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At-home allergy test to assess in four easy steps whether a particular food might be triggering intolerance or sensitivity issues. Not appropriate for severe situations that may trigger anaphylaxis.
Food sensitivities and allergies in children are clearly on the rise. Official estimates put the number at about 6% of children under the age of three. This sure seems low to me.
In my child’s preschool class, 10 of 12 children suffered from at least one food allergy!
When I went through elementary school in the 1970s, I barely remember one child with a food allergy of any kind.
Food Allergies, Intolerance, and Sensitivities
In years past, genetic predisposition was a clear and primary contributor to the development of allergies.
However, the modern-day tendency for children to eat just a few types of foods all the time like pizza, chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, boxed cereal and peanut butter sandwiches is a big reason for the skyrocketing allergy trend.
Exclusive eating requires a constant demand for the same types of digestive enzymes over and over. This can eventually lead to digestive exhaustion, food addictions, and biochemical disruptions.
Poor diet in infancy and childhood which is devoid or low in animal fats such as egg yolks, cream, and butter is also a contributor to the development of allergies.
Arachidonic acid and beneficial cholesterol in these nourishing animal fats promote the development of an intestinal wall that is strong with much integrity.
The nutritionless, carb-heavy, rancid vegetable oil-laden processed foods most allergy-prone children subsist on can lead to weakness in the intestinal walls. Another name for this is leaky gut syndrome.
These microscopic perforations allow partially digested food particles to enter the bloodstream. At that point, the trigger is set for an unpredictable mix of auto-immune and behavioral disorders.
What to do if you suspect a food allergy in your child or yourself but you wish to avoid expensive testing?
Home Pulse Test
As it turns out, it is rather easy to test for a food allergy at home.
Note that this is not appropriate for any situation where anaphylaxis might occur.
The four simple steps include the following:
- Avoid the suspected food for at least 4 days.
- Eat a moderate amount of the suspected food on an empty stomach. Consume no other food within the previous 2 hours (drinking water is fine).
- Measure pulse rate (beats per minute) before and 5-10 minutes after eating the food in question.
- Calculate the difference in pulse rate. Did you find a significant rise of more than just a few beats per minute? If so, then an allergy or intolerance is likely even if you do not identify any other symptoms.
Besides an increased or racing pulse, food sensitivities and allergies can be identified via rashes, fatigue, insomnia, headaches, joint pain, and even hoarseness.
How to Heal
Once one or more food allergies are identified, a diet such as GAPS would need to be followed.
Over a period of time, usually 18 months to about 3 years, the gut wall will heal and seal. At that point, offending foods can be gradually reintroduced into the diet.
If the allergies are not severe, simply eating a varied and best traditional diet may be all that is necessary to put them in remission. This means no refined or stimulating foods.
“Refined” and “stimulating” foods would include anything made with white sugar, white flour, rancid vegetable oils like canola or soy, sodium, and caffeine.
In addition, a variety of traditionally fermented foods and beverages like home-brewed kombucha help tremendously with supplying friendly bacteria and food enzymes to keep the intestinal tract in optimal function.
These vital foods help maintain the integrity of the gut wall. This prevents compromise where undigested foods spill into the blood and trigger symptoms of sensitivity or intolerance.
Prevention is the Best Policy
Ultimately, it is best to never have to “undo” allergies if at all possible.
Eating a nourishing, traditional diet while pregnant and breastfeeding and ensuring that growing children receive regular and sufficient quantities of optimal growth encouraging foods.
These include cream, butter, ghee, egg yolks, fish eggs, grassfed and organ meats for development of a sturdy intestinal system.
This is the best insurance policy against ever needing any sort of special diet to combat allergy or other autoimmune issues.
Reference
Nourishing Traditions, About Food Allergies and Special Diets
This is a strange question… I have done some study that shows that the body reacts to coffee in a similar fashion that it does to gluten for those who have gluten sensitivity. So, if you have autoimmune tendencies (such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis) and you are told to go gluten free, you might also need to eliminate coffee. You can check out my posts here if you are curious:
Could you do the simple test above to discover a coffee sensitivity? The reason I question is that coffee also contains caffeine that could drive your pulse rate up as well. What do you think?
Yes. The pulse test is helpful for testing just about anything you put in your mouth. Not sure about the caffeine though as this might skew things. It works nicely for figuring out which sweeteners sit best with your digestion. For example, sucanat and maple syrup are both wonderful natural sweeteners, but one may cause you distress and the other none at all.
