Warning: A Note About Hair Follicle Tests!!!
Hair follicle testing is not listed among the testing methods below. We believe that they are pointless since “Hair is not involved in allergic reactions so testing hair samples cannot provide any useful information on allergic status.” Nor should people be deceived into thinking allergies are caused by an “energy blockage” which can be diagnosed by muscle testing and cured by acupuncture.
These bogus hair tests are convincing thousands of people to take unnecessary treatments and put themselves or their children on inadequate diets, sometimes resulting in malnutrition, a group of experts and charities has said.
Alcat test which is a Leukocytotoxic Test, was first developed in 1956 by Black, and is the most notorious and unreliable method among others. It is a very old technology which was promoted during the early 1980s by storefront clinics, laboratories, nutrition consultants, chiropractors, and medical doctors. It was claimed by the company that it can determine sensitivity to food accurately however, controlled studies never demonstrated reliability, and some studies found it highly unreliable. [1-4]. For example, one study found that white cells from allergic patients reacted no differently when exposed to substances known to produce symptoms than when exposed to substances to which the patients were not sensitive.. Government regulatory actions [6-9] and unfavorable publicity have almost driven cytotoxic testing from the health marketplace. It was banned in some states like New York, but still few practitioners perform it nationwide.
Needs full blood in tubes. A nurse or doctor is a must to draw blood.
Almost impossible to follow the nutrition plan due to incredibly high number of results.
Alcat is a very old tecnology test which was used by some practitioners in early 80s because there was no other alternative at those times.
However the technology is completely primitive.
Although most people have only 2-3 intolerances, the results that you will get from Alcat will be around 50-60 meaning you will get 10s of wrong results. It is obvious that trying to follow such a diet will cause many problems for the client.
ELISA stands for ‘Enzyme Linked Immuno Sorbent Assay’ and is a well-proven process used, for example, detecting HIV positivity. In this case the technology is used to detect IgG positivity and the degree of reaction. The potential allergen has to be very carefully prepared into ‘plates’, and then the patient’s serum is introduced to it. If there’s an lgG reaction to the food, the lgG antibody in the serum combines the allergen on the plate. After incubation of several hours, water plus anenzyme is added, which colors the antibody-allergen complexes. The more antibody-allergen complexes there are, the more colored the sample becomes. This is then analyzed by computer to produce a graded scale of reaction to each food. The greater the reaction, the greater the sensitivity.
Elisa method is a reliable method, with a high reproducibility rate for determining food intolerances. However still requires full blood samples, which are difficult to draw and transport. Although it is much more precise than Cytotoxic, still does not have a 100% solution for determining the permanent and temporary intolerances. Half of the results that you get will be your temporary intolerances that may have been a result of a temporary overeating and health problem.
Although the method of Microarray-Elisa Method tests appears similar to the classic Elisa method, it has many advanced technologies. The most important is the analysis of Antigens to differentiate the temporary and permanent intolerances. The test also differs from classic Elisa, since in this latest technology, mostly computerized systems are used; rather than human power. The microarray chips have the advantage of testing with only a few drops of dry blood. Microarray testing presents blood collection kits that are similar to the collection in blood sugar tests.
No need to draw blood from the vein. As simple as a blood sugar test.
Very easy to understand result page.
A very advanced and precise technology. The reproducibility rate is very high.
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