Food Allergy testing?

Over the years, I have developed food sensitivities. I am a very picky eater so everything I have to take out becomes an issue.

A year ago, I saw an Allergy and Immunology specialist who had done a fellowship with the NIH. He wanted me to do an elimination diet which consisted of chicken, white processed rice and salt. No spices!

I already knew that I was allergic to dairy proteins (not lactose) because after eating ice cream, 2 hours later my body very violently got rid of it. So I started his diet, but only lasted 4 days. I had been feeling better but had no food in the house except eggs. I hardboiled some eggs and ate the whites. I don't particularly like the yolks. But again, my body violently expelled them. The doctor was concerned that many people allergic to eggs have a cross reaction to chicken.

He didn't recommend food allergy testing. I was never able to make the 2 weeks. i lost tons of weight and was starving.

When I talked to my pcp about Lyme, I mentioned the elimination diet and how I can't do it. She said she could get information for the testing if i wanted it. The idea being at least I could find a list of foods that would be most likely be safe.

The websites are meridianvalleylab and pinnertest. Meridian Valley Lab has a blood test and a test that is done using blood drops on a paper card.

I wondered if anyone had tried these and if the results were helpful? Or if anyone had done research on them and gotten any information, good bad or indifferent?

Thanks,
Kim

Sounds just like me. It was so odd. I began having what I thought to be allergies to certain foods. I would eat something and then it would feel like my brain would swell and extreme brain fog would set in. I tested for all types of food allergies all of which came back negative. I finally narrowed it down to food intolerances. It's very hard to explain, but gluten was the culprit. I can't explain how Lyme causes this. I've read a lot of stories of people describing the same thing.
Youtube- Darryl Hall and watch his video on lyme symptoms.
He says one of the first things he noticed were allergic reactions to food

Sounds just like me, too. I got so bad I could not digest solid food. I had extreme violent reactions to ice cream. And eggs usually give me diarrhea. The more eggs, the more extreme the reaction. I spent 2 yrs working with an ND and finally got back on solid foods but I still had a long way to go because she wasn't even considering lyme & co...

And white rice is a definite no-no for most diets—way too high on the glycemic index for very little nutrition. Your MDs "elimination" approach seems quite archaic. Nutritionists now days understand far more about your GI function than any MD.

One very common cause of food reactions, sensitivities, allergies is leaky gut. It's caused by the damage the yeast does to your gut (it grows roots through the mucosal lining, allowing debris, fecal matter and yeast to seep into your bloodstream, which is detected as "foreign" by your immune system—food is not supposed to be in your blood). But this damage can also be caused by gluten and I wonder if the lyme and Bart infections can also cause this kind of damage to your mucosal lining.

The trouble with leaky gut is you become sensitive to just about everything you eat. Gut repair is absolutely critical with mucosal lining damage because you absorb nutrients and medication through the lining and it functions as your immune system—70% of your immune system IS your gut. So, with gut damage, no treatment and no brilliant diet is going to help you. You must repair the damage first.

Regarding the food allergy tests, I've done multiple Meridian Valley tests and one Great Plains Labs test and a US Biotek test. Results were pretty different across the board. My takeaway is that the moral of the story is you gotta go by your sx, as Razzle pointed out. And with foods it can be very difficult to determine what your reactions are due to the process of digestion—some foods will give you immediate reactions, others take days. So the elimination diet is necessary but with leaky gut, you are likely going to react to most foods you ingest. Period.

My suggestion is to pick out one veggie you like and concentrate on chicken for a wk. Nothing else. As Razzle suggested, you need to log your daily intake and what happens after each meal. Switch to a new veggie wk 2 and keep the fish. Then keep the 2nd veggie and rotate in a white fish wk 3, etc.

I'd also seek consult of a ND trained nutritionist—not an MD for support and guidance and possibly more testing if there are other issues involved like hormonal, HPA axis and neurotransmitter imbalances.

Hope this helps

-p

The doctor that put me on the elimination diet was an allergist. He recommended the rice because it was something that he found very few people react to. He didn't mention that chicken might have a cross reaction with eggs until I mentioned that I had a violent reaction to egg whites.

Ice cream makes me throw up exactly 2 hours after I have it and now eggs (whites) do the same. Soy gives me diarrhea.

I have been unable to make any other determinations because the elimination diet he gave me was impossible to stick to. I was starving to death. I planned on sitting down to figure out what I thought I could eat to start from there, but have had little success since life happened and I can't control what I eat and where I eat it.

i definitely have Leaky gut, so I'm probably sensitive to a lot of things but nothing else gives violent reactions.

It was my primary that mentioned the food allergy testing. The idea was it might give a list of foods that are safe for me. When I started looking into it I found that they wanted you to eat as many things as possible over a three week period before having the testing done. Makes sense, but when I look at the list there really aren't a lot of things on the list that I eat. I'm very finicky and knowing I'm sensitive to dairy protein, egg and soy really cuts out a lot of things.

I guess the reason I made the original post was that I'm conflicted about the testing.

I don't keep a food diary because I only eat a limited number of things. I think I was hoping that the testing would tell me about the small list I do eat because if I am reacting to any of those I could remove it.

So I guess the question becomes - have people had there Leaky gut go away with the Lyme treatment.