EveryWell Food Sensitivity test

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apod
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Re: EveryWell Food Sensitivity test

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TheresaB wrote:So he's not a fan of IgE tests, but is with IgG. Do you remember where you read most medical practitioners prefer IgG?
Super interesting. Actually, I'd heard the opposite -- but take Dr. G's wisdom over random web chatter (E.g.

Maybe IgA is the ideal option. For the money / ease of at-home kit testing, the comprehensive IgG doesn't look too bad.
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Re: EveryWell Food Sensitivity test

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apod wrote:Maybe IgA is the ideal option. For the money / ease of at-home kit testing, the comprehensive IgG doesn't look too bad.
I've used the Coca Pulse test, and it picked up most of the items on my recent Vibrant Zoomer test, that I eat and that were on the test. Basically test pulse before meal (I found a 60 second manual pulse worked better than instantaneous from a device). Then 30/60/90 min after. If pulse is >6BPM more, then sensitive. I found foods that were not subtle: 15-25 BPM elevations is some cases. If I eat to not spike my pulse well, then my sleep works much better. More effort than a blood test, but basically free.

Initially, I had an overnight pulse rate of 63 BPM, a couple months later, after taking out some big offending foods, my overnight pulse average was 45 BPM without changing exercise. Oura ring said much more deep sleep, too.
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apod
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Re: EveryWell Food Sensitivity test

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Tincup wrote:
apod wrote:Maybe IgA is the ideal option. For the money / ease of at-home kit testing, the comprehensive IgG doesn't look too bad.
I've used the Coca Pulse test, and it picked up most of the items on my recent Vibrant Zoomer test, that I eat and that were on the test. Basically test pulse before meal (I found a 60 second manual pulse worked better than instantaneous from a device). Then 30/60/90 min after. If pulse is >6BPM more, then sensitive. I found foods that were not subtle: 15-25 BPM elevations is some cases. If I eat to not spike my pulse well, then my sleep works much better. More effort than a blood test, but basically free.

Initially, I had an overnight pulse rate of 63 BPM, a couple months later, after taking out some big offending foods, my overnight pulse average was 45 BPM without changing exercise. Oura ring said much more deep sleep, too.
For kicks, I picked up the comprehensive IgG test along with the Viome Health Intelligence -- I'm not totally sold on the clinical accuracy of either (sort of like the sleep tracking accuracy of my Oura ring or the glucose reading accuracy of the Freestyle Libre), but will jump on board as an early adopter hungry for trendline data points. Will share what turns up.

I'll have to experiment with the postprandial HR, I would tend to think there's a strong correlation with meal size, but perhaps given a fixed meal volume, relative comparisons can be made.
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Re: EveryWell Food Sensitivity test

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I received my Everlywell results today (Viome expects the process to take another 3wks for processing.)

Interesting to see what popped up in this IgG report. Across the board, everything was very low, including items like gluten / grains, legumes.
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There were a few items I thought could be higher than non-reactive, like cacao / coffee or nightshades, but didn't see that reflected in the numbers. I did show a moderate reactivity to brazil nuts (68), oddly enough. And a mild reactivity to almond (18), casein (24), cow's milk (39), goat milk (21), yogurt (50), marjoram (18), and white mushrooms (19). Thinking about the dairy items, I have supplemented whey / colostrum protein (several months prior to the test), but now realize these are basically dairy IgG supplements, so I likely botched those results. While dairy was raised across the board for me, kefir was the exception to the list.

This looks like good news, with the suggestion here to take it easy on the almonds, brazil nuts, and dairy, and maybe ease up on the legume / grain / nightshade avoidance (when not aiming for nutritional ketosis.)

It'll now be interesting to see how the Viome recommendations line-up with these.
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Re: EveryWell Food Sensitivity test

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I've been looking into the various food sensitivity tests as well. I see a conventional allergist/immunologist in March who knows about MCAS and I think might also be open to trying 'cutting edge' (her words) options. I'm doing a lot of prep work so I can try to ask the best questions.