D- yes, I’m off most supplements now, and it was by habit that I continued to take them from years ago when I was extremely malnourished (2006) such that I had to megadose in order to keep from getting worse, as I was going downhill fast. There are still some things I must take no matter what such as bile salts and hydrochloric acid, and digestive enzymes since I am missing both a gallbladder and appendix. I’ve been eating real food since 2005 and really don’t do processed or refined foods anymore. I’ve been on the GAPS diet now for a month and I’ve already noticed a huge difference. I know I’ve still got a long ways to go, but I find that so many people I know have symptoms and “allergies” that I am certain would be remedied by GAPS diet or similar eating habits. Five years ago I spent nearly 2 years on the candida diet, and it certainly did help my health. But I know stress and skipping meals when I was working 13 hour days put me right back where I was 6+ years ago. I have learned it’s not always just food, sometimes it’s not consuming enough nutrients and stress that can do you in.
Erica – I have heard about that too, but I was a jittery mess all night long for over 2 months and I don’t know if detox is ever that severe. I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin and couldn’t settle down long enough to actually go to sleep – sometimes until 6 a.m. It sounds so bizarre, I know, but I still have little clue as to what caused it. I can guess and speculate – maybe it’s liver toxicity or mineral depletion. I tried everything I could think of…so I’m guessing that since my efforts with the GAPS diet is making some improvements, it had to be some kind of very severe depletion from all the stress. It couldn’t be that I was eating the wrong foods because I don’t eat junk food.
Quoting did not work. I mean THESE claims:
However, the modern day tendency for children to eat just a few types of foods all the time
like pizza, chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, boxed cereal and peanut butter sandwiches is a big reason for the skyrocketing allergy trend. Exclusive eating requires a constant demand for the same types of digestive enzymes over and over which eventually leads to digestive exhaustion, food addictions, and biochemical disruptions.
Poor diet in infancy and childhood which is devoid or low in animal fats such as egg yolks, cream and butter is also a contributor to the development of allergies.
I would love to see your scientific data for these ridiculous claims:
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One cannot just make things up and pass them off as facts.
Great post Sarah! I’m currently on the GAPS diet for a number of puzzling and strange health issues since January. For 6+ years I’ve had a really healthy diet which includes ots of healthy, traditional foods, and plenty of fats and proteins. I suddenly started having panic-attack like symptoms in the middle of the night which kept me awake for literally 2+ months. I was a mess. It was so disruptive it negated my ability to get anything done including my job and my blog. I used to get these years ago when I wasn’t eating well, but when I learned about how diet affects health and changed my ways, they started disappearing.
Before these episodes started, I was doing a detox for metals with a zeolite spray a nutritional therapist gave me, and I had also just started a systemic enzyme. Plus I was taking all my usual supplements like bile salts, hydrochloric acid, probiotics (I have to take these because I have no gallbladder nor appendix anymore) and multi-vitamin minerals (whole food, organically source).
However, in January, everything seemed to come apart. Our family has been under tremendous stress due to the fact that we opened a small business two year ago in an economy that is still moving very slow. I will never underestimate the power stress has on health again, because I now know this has had a huge impact on how my body dealt with whatever was going on. And, these episodes were far worse than those I used to get when I wasn’t eating, which told me something major was going on. I tried everything I could think of to stop the symptoms: I was seeing an M.D. who is also board certified naturopathic. She did several blood tests that revealed I was “hypothyroid” and also that my Vitamin D levels were very low – even though I was taking 6-8 capsules of fermented cod liver oil daily. I knew something wasn’t right and I wasn’t absorbing nutrients. After seeing 4 other practitioners and not getting anywhere (and getting a number of different only sort-of certain answers such as adrenals, thyroid, hormonal imbalance, anxiety, etc.), I finally decided my liver was having a hard time and that also perhaps heavy metals were involved, so I stopped all supplements but the bare minimum and started the GAPS diet. I am eating lots of bone broths, fermented dairy, cultured vegetable juices, cooked vegetables and meats/fish, and other healthy fats and proteins with mostly no problems now. I wasn’t eating grains to begin with, so I was already more than half-way there. I know it will take some time, but I know I’m on the right path. I’m also doing the liver/gallbladder flush by Andreas Moritz (read his book the Miracle Liver Gallbladder Cleanse), which removes stones from the liver that can cause all types of symptoms, including food-type allergies, and doing coffee enemas.
I have a nutritional consultant friend who works with late-stage cancer patients and says my symptoms are consistent with metal and liver toxicity. It’s hard to believe that even with the healthy diet I’ve maintained all these years, I’m still having these issues. But as long as those stones remain in the liver, no matter how healthy a person eats, problems will remain. The symptoms listed in Moritz’s book are very consistent with the same types of things people with food allergies/intolerances have, and I recommend anyone do this flush who is having trouble, in conjunction with the GAPS diet protocol. Moritz does suggest vegetarian/vegan diets for health, but I just ignore that and eat my normal healthy, traditional foods. The cleanses come out just fine and I know others who have used this method as well with good results.
