Food Sensitivity Testing: When and Why

Outside of potentially identifying a cause to those troublesome symptoms indicative of underlying dysfunction, the importance of accurate food sensitivity testing when it comes to preventing potential or slowing existing autoimmunity can not be overstated or taken lightly.

We’ve touched on the increasing prevalence of this epidemic before, but the emphasis when it comes to identifying a food sensitivity, and how that provides you with an opportunity to alter your life is nothing short of empowering. The markers measured in a food sensitivity panel indicate an immune response. It tells us that the food consumed provokes elevated immune reactivity. Many times we are prompted to search this out due to finding no other explanation for our symptoms.

However, just because the presence of outward symptoms is not noticeable or detected, does not mean an immune reaction is not taking place. If allowed to continue, this can contribute to, if not outright cause the first phase of autoimmunity; the silent phase.

This is when antibodies to our own tissue are elevated (measurable), but symptoms and tissue destruction are not. One reason the immune system can be over stimulated to the point where it ends up self attacking, is the constant immune reactivity caused by exposure after exposure to a food we are sensitive to. This makes identifying and eliminating any of these personally provoking foods a powerful tool in preventing progression of autoimmunity.

As with most pathology, we don’t look at autoimmunity as being due to one cause. Sure, there may be that straw that breaks the camel’s back, but the fact that the straw was able to break that back is reflexive of a lack of self tolerance and resiliency due to a confluence of factors, with constant stimulation of the immune system by food sensitivities or allergies landing at the top of the list.

The good thing about this is that it is testable and obviously malleable as we possess ample control over what we do or don’t voluntarily put in our mouths. We don’t have to look at autoimmunity as the helpless results of genetics, and unmodifiable circumstance. You can proactively identify and eliminate a trigger and thus change your circumstance, altering the way your genes are expressed (epigenetics), and change the rest of your life in the process.