Anyway, one thing I found was the Food Allergy Research & Education website. They are a food allergy patient [ie, not food intolerance] advocacy group that seems to adhere to conventional medicine while also maintaining a focus on advances in diagnostics. They seem very aware of the disadvantages of traditional skin prick testing but not yet ready to embrace all the newfangled tests on the market. Their opinion is that a food challenge test is the best, although if one has any risk of anaphylaxis, they need to be careful.

Their website includes a page headed Unproven Diagnostic Tests. For IgG they say:
The creation of IgG antibodies is thought to be a normal response to eating food. For example, IgG antibodies actually go up during successful research studies on food immunotherapy.
I can't comment on that.

As for the pulse test, they say:
The increase in pulse rate is most likely a because of the person’s anxiety about the test.
While that could play a role, some people will be more able to approach it from a zen beginner's mind and be less affected by anxiety about the test. I'm not too impressed with their flippant explanation; at the same time, I think psychology is an underappreciated and underarticulated (is that a word?) variable in functional medicine circles.

Other tests are mentioned.

My default these days is to start with conventional arguements and then try to see what level of science currently backs non-conventional approaches, because I'm leery and weary of the explosion of expensive tests on the market, each one 'necessary' (by implication) for one thing or another [insert: why you should be afraid of not using this test]. I made these brief notes to myself just to help me keep track and begin to understand the differences:
Skin Prick Testing (SPT) — intradermal IgE ('About 50-60 percent of all SPTs yield "false positive" results' FARE)

Companies I've checked that are selling tests using methods that are 'unproven' according to FARE [I don't know who's right]:

Great Plains LaboratoryIgG*
Cyrex food panel — proteins and peptides, IgG* and IgA** (Dr. Aristo Vojdani)
Everlywell food sensitivity test - IgG*
Vibrant Wellness food Zoomers — peptides, 'options to measure an individual’s IgG*, IgA**, IgG subclass 4*, and C3d reactivity to food antigens.'

* 'IgG antibodies are found in both allergic and non-allergic people. IgG are the normal antibodies made by the body to fight off infections. The creation of IgG antibodies is thought to be a normal response to eating food'. [FARE]

** 'Being able to test IgA antibodies provides additional information to foods that may be causing mucosal damage.' [Vibrant Wellness]
So IgG appears to be all the rage. I haven't drawn any conclusions. I'd probably need a PhD or two or three to have any confidence in them if I did. Meanwhile I like to keep learning from all corners, so I hope others will keep posting what they learn and what their own experience is using a particular test.

One thing I would like to see are data showing that the same individuals, taking any one of these tests, say, seven days in a row, gets the same results every time. I'm also struggling with the notion that some individual protocols will rely on one pass of an organic acids or amino acids test. Do we know that these are stable as opposed to fluctuating to one degree or another? …. But that's another topic.
ApoE 3/4 > Thanks in advance for any responses made to my posts.
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Re: EveryWell Food Sensitivity test

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Excellent points @circular!

Thinking about the pulse rate test, I have a cool idea for how that could be implemented, I just haven't had the time to try it. I do quite a bit of ML/data science these days, where it would be trivial to run a feature importance regression using decision tree models between X foods and Y post-prandial pulse or HRV. With an Apple Watch + Cronometer, I think I could do a fairly robust analysis, with the caveat that I'd need to input everything I ate with timestamps and eat a varied enough diet to minimize common combinations, and do that for say... 6-12mo, then build the model and do the EDA/FE and report. At the end of the day, it might not be any more illuminating than "going by feel", but I'd love to see what it looks like in a Jupyter notebook, just to see if there's anything there to this methodology.

These X / Y labels could be switched to associate against more impactful items like Sleep Quality (as captured by an Oura Ring), or even something like a digit span test. The X features could easily expand to include things like supplements / types + quantities of exercise. It's on the list of things worth developing!
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Re: EveryWell Food Sensitivity test

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apod wrote:Excellent points @circular!

