Introduction
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Health Detective Podcast by Functional Diagnostic Nutrition. My name is Evan Transue, aka Detective Ev. I will be your host for today’s show on analyzing results for food sensitivity testing. We are continuing our series where we go over live lab results.
Today will be a little quicker and I will be by myself. I do believe that you can probably get about 80% to 90% of what you should get out of this if you’re just listening on audio. However, if you have the ability, I recommend watching it on YouTube as well.
You know, it’s tough. The vast majority of our viewership and listenership, if you’ll call it that, is on audio. We were really late to the YouTube game. We probably should have done it a little earlier. It is what it is. We’re trying to make amends for it now. You can check it out there, but I know most people, like 95%, are probably going to listen to this on audio only, which is okay. I will do my best here with this one.
Maybe at the very least what you can do is just open up the YouTube video and kind of just scroll through it really quick. If you can even just get a visual idea of what the test results look like, I think that would more than suffice for you to get through this episode and understand what it is that I’m going to be sharing with you today.
What we are looking at are test results from a client of mine. It was actually someone I worked with about two years ago. She does share her story publicly.
Food Sensitivity Test Results of a Hashimoto’s Client
This is quite an audience to be sharing with and it’s a little bit different when we’re using it for purposes such as this. So, I just blocked out her name, but I will share her full story. I know that she probably wouldn’t care. I might be in the complete wrong boat here. She might actually want me to share her name and think it’s cool. But either way, I’m going to take the neutral approach on this.
So, a little bit about the client. Because remember, this is one thing you need to understand about FDN. The client always matters. We don’t look at just test results and say, oh, okay, this is high, or this is low. We look at test results in relationship to the person that the test results belong to. So, that’s one thing to consider.
The profile of this person, mid to late twenties at the time of taking this test, has one child at the time, had just given birth to a child, probably, I think within the last year or two prior to that. She had a diagnosis of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.
If you do not know what that is, it is an autoimmune disease of the thyroid. It’s one of the more common autoimmune diseases. You’ve probably heard about that if you’re in this space. But if you haven’t, that’s what it is. It is associated with underactive thyroid function.
This is the people who might be eating 1200 calories a day and they really cannot lose weight. It might be people who feel extremely sluggish, debilitating fatigue. Their heart rate might even be really slow at times. Hair’s falling out. So, you can almost think of hypothyroidism, which is associated with Hashimoto’s as slowing down, right? Hypothyroidism, slowing down.
Jumping Right into the Functional Side of Healing Modalities
In the opposite, much less common, but this was the one that my mom had, so I’ll always shout it out, is Grave’s disease. This is the thyroid autoimmune condition that is associated with overactive thyroid or hyperthyroidism. So hyper, think of everything going fast.
My mom’s heartbeat was 130 beats per minute sitting down. She could not keep on weight to save her life. I know that sounds like that’s a great problem to have. It’s really not, trust me. When it goes to that extreme, it’s just as uncomfortable as the opposite. Racing thoughts, only sleeping three, four hours a night. Whereas a Hashimoto’s person might sleep for 10 to 12 hours a day and still not feel good. So, it’s kind of the opposite.
But again, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis is much more common. This is the one this client today had. Sorry that I went off on my side note, but I’m sure you guys appreciated that.
What was interesting about this client is that she was someone who jumped into the functional side of things way sooner than most people do on their healing journey. When most people try to get well, if they are sick, this is how it typically goes.
They go to the doctor. That doesn’t work out. They get put on some medications, whatever. Then over time they realize maybe I have to take this into my own hands. This is assuming they ever come to that conclusion/realization ever. They might never do that, unfortunately.
I have seen family members that were very intelligent people, unfortunately, pass away from the conditions that they dealt with because they did not ever think outside of that Western medicine paradigm. They needed something more than just what Western medicine was offering.
Food Sensitivity Test Results of a Client Still Eating Fast Food
So, assuming we even get there thinking outside the box, then we go through a cycle of trial and error. We were probably doing that before. We say this at FDN, the cycle of trial and error.
