there are several reliable methods to determine IgE reactions to foods (true food allergies) as well as food hypersensitivities.
Most allergists can run RAST or skin-prick tests to find IgE allergies. The most accurate test we have found for determining food hypersensitivity reactions is the Lymphocyte Response Assay from Elisa/Act Biotechnologies. This test provides the most clinically useful data of any test that we have found, with a high degree of sensitivity (which means few false negatives) and a very low degree of false positives. This allows us the best data from which we can structure dietary programs.
The Second Step to Enjoying Food: Wisdom
Armed with concrete, objective information from the tests above, we can help people design dietary programs that fit what they can eat. We can then help them figure out how to make that happen in the easiest way possible. We have helped well over 1000 people incorporate all manners of dietary restriction into their daily lives and we can help you as well.
Sure, you may not be able to eat all the foods you love, but you will be able to eat many of them. They may need to be prepared a little differently, or adapted to fit your specific food reactions, but we can help you do that.
Get Started
To get started, please contact us. Eating is supposed to be an enjoyable, enriching experience. Food allergies don’t need to change that. Let us help you enjoy eating again!
