have you done ALCAT *and* IgG testing?

[riomidwife]

Curious if anyone has done both tests, and how their results compared?

[kjbrown92]

Nope, only did ALCAT for DS and DD2. I had done intradermal allergy testing before that with both of them. For us, it was accurate, though for DD2 it missed her biggest one: corn, which we already knew about and she'd been off of a year (they say you have to have the food within 6 months for it to be accurate). Haven't done any IgG testing, though maybe someday for me.

[riomidwife]

Thanks Kathy, I hadn't realized that ALCAT required a six month window of exposure. DS is reacting to something again, and I've been wondering about testing....The thought of going through an elimination process again is overwhelming with my newborn, and that we're already off so many things. Sometimes he seems to react to everything and I feel like testing is futile, and other times I wonder if there's not something underlying all his "reacting" that we could simply identify and eliminate via testing. One ND we see is big into IgG testing, of which I remain unconvinced (she she is strongly convinced!) and another ND we see, who is a dear friend, has switched to ALCAT (white blood cell) testing and is also "convinced." It all feels so subjective (and non-reproducible) so I do wonder if anyone has had both tests performed.

[flightgoddess]

I did ALCAT. Reenforced my gluten suspicions ( I had a positive genetic test but inconclusive celiac panel) Also, surprised to be sensative to foods I NEVER ate, still never eat....also sensative to many things I ate. I think the elimination diet was great for healing my leaky gut due to gluten, and I had no issues reintroducing foods back in later (except for gluten of course)

[riomidwife]

It makes me wonder, if 100 people did a food sensitivity test like IgG or ALCAT, would everyone test "positive" for a certain number of foods regardless.....And wouldn't it make sense that they would test positive primarily for foods that were in heavy rotation in their diet? And wouldn't it make sense that switching up the diet might improve any symptoms? Guess I'm a skeptic.

[changingseasons]

Well, DD's ELISA came back positive to a LOT of things that she had never eaten (and quite a few that I had never eaten while pregnant/breastfeeding, so it would have been pretty difficult for her to be sensitized to them already).

BUT- I remember listening to a webinar or lecture where Liz Lipsky (author of Digestive Wellness) was speaking, and she said she stopped using a certain lab because every single person's test came back positive to sesame and banana (or something weird like that.)

I'm also a bit of a skeptic... and we've done an ELISA twice for DD, with different results (but about a year apart, so things could have changed in that time.)

[kjbrown92]

Originally Posted by riomidwife 

It makes me wonder, if 100 people did a food sensitivity test like IgG or ALCAT, would everyone test "positive" for a certain number of foods regardless.....And wouldn't it make sense that they would test positive primarily for foods that were in heavy rotation in their diet? And wouldn't it make sense that switching up the diet might improve any symptoms? Guess I'm a skeptic.

DS had been off of all dairy, soy, and potato for a year and a half before he took the ALCAT. Dairy still came up severe, soy came up mild, and potato came up safe. So none of those were eaten within 6 months of the test, so they weren't supposed to be "accurate" anyway. But he reacted to plenty of things that he'd never eaten before, like okra, as well as things he was eating regularly. I was hoping after 6 months of elimination, I could retest him to find out what I could add back in, without having to go through food trials, but the company said that wasn't a good idea since they wouldn't have been exposed to the foods within the 6 month window. I saw amazing changes after switching the diet, that's true.
 

Originally Posted by changingseasons 

Well, DD's ELISA came back positive to a LOT of things that she had never eaten (and quite a few that I had never eaten while pregnant/breastfeeding, so it would have been pretty difficult for her to be sensitized to them already).

BUT- I remember listening to a webinar or lecture where Liz Lipsky (author of Digestive Wellness) was speaking, and she said she stopped using a certain lab because every single person's test came back positive to sesame and banana (or something weird like that.)

I'm also a bit of a skeptic... and we've done an ELISA twice for DD, with different results (but about a year apart, so things could have changed in that time.)

I had a friend IRL who was getting blood test after blood test for IgE allergies, and she always reacted to whatever she had eaten in the last 24 hours. She wasn't actually reacting to any of it, but on the test she was. So they said the doctor was a quack and stopped going. Her father is anaphylactic to tree nuts, and she had really bad skin and something else, which is why they were testing her. But they decided after that, that she must not have any. Not sure why that would happen though.
 