When you are sick and don’t really know what the cause is, you’re kind of going from doctor to doctor, pill to pill, maybe surgery to surgery, which is not fun at all. But it’s the cycle of trial and error and it continues into this realm of self-treatment. Then it becomes trying supplement after supplement, maybe alternative practitioner after alternative practitioner, diet after diet is a big one.
What was interesting is the client that I was working with went right from Western medicine to immediately like FDN level. Now this is amazing. This is what I would love to see happen more. I mean, really, I’d love to see FDN be used as a preventative thing. That would be even better. But this was still pretty darn good because most people are suffering for 5, 10, 15 years prior to ever learning about what we do.
It was great that she made this jump, but it was an interesting client because she was coming to me still eating fast food. I’m not suggesting she was being lazy or not disciplined. That’s just where she was mentally. That’s what her paradigm was at the time. Okay, I can still go just eat fast food. It’s not that big of a deal.
Maybe she did know it was a big deal but didn’t realize that this could actually be causal for her health issues. So, she had a TSH of 111. TSH is thyroid stimulating hormone. It’s actually not a hormone produced by the thyroid; it’s produced by the pituitary gland.
Food Sensitivity Test Results of a Client with TSH of 111
You can kind of pick it up from the name that it’s not produced by the thyroid. Although, it’s tough. It’s not inherently obvious, but you can kind of get some clues there cause it is thyroid stimulating hormone. Obviously, in theory, I guess the thyroid could stimulate itself, but it makes a little more sense when you say it out loud.
All right, thyroid stimulating hormone. Hmm. Something else must be stimulating it and it just so happens to be the pituitary gland. The pituitary starts pumping up, pumping up, pumping up, trying to get that thyroid to work. But remember, we’re hypothyroidism, in this case, Hashimoto’s. We’re underactive. The TSH goes up and up and up.
Now, to put it this way, Western Medicine has a TSH reference range of about 0.5 to 4.5, or even 5 depending on who you talk to. We already think as functional practitioners that 5 is a little too high. My client was 111. The highest I’ve ever heard of? No, there was one other person that I know that had higher and he’s been on the podcast a couple of times. His name’s Ryan Monahan.
You guys, if you’ve been long-term listeners, might remember him from way back in the day. He was the first guest on. He had it at 150 and it stopped at 150 because that’s where the test maxed out. So, for all we know, it could have been 151, but it could have been a lot higher than that too. We will never really know cause it maxed out the test. Nonetheless, when we’re talking about something over 10, we’re really messing with some stuff here.
Starting with Just a Food Sensitivity Test
When you’re going 111, it is astonishing that this woman that I was working with was able to get out of bed and help her kid. I think that’s more of a testament to the drive that mothers have, rather than a testament to her not being sick. I’m pretty sure she’s pretty sick.
So, she goes to the doctor, figures all this stuff out and then immediately comes to me. Now, normally in the world of FDN, what we like to do is we are going to run multiple labs at once. Typically, I will do that. This was a unique case because this woman was coming to me way earlier than most people do.
I realized; you know what? Just run the food sensitivity test on someone who is eating fast food currently. That’s the only client I’ve ever had that was still eating fast food. The rest of them had stopped that, or at the very least, maybe it was like a few times a year thing. I’m not talking total abstinence per se, but not a weekly thing. I’ve never worked with anyone else like that. Cause they’ve usually tried a bunch of other things before they get to me.
So, I realized, you know what? We can probably just make a ton of progress here just using the food sensitivity test. She was on board with that. I let her know, this isn’t how I normally work, but I think it’s wise in this case, and totally fine to do. We did this.
Here is how I look at these tests. If you’re on YouTube, you’re watching me. I’m finally scrolling. So sorry, I’ve been sitting on that same spot for a while, but I’m finally scrolling and moving around.
Looking at the Big Picture with Food Sensitivity Testing
We have a lot of different things on this test. There’s over 170 foods and food chemicals. On the left we’re going to see the chemical section. This has everything from ibuprofen to acetaminophen, which is like Advil, Motrin, and Tylenol like prospectively. Advil, Motrin together, they are ibuprofen. Then Tylenol would be acetaminophen. So, you have pain killers to a degree and anti-inflammatories.