@Raine: Sometimes I think, in the name of health, we overdo the supplements, whether they’re whole food supplements or not. Maybe try eliminating the supplements, just eat real foods, use the Nourishing Traditions cookbook to make some of the healing tonics (towards the back in the recipe section) and then slowly add back the supplements. Our body can only use so much stuff each day, and I think taking so many mg’s of this or that tends to build up and cause collateral damage of a sort. I used to have panic attacks a lot in my 20’s. I learned some breathing exercises, took magnesium (then switched to dolomite mixed in my raw milk) and things started looking up. I hope you find your answer.
Hi Raine,
I wonder if it was because you were detoxing that lead to the lack of sleep. I read somewhere regarding how when toxins are in circulation throughout your body due to detoxing, it can cause a host of issues including insomnia. Doing the gaps diet will do wonders as it will facilitate in the detoxification process.
Wow! The post was helpful and so was your response and experience, Sarah. I am struggling with a continual arrhythmia – just a skipped beat, nothing to worry about according to my cardiologist (holistic & md), but it is annoying and he & my naturopath says is brought on by stress. I have no known food allergies, but I’m wondering if that is contributing – something digestive that I’m not aware of. Anyway, Thanks!
Why does my homemade milk formula curdle when I gently warm it up? Is it because of the whey?
Are you using cheese whey? Cheese whey curdles the formula. You can’t use that kind of whey. Use liquid whey from clabbered mik, yogurt, or kefir.
I’ve heard of this before, but I wondered: doesn’t your pulse increase when you eat anything? Especially if it’s on an empty stomach? Just wondering…
Yes, it does increase. But it shouldn’t increase by much if you eat a moderate amount of the food in question on an empty stomach.
This is great to know, and so simple to administer and check the pulse. Another test, and one which doesn’t involve ingestion, is to apply a small amount of the suspected offending food to the inner wrist in the evening (allow it to dry before going to bed). In the morning, if it’s red and irritated, you have your answer.
This test can be redone while on the GAPS or similar diet until the gut wall is healed and the allergy reversed.
LOVE IT! Thanks Beth. Haven’t used that one before. What would you do with a food that is dry like wheat bread, for example? Just rub it on the skin? Would that be sufficient?
Mash and mix with water. This is the sensitivity test that Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride recommends, and she discusses it numerous times in her book Gut & Psychology Syndrome (in the new edition, see p. 120, 134, 143-4, 352).
Page 143-4 says “If you suspect a real allergy (which can be dangerous) to any particular food, before introducing it do the Sensitivity Test. Take a drop of the food in question (if the food is solid, mash and mix with a bit of water) and place it on the inside of your patient’s wrist. Do it at bedtime. Let the drop dry on the skin and let your patient go to sleep. In the morning check the spot: if there is an angry red or itchy reaction, avoid that food for a few weeks, and then try again. If there is no reaction, then go ahead and introduce the food gradually starting with a tiny amount. Always test the food in the state you are planning to introduce it: for example, if you are planning to introduce raw egg yolks, test the raw egg yolk and not the whole egg or cooked egg. Those without serious digestive problems and food intolerances can move through the Introduction Diet quite quickly.” She then goes on to describe the stages of the diet to heal and seal the gut, reset the immune system, remove toxins, and reverse ailments, including allergies.
I’ve got to get her new edition! This isn’t covered in my copy.
@Beth or Sarah: What is the name of McBride’s new book? Does Amazon carry it?
Thanks.
D, it’s Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS), and be sure to get the expanded 2010 edition. You can get it alone at Amazon or paired with a new companion cookbook.
FYI, she’s working on a new book called Gut and Physiology Syndrome, which apparently will address numerous physical diseases and conditions but the dietary program to heal them is the same.
I had allergy shots when I was in my 20’s. They did me a world of good. I was totally miserable before I had them.
Good tip to take a break every few days from a food your eat routinely. I avoid all grains, starches and sugar and have great results, but I tend to eat the same foods over and over again every day. I eat a lot of eggs every day, so I am especially going to focus on giving myself a break from them a couple days a week. I also need to evaluate my son’s diet in this respect. Thank you!
Hi Bethany, it’s so easy to get into a food rut, isn’t it?
Do you think the factor in terms of “amount” is time or quantity? What I mean is, say person A has 1 egg every day & person B has 4 eggs one day, but then goes a few days without. We had the same quantity of eggs, but there was a greater time of not having it at all in the 2nd person. I consider my diet extremely varied, but in the sense that there is a lot of variation within the day & usually have a pretty small total quantity of that food….
from what my doctor has told me, it doesn’t matter how much. however, he does say that if you only eat foods seasonally – ie, only strawberries in the springtime, he’s much less worried about eating them several days in a row because it’s a short season. and then you don’t have them for months & months.