[DevaMajka]

Originally Posted by riomidwife 

It makes me wonder, if 100 people did a food sensitivity test like IgG or ALCAT, would everyone test "positive" for a certain number of foods regardless.....And wouldn't it make sense that they would test positive primarily for foods that were in heavy rotation in their diet? And wouldn't it make sense that switching up the diet might improve any symptoms? Guess I'm a skeptic.

We only did IgG (for ds2). He had only 3 positives- sweet potato, pinto beans, and kidney beans. Sweet potato we already knew was a trigger. I don't eat pinto beans anyway because they make me gassy so we haven't tested them, and the naturopath said that all her clients show positive to kidney beans. We had eaten every food in the previous month (with the exception of stuff I had no intention of ever eating- like sardines).

[riomidwife]

Originally Posted by kjbrown92 

DS had been off of all dairy, soy, and potato for a year and a half before he took the ALCAT. Dairy still came up severe, soy came up mild, and potato came up safe. So none of those were eaten within 6 months of the test, so they weren't supposed to be "accurate" anyway. But he reacted to plenty of things that he'd never eaten before, like okra, as well as things he was eating regularly. I was hoping after 6 months of elimination, I could retest him to find out what I could add back in, without having to go through food trials, but the company said that wasn't a good idea since they wouldn't have been exposed to the foods within the 6 month window. I saw amazing changes after switching the diet, that's true.
 

Did you ask the company what then they make of the results for the foods he hadn't eaten within six months? By their logic in not retesting after 6 months following the first test, the initial results would not be accurate either, right?

Did you do their rotation diet, or did you eliminate all the offending foods?

Originally Posted by DevaMajka 

We only did IgG (for ds2). He had only 3 positives- sweet potato, pinto beans, and kidney beans. Sweet potato we already knew was a trigger. I don't eat pinto beans anyway because they make me gassy so we haven't tested them, and the naturopath said that all her clients show positive to kidney beans.

See, that's what makes me suspicious. When researching IgG tests I saw something written by faculty at Bastyr, a leading Naturopathic college, detailing the unreliable results of IgG testing based on their comparison of multiple labs. Many of the results were not even reproducible within the same lab! In my use of IgG antibody testing in my midwifery practice, they simply indicate an exposure. So, for example, if a mama was exposed to say parvovirus and she wants to see whether or not she has immunity, we'll draw her IgG and IgM antibodies which tell us whether there has been a prior exposure or active infection, respectively. No one, including any NDs, has been able to explain to me why IgG antibodies against food would be any different.

Originally Posted by changingseasons 

BUT- I remember listening to a webinar or lecture where Liz Lipsky (author of Digestive Wellness) was speaking, and she said she stopped using a certain lab because every single person's test came back positive to sesame and banana (or something weird like that.)

[CrunchyChristianMama]

My DD had a blood test for allergies that came back completely negative for everything. 

We then had the ALCAT done and she had lots of milds and moderates, but sunflower and gluten were severe.  Sure enough, we can see all kinds of differences in her when she has either of them.  Now we know that the gluten is because of celiac, but that's another story.  We didn't remove the milds or moderates for longer than a week or two and didn't do a rotation diet, but we don't see any reactions to them.

[kjbrown92]

Originally Posted by riomidwife 

Originally Posted by kjbrown92 

DS had been off of all dairy, soy, and potato for a year and a half before he took the ALCAT. Dairy still came up severe, soy came up mild, and potato came up safe. So none of those were eaten within 6 months of the test, so they weren't supposed to be "accurate" anyway. But he reacted to plenty of things that he'd never eaten before, like okra, as well as things he was eating regularly. I was hoping after 6 months of elimination, I could retest him to find out what I could add back in, without having to go through food trials, but the company said that wasn't a good idea since they wouldn't have been exposed to the foods within the 6 month window. I saw amazing changes after switching the diet, that's true.
 

Did you ask the company what then they make of the results for the foods he hadn't eaten within six months? By their logic in not retesting after 6 months following the first test, the initial results would not be accurate either, right?

Did you do their rotation diet, or did you eliminate all the offending foods?
 

I did not ask about the things he hadn't eaten within 6 months. I took out all the red (severe), orange (moderate), yellow (mild) foods for 6 months and followed the rotation. After 6 months, I started adding back in the milds, stayed on the rotation. We stayed on the rotation for about 2 years. We've now added back a lot of the yellows, and some of the oranges as well. DD2 has added more back in than DS has, but I think it's because he is older and so he'd been eating the offending items for longer, so he had more damage (at least that's my theory). Anything that has been added during the last year stays on the rotation though (even if green things are no longer rotated, because I don't want to lose them again, and portions are controlled on those items).