Then you have other things like FD&C Red #3 and FD&C Yellow #5. We have food dyes, which is really interesting too. You have things like MSG, aspartame. Clearly, these are things generally speaking that you wouldn’t really want someone consuming anyway. But there’s other good stuff on there. I mean, there’s caffeine, which is not inherently bad. There’s capsaicin. That’s the ingredient that would be found in certain peppers. That’s actually, if I’m not mistaken, I believe Pepper Spray has a high dose of capsaicin. Not the point though.
The point is we have a lot of different things that we’re looking at here. Some pretty bad and we wouldn’t want to take it anyway. Others? Okay. It might come up in a normal day, who knows. So yes, we’re looking section by section. But really as an FDN, we’re always doing what I’m about to say, but especially for this test. I’m looking at the big picture.
When I run this with someone, I’m immediately going down to the grain section. I want to know about grains and dairy, especially if they’re still consuming these things actively.
Investigating Gluten Sensitivity with Food Sensitivity Testing
If someone has a wheat sensitivity that hasn’t been addressed, if someone has a dairy sensitivity that hasn’t been addressed (This is going to be truer for wheat, but it is true for dairy as well.), I know that this test by itself automatically was worth the entire price that they paid. Even though there’s 170 things on here, if just those two alone show up, bam, it was already worth the money.
The reason is, it’s twofold. One. People need objective data to remove foods that are very common, generally speaking. You know, no one really wants to just remove wheat for the sake of removing wheat. However, most people are willing to make some changes in their life if you can show them something objective. In this case, clearly, we were able to do that and show her. Okay, wheat was pretty sensitive, and cow’s milk was very sensitive. I also should break that down.
I apologize for those on audio. When we look at this test, we have three categories. We have green, which is nonreactive. We have yellow, smallest category, which is considered moderately reactive. And then we have red, which is considered straight up reactive.
How we interpret this as FDNs is this. Green, generally safe, but we’ll be a little careful. I’ll explain how we can kind of perfect that in a moment. Yellow, we are going to want them to remove that for at least 60 days, possibly longer, and then we would introduce it slowly. Red is going to be a 90 day removal, minimum, until we’ve really healed and sealed the gut and possibly longer. Again, we’re definitely not going to want to do that every single day. We’re going to kind of do that every few days, tops.
Extended Immune Response from Gluten Food Sensitivity
There are a few exceptions to that, wheat being one of them. If I see that sensitive at all, I don’t care, to me that is too severe. That shows that you are in, you know, some trouble there if you’re eating that food.
We know wheat sensitivities are unique in that the immune response that results from them last much longer than most other immune responses. It can last three to six months from a serving size that is a 10th of the size of your thumbnail is enough to trigger an immune response three to six months down the road in someone who is sensitive to this.
That does not mean they’re eating it every day. I’m saying that if I ate it today, it’s December 5th at the time of recording this. So, it’s December 5th, I record this, I eat wheat today, and then for three, six months, I don’t eat any wheat. I could still be having that immune response because I am someone who’s sensitive to wheat. That’s crazy. So, that’s the one exception on this. Everything else we can kind of work with a little bit differently.
How we are measuring the sensitivities on this one is also a little different, and I’d like to mention that before I continue. I should have done that probably before. On most food sensitivity tests, the major ones that you’re seeing on the market, they’re measuring one of a few things, IgG, IgA, IgM, or maybe a combination of a few of those. That stands for immunoglobulin G, A, and M respectively. That is important.
MRT is Food Sensitivity Testing that is Highly Accurate
That is a few ways the body can react to a potential antigen. The potential antigen in this case, are the food proteins or the chemicals. It’s just a fancy word to say the things that we’re reacting to.
When we’re looking at the MRT test, which is the one that we’re using today, it’s called the MRT by Oxford Biomedical Labs. It’s the one that we train you on in the course if you’re a Canadian or American resident. I think that they have this somewhere else, but don’t quote me on it. So, I’m just going to say Canada and America for right now. It is patented technology.