Thinking about the pulse rate test, I have a cool idea for how that could be implemented, I just haven't had the time to try it. I do quite a bit of ML/data science these days, where it would be trivial to run a feature importance regression using decision tree models between X foods and Y post-prandial pulse or HRV. With an Apple Watch + Cronometer, I think I could do a fairly robust analysis, with the caveat that I'd need to input everything I ate with timestamps and eat a varied enough diet to minimize common combinations, and do that for say... 6-12mo, then build the model and do the EDA/FE and report. At the end of the day, it might not be any more illuminating than "going by feel", but I'd love to see what it looks like in a Jupyter notebook, just to see if there's anything there to this methodology.

These X / Y labels could be switched to associate against more impactful items like Sleep Quality (as captured by an Oura Ring), or even something like a digit span test. The X features could easily expand to include things like supplements / types + quantities of exercise. It's on the list of things worth developing!
Now you're talking! If you can do it I look forward to the results, although I'd be doing better if I could understand half of your references above. :lol:

I have to take back my comment that I can't have confidence in my own conclusions about these complicated matters unless I have one or more PhDs, because the reason I can't bring myself to rely on any one scientist's or practitioner's perspective is that highly degreed people always disagree among themselves, at least as far as forming 'camps'. One can't escape it. Degrees are worthwhile and can lend a greater understanding of so many things, but they don't mean much inherently. No offense at all. If I could get more degrees I'd love to just for the mental exercise of it. And who knows, maybe I'd draw a conclusion or two in cutting edge areas.
ApoE 3/4 > Thanks in advance for any responses made to my posts.
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Re: EveryWell Food Sensitivity test

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I came across this at Dr. Janice Joneja's website:
Question:

During the past five years I have consulted several allergists to find out exactly which foods I am allergic to. I have had four different allergy tests and each one gave a different result. I had scratch tests, prick tests, a blood test, and a Vega test. They all showed that I am allergic to many foods, but the only food that all the tests agreed on was carrot! I am avoiding all of the foods testing positive, but find I have very little to choose from and know that my diet is quite unbalanced now. And I still have a lot of symptoms. Which of these tests should I believe? I am very confused – and very hungry!

Answer:

The short answer is that there is no laboratory test that on its own will determine exactly which food is causing a person’s symptoms. All of the tests need to be followed by elimination and challenge of the suspect foods before we have a reliable picture of a person’s food allergies. Elimination and challenge involves avoiding all of the foods that produce a positive test for a month, and then reintroducing each one separately in a dose-controlled fashion, to determine exactly which symptoms are triggered by the food when it is consumed.

My Factsheet “Diagnosis of Food Allergy” will explain exactly how each test is carried out, and what the results mean.
She seems to agree with the Food Allergy Research & Education group that challenge testing is the best method of determining food intolerances/allergies, although they carry out their challenge tests different from one another. Apparently you can use any and all tests to just get some ideas to work with if you're running out of ideas while not using tests.

But then I found this web page that I think may provide the best overview yet:

Food Sensitivity Testing – Which Test Is Best?

I tried to find the MRT test they mention to see the cost, but it couldn't find a way to order it at the link they gave. I've emailed them about it.
ApoE 3/4 > Thanks in advance for any responses made to my posts.
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Re: EveryWell Food Sensitivity test

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circular wrote:MRT test
Interesting, on the Trying Low Oxalates Facebook group, a member just talked about the MRT test and how it helped her.
I have experienced MUCH relief from symptoms (at least the symptoms NOT directly caused by oxalate) by taking foods that showed up reactive out of my diet...I will add that, based on what I’ve READ, IgG food sensitivity testing is worthless. In my personal experience, Mediator-Release Testing is invaluable. It will NOT identify or solve your oxalate problem. But if you have gut damage from oxalate or any other agent or disease process that can cause gut damage, this test can be well worth doing.
Those of us with oxalate problems, tend to have gut damage, so figuring out the right foods to eat is a combo of lowering higher oxalate foods, along with avoiding those we react to because of the gut damage. Once gut damage is improved, the theory is that you can add some of those reactive foods back in.

