No More Chocolate!
Mar. 11th, 2008 05:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
errantemberFor years I've had various depressive symptoms, sleep complications, and general fatigue. In an effort to improve things, I decided, after much research, to explore food sensitivity testing. In addition to the symptoms I've had, food sensitivities can cause migraines, muscle aches, bowel problems, and a host of other crazy symptoms. I decided on the MRT test from Signet, which is expensive but currently the best thing going. The general idea is that many people have an immune reaction to foods that isn't allergic. There are three types of food problems. Allergies are what most people are familiar with. For instance, I'm allergic to peanuts. Food intolerances, like lactose or gluten intolerance, are situations where you body is actually genetically unable to properly digest something. The MRT test if for the last category, in which food substances trigger an incorrect immune reaction. This can sometimes happen hours or even days after the food is eaten, making it very difficult to detect. The test works by exposing blood to various foods and food additives (150 in all) and measuring the response.
Once you know which items are problem children, you create a diet that excludes those foods for about a month. Then, you slowly add in the "yellow" and "red" foods one at a time to see if you react to them. If you do, they're off the list effectively forever. If they're ok, you can eat them occasionally. One thing about the way food sensitivities function is that continuing to eat something one is sensitive too makes it continually worse, kind of a residual effect. However, if you get off that food for a while, it's reactivity goes down. Your immune system actually creates custom chemical tags for each food, which is how the residual effect works.
So, major stinkers for me in the Red List are cucumbers, grapes, cranberries, bananas, cashews, and crab.
Unfortunate inclusions on the Yellow List are Apples, Apricots, Avocados, black pepper, cane sugar, chicken (ouch!) cinnamon, cocoa (no chocolate!) coffee, egg, eggplant, fructose, honeydew, hops (don't drink anyway,) oats, tumeric, and yellow squash.
We'll note that while I'm allergic to peanuts, they register Green on this test.
Once you know which items are problem children, you create a diet that excludes those foods for about a month. Then, you slowly add in the "yellow" and "red" foods one at a time to see if you react to them. If you do, they're off the list effectively forever. If they're ok, you can eat them occasionally. One thing about the way food sensitivities function is that continuing to eat something one is sensitive too makes it continually worse, kind of a residual effect. However, if you get off that food for a while, it's reactivity goes down. Your immune system actually creates custom chemical tags for each food, which is how the residual effect works.
So, major stinkers for me in the Red List are cucumbers, grapes, cranberries, bananas, cashews, and crab.
Unfortunate inclusions on the Yellow List are Apples, Apricots, Avocados, black pepper, cane sugar, chicken (ouch!) cinnamon, cocoa (no chocolate!) coffee, egg, eggplant, fructose, honeydew, hops (don't drink anyway,) oats, tumeric, and yellow squash.
We'll note that while I'm allergic to peanuts, they register Green on this test.