If you’re watching this on YouTube, you might have actually noticed at the top right, you will see the US patents are actually up there. What they patented is the technology to measure volumetric changes in the white blood cell when a potential antigen is exposed to the white blood cell. What does this mean?
Well, remember, mediator release test. What is a mediator? A mediator is something like IgG, IgA, IgM, or thousands, it’s probably more like hundreds, but at least hundreds of different ways that we can respond immunologically this test accounts for.
Now, when I’m looking at the green or the yellow or the red here, I can’t say, oh, hey Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so. You are reacting with an IgG response. I have no idea. This test is non-specific, but it is highly accurate. In fact, at the time of recording this, they still have 93.6% replicability rates in their testing, which is phenomenal.
In the world of food sensitivity testing, they have been clinically shown to be highly correlated with symptomology.
MRT is Food Sensitivity Testing with Top Technology
That means if the person has symptoms, the food sensitivity test is highly correlated with those symptoms, generally speaking. It’s not perfect, but generally speaking, it’s pretty good for those things. So, it’s a great test. That’s the way that we’re looking at this. It’s a little bit different, right? We’re indirectly looking at hundreds, if not thousands of different ways that the body can react immunologically to a food or food protein versus just one or two. It kind of becomes a no-brainer then.
Because the MRT is maybe like $100, $200 tops more expensive than the other tests on the market, except you are getting so much more, not even comparable. It’s not like you’re even getting three things more, you’re getting hundreds more things looked at indirectly. So, it just makes sense to use this test whenever you have access to it.
There are a few cases where you’d want to use different types of tests called Zoomers. We’re going to have someone on in January to go over that. Those are specific to gluten, corn, dairy, and they have relevance. There’s a reason that we use them.
But any other time, if you have access to MRT or the technology, maybe it’s licensed in other countries, I would imagine they’ve done that and it’s under a different name, then you want to use this one. Because it is by far the most accurate thing that we have currently.
Utilizing BROW with Food Sensitivity Testing
Bringing this all home. I was talking about the client and what I look for first. So, I’m looking at the big picture of the test. I’m looking at, do they have that wheat, dairy sensitivity, or both? And in this case, we have both. Remember, I don’t care if wheat is in yellow or red, if it’s in red, it’s even worse. But I don’t care if it’s in yellow.
If they are reacting to this, I do not want them consuming it. And frankly I don’t want them consuming it anyway. Wheat’s not particularly good. It’s doused in glyphosate in the United States of America. There are many arguments I can make against this. But when you are reacting immunologically to it, then that’s a no brainer. You do not want this.
What’s also interesting when we start looking big picture at this woman’s test is there’s an acronym called BROW. This is the acronym we use to help people get gluten free. It stands for barley, rye, oats, and wheat. Now, out of those four, you might know this already, there is only one that is not inherently containing of gluten and that’s oats.
The reason oats get put into the acronym of BROW though, is because oats are the most cross-contaminated food when it comes to wheat. They are typically harvested together. They might go on the same trucks. It’s very, very common for oats to have hints of wheat in it.
So, for someone who’s sensitive or allergic, you do not want to mess with this. What’s interesting is when we look at her results here, we can actually see she almost uses the acronym.
Commercial Break – The 12 Days of Christmas Special
[00:00:00] Detective Ev: Hey guys, it is Detective Ev here with some great news. The team that does the podcast asked me to record some exclusive content. We did a 12 Days of Christmas Special. We recorded 20-minute episodes with some of our top FDNs, including Reed Davis, the founder of FDN. We only dive into the deep stuff. No formalities, no bios, just tips to actually help your health and or your business.
We have about six episodes on the business side, and then six advanced health tips ranging from secret gluten sensitivities and how to deal with them around the holidays, how to deal with mold exposure. We got all this good stuff.
You want to go to fdntraining.com/insider, that is fdntraining.com/insider. There you can sign up for that podcast.
It is not going to be released to the public. It is only for people who are registered. You will have it dripped into your email for the 12 Days of Christmas. That is fdntraining.com/insider, and you can check out the link in our show notes as well.