Thanks for the testing link, circ, as I was just about to go off and find more info about MRT.
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Re: EveryWell Food Sensitivity test

Post by circular »

SusanJ wrote:
circular wrote:MRT test
Interesting, on the Trying Low Oxalates Facebook group, a member just talked about the MRT test and how it helped her.
The Mediator Release Test MRT is the first food sensitivity test I could even begin to get excited about. It tests the downstream, and clinical, consequence of any sort of food sensitivity trigger, both innate and adaptive, by testing whether each food or food chemical causes immune cells to release their mediators.

I'm growing more skeptical of the IgG tests. This paper discusses the normal role of IgG and IgG4 in food reactions and lists many organizations that don't support its use. As to IgG4 it even indicates (I didn't look at the cited paper):
Children with a high sIgG4 to sIgE ratio tolerate the sensitizing foods better [17]. High sIgG in children with IgE-mediated al- lergy is a predictive factor of a future tolerance [18].
A host of organizations state that IgG and IgG4 cannot be used to determine food allergy or intolerance:
  • European Academy of Allergology and Clinical Immunology (EACCI) [allergies, intolerance]
    American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) [allergies]
    American College of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (ACAAI) [allergies]
    Joint Council of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology (JCAAI) [allergies]
    World Allergy Organization (WAO) [allergies]
Since most are commenting on allergies specifically, it's possible they haven't all considered IgG or IgG4 in food intolerance, but I think their statements raise the bar for the IgG testing companies to clearly delineate how they think IgG or IgG4 is helpful with respect to food intolerance but not food allergies. Maybe they have done this and I haven't seen it.

I also think this has the potential to free me of the whole lectin issue. I spoke to a representative of the MRT laboratory about this. He explained that lectin is simply one of many components of foods that can cause a reaction. Rather than eliminating nutritious foods because they contain lectins, see if your immune cells are responding to the food with mediators that cause symptoms. It doesn't really matter whether it was a lectin or some other part of that food.

The test is $695 including the LEAP diet plan for the largest test (not including the cost of blood draw) and they don't run it through insurance. They used to and some but not enough companies covered it, probably because it really doesn't have enough published research behind it. But you can pay up front and submit it to insurance for reimbursement, which may work better if your doctor will submit it.

Despite that there isn't a lot of published work on MRT for food intolerance, besides its conceptual strengths (at least as I see it unless and until someone can tell me why it's a weak test), it also has these going for it:
The reason MRT has the greatest clinical utility for food sensitivities is because it most closely approximates the actual picture of what is happening in vivo. This has great clinical value.

W. Ted Kniker, M.D.
Past Chairperson
Adverse Food Reactions Committee
American College of Allergy, Asthma &
Immunology
and

They claim '93.5% split sample reproducibility' in this overview:
MRT at a Glance

Functional

o Quantifies the inflammatory response to foods & food chemicals
o Accounts for clinical and subclinical inflammation
o Accounts for the widest range of inflammatory pathways
o The only blood test capable of measuring both innate and adaptive pathways


Clinically Relevant

o Gives information no other blood test can give
o Highest clinical utility
o Identifies your patients best foods

Reliable

o 93.5% split sample reproducibility

Innovative

o Awarded 3 US Patents
LabCorp and Quest don't do the blood draw for this, but they have a draw locator tool on their website.

You can email the company at cs@nowleap.com to request more materials on the foods tested etc., which is where I got some of this information.

So I'm convinced (so far) or duped again :lol:
ApoE 3/4 > Thanks in advance for any responses made to my posts.
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