Food Inflammation Testing

Food, so vitally critical to our overall health. One of my favorite quotes (and a number of people don’t always appreciate it – oh well) is “there is no junk food, there is junk, and there is food!” Now, food has been around for a long time. Here is how to recognize food. Did it grow from the earth? Did it at one time run around on the earth? Did it ever swim in or live in our waters? Personally, I try to make 80% of my diet real food – no one is perfect and frankly that’s not the goal.

PPH, after careful individualized examination, nearly always recommends a food program to patients. True food science is a thousand times more complicated than those ever-changing one-size-fits-all food pyramids. You see, it’s not the right diet, it’s the right diet for YOU. PPH has various therapeutic food programs. Patients often receive select menus, recipes and shopping guides. Changing food habits can be difficult but you will have support/resources and the payoff can be huge!

Testing – In some individuals, especially those with various GI challenges, even good, clean, healthy food can become a health hazard. This is usually secondary to a breakdown in the protective mucosal barrier in the digestive tract – you can be screened for risk factors during your initial consultation. With diminished barrier integrity, your immune system can become exposed to foods that have erroneously entered the blood stream. This abnormal gut/immune interaction over time can sensitize you to those foods, causing inflammation and further damage to the mucosal lining. Unfortunately, without proper interventions this can become a negative feed-forward loop.

PPH uses an advanced lab to get a comprehensive evaluation of immune/food interactions to assess specifically which foods are healthy (non-inflammatory) and unhealthy (inflammatory) for you. The FIT (Food Inflammation Test) measures IgG antibodies in all four sub-classes as well as complement to assess reactivity. IgE food allergy are not typically measured as they are fast acting and frequently already known to the individual that has them.