All right, now back to today’s episode.
Investigating Dairy Sensitivity with Food Sensitivity Testing
Her most sensitive food in the grain’s thing, which is off the charts almost, super high sensitivity is barley followed by rye and basically tied for second is wheat. We see three out of those four are right on top there. Of course, oats don’t actually inherently have gluten, so it’s kind of interesting.
This to me, is a woman that has a very severe gluten sensitivity most likely. She is not doing well with this. That’s one thing. I know I just got an easy win for her, and I can help her feel a lot better very quickly.
Then I go down to dairy. What’s interesting is they specify different types of proteins in dairy. Especially if you’ve been into the world of lifting, you know there’s different types. There’s whey, there’s casein. That’s one of the ways they’re able to measure the different types of dairy here.
We have cow’s milk. She’s very sensitive to this. Cheddar cheese and American cheese in the yellow. Whey, cottage cheese, yogurt, and goat’s milk, all doing okay. When I see this though, the problem is there’s so much overlap with these products, you need the person to remove some dairy for a good amount of time there. You don’t want to be messing with that too much.
Thank God. I mean, coffee is in the green for her so she can keep consuming that maybe. It’s a little high green, but it’s okay. Remember, I’m walking you through this in the same way that I walked through this with her. We have other things on here that she’s sensitive to.
Short-term Plan for Gluten and Dairy Food Sensitivity
We have shrimp, we have mustard seed, we have cane sugar. We have mung bean and garbanzo bean. We have tomato, which we’ll get to in a moment, and we have grapefruit. But the main things are this. I’m asking this client, if they can remove the other things, fantastic. But if I can get them started with the wheat and the dairy, they’re going to feel amazing. Actually, that’s what happened.
With this client, I said, hey, so glad we ran the test. Look at these results. We found some big things here. She was amazed. This was motivating for her. Totally worth the money. What we did is we made a short-term plan. Because I know someone like this, as a practitioner, they’re going to feel very good like I said, if they get off the wheat.
I know that they need to be off wheat permanently, but I just start with 30 days. Cause they’re going to feel better after the 30 days and then it becomes kind of a self-fulfilling practice. Like they are going to want to do this on their own because they notice how good they feel.
So, I made a deal with her. I said, I know you’re super motivated by your son because she wanted to help him be as healthy as possible and he had a lot of stuff going on and is thankfully getting a lot better, which is awesome. But she wanted to be this mom that could be an example for her son, learn much so she could help him, and be there for him. I knew she’s motivated.
Taking it Slow and Seeing Tremendous Results
I said, hey, I know it’s a big change for you because you’re doing the fast-food thing right now and this is going to completely eliminate fast food from your life. But we need to do a wheat and dairy thing for 30 days. Is that something that you can commit to? And she said, heck yes. She was in.
Now, this is what’s interesting. This is why sometimes less is more. There’s a saying that goes, “anything permitted increases.” What does this mean? It means if we start watching 10 minutes of TV at the end of the night, generally speaking, it’s not guaranteed, but generally speaking, that’s going to probably turn into 20 and then 30 because anything permitted increases.
Likewise, the opposite’s also true. If we start going to the gym once a week, we probably have a tendency to start going two, three, even four times a week eventually, because anything permitted increases. So, we just start slow. We start super slow and it’s going to work for her. I tell her to do this for 30 days.
We get back on the call, this woman lost 40 pounds in 30 days, and her TSH went from a 111 to a 4.5. One disclaimer on this, she also started taking thyroid medication, which is absolutely an intelligent thing to be doing with a TSH like that. But did that account for all the stuff that she experienced? Absolutely not.
The doctor himself was completely amazed by what we did. They couldn’t believe that her TSH dropped that low in one month. They couldn’t believe the weight thing. She was feeling great. They had to lower the dose of the medication actually.
Testing the Food Sensitivity
It was a really cool experience. And it was a mix of both Western and functional medicine, it was the best of both worlds.
