Conventional wisdom states, “you are what you eat.” This adage describes what practitioners of natural medicine have known for many years: nutritious food is key to health. Unhealthy food or unsafe food can be the source of illness. Toxic Food Syndrome manifests as a hidden food allergy that can cause damage to overall health.
Often, holistic providers and nutritionists advise patients about general dietary guidelines that are considered safe and effective for improving general health or a specific health condition. Of course, this great advice is not entirely helpful if the individual has an undiagnosed food allergy, intolerance or sensitivity. The recommended diet may actually cause more harm than help.
Rather than recommending one size fits all diet plans, we look for underlying food allergies and tailor our nutritional advice to the needs of the individual patient. Blood samples are taken to identify food allergies, so the offending foods can be eliminated from the diet.
Uncovering hidden allergies and eliminating exposure offers a wide range of health benefits, including improving allergy symptoms, mood swings, headaches, digestive upset and other symptoms of food intolerance. In addition, health conditions and mood disorders, such as depression, ADHD and other conditions affecting children and adults can be improved with allergy testing and nutrition counseling.
Hidden food allergies affect such a large number of people that many holistic providers test for them as the first step in creating a custom dietary program. This is essential, especially if an illness or disorder uses diet and nutrition as the primary treatment. Diabetes is one such condition, but recommending foods to which the individual has a hidden allergy will cause the health to deteriorate, rather than improve.
Testing for food allergies is relatively simple with the ELISA antibodies testing. This test allows the provider to assess a wide variety of allergens at one time to quickly identify the reactive foods. In addition to the ELISA test, we also perform testing for gluten and Candida albicans to rule out other underlying causes of illness and restore the individual to optimal health.