Dr. Tabatha Barber discusses food sensitivity testing, contrasting conventional allergy testing (IgE) with functional-medicine approaches (IgG food sensitivity tests). She explains that conventional clinicians focus on life-threatening IgE-mediated allergies and often dismiss IgG testing; functional practitioners and some direct-to-consumer labs offer IgG and other sensitivity tests. Barber notes that results vary by lab method and over time—especially if a patient has 'leaky gut'—and that widespread red/positive results can indicate active intestinal permeability and an overactive immune response. She also mentions non-food sensitivities (e.g., mycotoxins) and stresses interpreting tests in clinical context.
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So it's really important to know what am I putting in my gut, what am I exposing my immune system to that could potentially be pissing it off, triggering it over, activating it. And so you can test these in different ways. And that's where a lot of controversy has come in, especially in the conventional medicine world. Because, you know, they're very much disease focused. And it's very much if you don't have an outright disease that requires treatment, it doesn't matter what's happening, you know, underneath what's smoldering, what else is happening. So you'll go to an allergist and they will test your ige levels for that life threatening thing that you require an epinephrine shot for to keep you alive. But they don't necessarily agree with igg testing to food sensitivities and other sensitivities. You can have sensitivities to different mycotoxins from molds in the environment. That's another example. There's definitely testing that you can do, but it's not commonplace in the conventional world. You probably will have to seek out a functional practitioner to do something like this. And there are tests that you can buy online for food sensitivity testing. And here's the deal. Some companies are better than others because it depends on what they're testing and how they're testing it, how accurate the results are. And if you have leaky gut, those results are dynamically changing as the days go on, because your immune system is continuing to see things it shouldn't and react to it. And so oftentimes I'll get patients who do food sensitivity testing and stool testing and they're reacting to a lot of stuff. Like their food sensitivity test comes back and everything's in the red, meaning they're creating antibodies against pretty much everything they're eating. And that tells me you have active leaky gut, your immune system is on fire. It's reacting to everything it's seeing. And so you have to take these tests into context with what else is going on.