We got all this done. Then I’m on the call and she tells me, hey, you know what? Not only did I stop eating fast food, but I’ve been going to the farmer’s market with my husband, and we’re picking up stuff like where I’m cooking at home. I didn’t tell her to do that. I didn’t ask her to do that. I didn’t even suggest to do that yet. I said, just remove wheat and dairy.
She said, well, you know what I realized? When you’re trying to remove wheat and dairy, it’s kind of just easier to go all in with it and cook for yourself. I’m like, bingo, right? Anything permitted increases. So, she ended up creating a lot of these wonderful habits.
Now, again, on this test, you will find this happens with clients. She messaged me probably two or three months afterwards, and we were still working with each other at that point. She had pasta, right? Because people forget how bad they once felt, and they want to test it. I get that. I don’t recommend it, but I get it. We’re all human. I’ve done it myself.
So, she tested it. I forget what happened. It was something maybe with hives or just puffiness, something like blew up, headache. I don’t know what it was, but it was a common symptom that you might see more with like an allergy. Not that I’m suggesting she has an allergy, but I’m just saying it was a weird symptom that she hadn’t even had before. Her body really responded well to getting off of it.
Lifetime Gluten-free from Food Sensitivity Testing Experience
I think it kind of packed a punch when she ate it that day. Again, remember what I said? It’s a self-fulfilling outcome eventually. She messaged me.
She said, you know what? I’m done. I don’t want to do this. Then you told me that immune response lasts for three to six months. It wasn’t worth it. I felt like crap an hour later, and now I know for three to six months I have elevated antibodies because of what I did. It’s just not worth it. So, this was a lifetime gluten-free person now because of the things that we learned on this test.
Another thing that we can do when we’re approaching the big picture on this test is kind of notice certain patterns. Now what I am saying is not diagnostic in the slightest. It’s just something to keep note of and it shows you how we think as FDNs.
Let’s say this woman felt terrible but had not gone to the doctor yet or at least did not have a diagnosis of Hashimoto’s. This is very common. It’s more common that they would’ve went to the doctor and got misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. That’s more common.
Well, I can see on here. Hmm. You feel terrible. You got the weight issues. Wheat sensitivity, grains are through the roof. We got the dairy thing. What I have noticed in autoimmune patients specifically is that other sensitivities start to manifest eventually. You might have heard this if you’ve been in the space for a while. Many autoimmune patients cannot eat night shades. They start to react to night shades.
Cross-contamination Vs. Cross-reactivity
And what do we have up here? You guessed it. Tomatoes, super red. Green pepper also in the yellow. These are night shades. Okay, interesting. So, we’re starting to see that.
What I will also see sometimes, which I admittedly do not see here, is corn. That’s why this is not diagnostic by any means, but you’ll see corn on there as well. If someone has been suffering for a very, very, very long time, she went pretty early to the doctor. I think her body just kind of like reacted super strong once the chain finally broke. But you know, she was good for a while.
But if you go sick for a while and then ran something like this, you might not only see the corn, but you can see what’s called cross-reactivity. This is different than cross-contamination. Cross-contamination is I eat the oats and there was some wheat in it. Cross-reactivity is a phenomenon in the body that the body actually starts reacting to things that have a similar molecular structure to the food that it’s reacting to.
Normally the main culprit is wheat, and then it goes for dairy. It goes for corn; it goes for cocoa a lot of the times. Coffee and caffeine can be on there, sugar can be on there and we do see that she is sensitive to sugar in here. The night shades can be on there. This is really common stuff and it is patterns that we learn to see as FDNs. It’s patterns that you just start to pick up on the longer that you do this.
Getting in the Head of an FDN
So hypothetically, if I knew that this woman felt the way that she did, but I did not have that diagnosis of Hashimoto’s cause no one had thought about that or no one ran the test, which again, is very common, unfortunately, I’m thinking about this one. I’m going to ask her, hey, maybe you’d like to consider running some type of autoimmune panel or getting some blood work because I’m curious about a few markers here.
