How I found out about my food sensitivities

If you saw my recent social media post, then you know what this blog post is about. I want to thank everyone who reached out to offer encouragement and share advice regarding my newly found food sensitivities! To the numerous people who told me they were going through the same thing, I feel ya.. This is why I am so thankful for social media. It's an outlet where we can come together, build each other up and go through things as a community. I'll briefly explain the journey of how I reached the root of my problem.

For the past several months I’ve been having unexplained allergic reactions on my skin & really just haven’t been feeling completely up to par. After trying every rash cream under the sun, the doctor’s diagnosis was consistently "dermatitis." Dermatitis, "a condition of the skin in which it becomes red, swollen, and sore, sometimes with small blisters, resulting from direct irritation of the skin by an external agent or an allergic reaction to it." ...oh?

I was taking probiotics, vitamins, immune boosting vitamins, you name it. I don't eat much fried food but when I do, it's mostly Chick-Fil-A. Therefore, I consider myself a pretty healthy eater. After weeks of rashes that would come out of nowhere, I began to attempt self-diagnose like 'oh I ate this or I was laying on the picnic blanket in the park...'

After many cases of dermatitis and random self-diagnosis, different signs pointed to an extreme amount of inflammation in my body.

Months before, my chiropractor in Houston told me about an IgG blood test that measures sensitivities to certain foods. Turns out, LV Wellness & Aesthetics, in my hometown offers this test, which is officially named "FoodStats Antibody Assessment." I had the general food panel done for IgA (immunoglobulin A) and IgG (immunoglobulin G), which identifies the level of food-specific-antibodies measured from a blood sample. These IgA and IgG antibodies exist for the purpose of fighting foreign invaders, (i.e. toxins, bacteria, viruses, etc). Basically, this test can be used to determine the level of IgA and IgG antibodies in your blood after consuming certain foods and/or food groups.

When I was consuming the foods my blood test recognized as causing high levels of IgA or IgG, my body was creating antibodies to attack the food as if it were foreign invaders. Therefore, instead of providing my body with fuel, the delicious dairy snacks I love sooo much were actually making my body work harder to attack these foods and thus, also causing extreme inflammation. (See results table below)

Luckily, the test measures delayed response reactions to food sensitivities because reactions can take hours, even days to show up. This makes pinpointing without the test difficult because naturally we don’t correlate our skin rash with the ice cream we ate two days ago.

Here's an example of what some of my results looked like:

O is no reaction, VI is an "extremely high" reaction.

IgA levels are in white, IgG levels in gray.

By eliminating foods that were categorized as very high or extremely high reactions on my FoodStats Antibody Assessment, I'm hoping to become more energized, and strengthen/reduce stress on my immune system!

Stay tuned for an upcoming report on how my first dairy-free, egg-free, whey-free, almond-free grocery haul went.

XXO,

Tierra