Hi Everyone I just updated my website to include a section on food sensitivity testing. Here it is!
As Dr. Otis Carol said “Health must at all times come from and be maintained by digested foods. Naturopathic physicians understand this principle and use it to repair the damage done to organs, tissues and cells which have become depleted of the necessary constructive elements. These necessary elements can come only from digested foods. After a food is digested, it goes through the circulation to every organ, tissue and cell. Remember, this process begins first with the digestion of food, and no drug yet offered can rectify damage done by failure of digestion.”
Proper digestion of foods is the prerequisite to all health. Without good digestion the body cannot obtain the fuel it needs in order to maintain its own biochemical processes and continue it’s functioning. If digestion is poor, toxins can also be created by the bacterial flora of our gut, adding to our already high toxic burden.
One of the great insights in Wholistic Medicine of the 20th century was the concept that certain people could not digest certain foods properly. Furthermore, while some foods were universally poorly tolerated, it was observed that many people were adversely affected by foods which others were perfectly fine with, or maybe even found beneficial.
Finding effective and reproducible means to determine which foods are harmful to an individual is the great puzzle which has emerged from these findings. The gold standard for this has been the Elimination diet. However this diet is quite restrictive and can be challenging to maintain for long enough to fully determine the intolerance. Hence other methods have been developed
Dr. Otis G Carrol devised the first system for clinically determining food intolerances in his Carrol food intolerance test. This test has the longest history of usage, and has amassed a very strong clinical history of usage. Other clinicians have devised blood tests which test the amount of immunoglobulins which react to particular foods. These tests however can be quite costly, and cannot identify reactions to foods that occur without antibodies (and yes these do occur).
After searching through a number of methods of testing foods, I eventually selected the Radial Artery Food Test as the best. It is extremely cost effective, can be preformed in office, generates immediate results, and detects all manner of sensitivities, rather than simply those which generate antibodies. As well it is also billable to insurance, as this is an in office procedure rather than a laboratory explanation.
This test is preformed by exposing the body to a sample of a number of foods. The reaction of the body, in the form of the pulse, is measured during the exposure. It is fast, simple and effective, and I have experienced great success in its use so far.
For more information, or to book in for an appointment, please do Contact us.
Image Credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Food#/media/File:Vegetarian_diet.jpg