Of course, we would be correct if we would’ve seen her thyroid out of whack. If you run an autoimmune panel, there’s an interesting lab by Cyrex. You can actually see; I think it’s antibodies that are correlated with like the 20 most common autoimmune diseases. Very useful test. Very expensive but worth it if you consider what you’re actually testing. I would be running that here. I would be looking at that. Thankfully we already had it, but you know, I’d be running that here.
Again, we don’t want to overanalyze this test. I mean, there’s only so much that we can do with this. These are just examples of how we think, this is how you can kind of get that big picture idea.
There’s one other thing I wanted to show you guys today though, and it’s this program at the bottom. You’ll see the word LEAP if you’re looking on YouTube. It just means lifestyle, eating, and performance. It’s kind of like the consumer facing brand for Oxford Biomedical Labs because they get very technical, they’re very sciencey. If you go to their website, it’s total nerd stuff. It’s stuff that we like, but the average consumer might be really overwhelmed by or confused by.
Using the LEAP Program to Perfect the MRT
I like this protocol that they provide you at the bottom. This is provided to every single person that runs the test. It is included in the cost. It’s not something that many FDNs use. It’s not something that many practitioners use, and I don’t blame them, I get why. It’s complicated. There are a few reasons that we’ll go over. But if you have the ability to do it or the discipline to do it, I have seen high levels of good results with this.
So, you have phase one, phase two, phase three, phase four, phase five, and then there’s something after that which we’ll touch on in a moment. The reason this is different for every single person, like your MRT phase one, would be different than my MRT phase one. What it is doing is it’s trying to perfect that missing percentage. Remember I said this test has 93.6% replicability rates. Well, what about the other 6.4? This is how they try to perfect it.
What’s tough is when we have an immune response from a food, it doesn’t always manifest into something noticeable. It usually does. It doesn’t always manifest into something noticeable. These people might not understand that something’s happening to them, even if they’re sensitive to the food. So, assuming that we get lucky, and they do feel off or just not as good as they normally do, or have a direct symptom, like a headache, rash, or whatever, this is when this can be particularly useful.
Phase one are the foods that the person was least sensitive to, and they do take all the groups. So, they take the least sensitive things out of all the groups.
How to Eat on the LEAP Program
You see proteins at the top. Then we have starches and grains, vegetables, fruits, dairy, nuts, seeds, oils, and flavor enhancers is what they call the other section. This works well in this case, honestly. Because it’s only for seven days, it’s days one through seven.
You can eat any of the foods on this list, and it just so happens that the client today has like beef, chicken, egg whites, tuna is in the protein. The protein is the thing that kills people, not literally of course, but figuratively. Because if the person has like really crappy proteins like just fish, some people love fish, but they don’t necessarily want tuna and salmon first thing in the morning for seven days. It can become kind of tricky.
In this case, egg white is perfect. Then not to mention the starches and grains. We have white potatoes and sweet potatoes on here. Butternut squash is in the vegetables, celery. Fruits are cranberry, strawberry, watermelon. We have a lot of different things that we can use here and make some great meals with.
How this would work for her is from days one through seven, we are only eating the foods in that column. Then when phase two comes around, it’s days eight through 12, it’s a little different. It is not just the foods in phase two, this seems to confuse people. What you are doing is now adding on the foods in phase two to phase one. Why are we doing this?
We are starting out with the least sensitive foods and then scaling up. Because if you just use basic logic, you are least likely to react to the ones in phase one and possibly you’ll react to ones with a little bit of a higher green sensitivity.
How to Course Correct If Symptoms Appear
Now remember, green should not be something that you’re sensitive to in theory, but this is not a perfect test. There is no such thing as a perfect food sensitivity test yet. The allergy tests are good, but that’s IgE. It’s something very specific. It doesn’t account for the hundreds of other ways that the body can react to food proteins.
So, this is how we kind of perfect it. We got phase one and then phase two will be eight through 12. We add in those foods. Then let’s say we get to phase three, and this is days 13 through 17. Remember, we’re adding in phase three foods. We are able to eat phase one, phase two, and phase three now.
Let’s say in phase three, I noticed I started to get those headaches again. Or let’s say this client, all of a sudden, the weight loss stopped, or the fatigue came back. They weren’t feeling themselves when they had been feeling really good. It might be an indicator that it was one of the foods that we consumed in this phase. So, we use common sense.
In her case, one of the things in the protein section that she has for phase three, she has venison, red kidney bean, clam, rainbow trout, turkey. Let’s say she started eating turkey. She was throwing that in with her egg whites. She starts to have some reactions. She’s eating that in the morning and not really feeling good in the afternoon.
We can use some common sense and say, this is probably the turkey. We course correct, remove the turkey. Oh wait, I feel better. Okay, that was one of the foods that pissed me off. Everything else worked well in phase three, but turkey, not so well.
Alleviating Anxiety and Depression Using LEAP
Then I continue my protocol, I move on to phase four, and hopefully everything just continues to sail smoothly. If it doesn’t, we’re able to course correct, need be. I hope that makes sense. Again, this is not for everyone.
Some people don’t have the discipline, some people’s test results are not really optimal for it. When it’s not optimal, like usually it’s the proteins again that get people with this, I will tell the client combine phase one and phase two from day one and still just do the full 12 days.
That typically works for people. Cause I think the phase one is with an abundance of caution. When you’re only doing phase one, you are being extremely cautious. Generally speaking, people are going to feel fine in phase one and phase two. So, they’re being extra safe there. I think it’s fine to combine both together.
But what we’re able to do now is we’re able to give the body a little bit of a break. We’re able to lower that immune response and people can feel really good, really quick. I interviewed someone years ago who actually, ironically, did not go through FDN. They went through a doctor that happened to run the MRT exclusively. That was the only test they mainly did. They used this LEAP protocol, which I never hear about anyone doing. I was really excited about that. I thought that was cool.
This is not going to be the case for everyone. It is an exceptional story, I admit that. But this woman, her name is Brittany. She had anxiety and depression for about two to three years prior to that. Once she did this, in three days, her anxiety and depression went away.
Clear Validity with Food Sensitivity Testing
At that point, when I talked to her and interviewed her, it had been about two years since she took the test. How amazing is that? Anxiety and depression, things that we’re told are, oh, that’s a SSRI thing, right? We need benzodiazepines or Lexapro, whatever it might be. Yet this woman just removed some foods from a test, and it only took two, three days, and her anxiety and depression that she had for years went away. That’s crazy.
Untreated depression is the number one cause of suicide and suicidal thoughts. How many people are dying because of foods that they’re sensitive to? I don’t want to go off on a whole tangent there, but I’m passionate about that and I think we all should be. I mean, that’s kind of crazy to think about.
This test has a lot of validity. It works best in combination with everything else. But you can see, I mean, today was a great day for this client. It really worked out well for her. She felt a lot better. I’m super glad we got to do this with her. That’s pretty much the overall, just for the test.
I mean, we talked about the differences in how these tests work. We talked about what the green, yellow, and red means. We talked about the big picture perspective, and we talked about the five-phase protocol. Oh, that was the one thing I was missing. At the bottom, this is technically “phase six”, and it has day one, day two, day three.
What they’re trying to do here is like cycle you through foods because it is believed, I think it’s even known that if you consume foods more often, you are more likely to become sensitive or just generally reactive to them.
Conclusion
I do believe that there’s science behind that. I can’t recite the science offhand, so I’m not going to speak on that. But I think that’s why they have this.
I’ve never really had anyone do it. I don’t think it’s a hundred percent necessary, but the five-phase thing is definitely an easy win for someone. If you want to make someone feel great fast, they run this test, they go through phase one, phase two, at the very least, and they’re going to feel a lot better.
If you have any questions, you can reach out to us. Drop a comment on YouTube or you can comment to our podcast on Podbean. We will be back soon, either way with another interview or maybe analyzing some more lab results. I’m not sure what’s next, but it’s going to be fun either way. Thank you so much for listening, and I’ll talk to you again soon.
You can always visit us at functionaldiagnosticnutrition.com.
To hire a coach, go to fdnthrive.com.
For a FREE Health Review, go to fdnthrive.com/match/.
