If you test positive for leaky gut with a low secretory IgA, your inflammatory distress is related to unknown food sensitivity reaction, or you are also dealing with digestive or autoimmune activity, the Mediator Release Test (MRT) food sensitivity panel is the best entry point. This blood test is the only food sensitivity panel on the market that looks at results based on the inflammatory response in your body. Many food panels look simply at immunological tagging (IgG) that can often yield a false positive, the MRT test looks at 170 foods and chemicals and takes both IgG type 3 and 4 along with the presence of inflammatory chemicals (interleukins, cytokines, prostaglandins, etc.) to assess reactivity response. This panel is used as a GPS of your body where you will remove moderate reactions for 3 months and significant reactions for 6 months while limiting diet to known non-reactive foods, then progressing with an elimination diet reentry approach. As you heal the gut lining with specific supplement regimen and food-as-medicine you will become more resilient and less reactive to foods creating both food freedom and symptom resolution.
Beyond inflammatory response to foods and chemicals, if your body isn’t equipped with the nutrients it needs to stave off free radicals and reduce inflammatory processes you won’t get resolution! If you are dealing with fatigue, hair loss, nerve tingling, or random symptom shifts and you have varied demands on your body from lifecycle or lifestyle changes, or you aren’t ready for a restrictive diet, you may consider starting with the Micronutrient Test which assesses 35 different vitamins, minerals, and antioxidants as a comprehensive report card to your nutritional status.
Note: I strongly recommend taking my Multidefense for at least 1 month leading up to the panel to cover nutritional support as a baseline, then the micronutrient test will be additional needs over a high quality multivitamin.
Although focused on cardiovascular disease, I’d also recommend looking into the Cardiometabolic panel which looks at C-Reactive Protein (CRP) as a marker of inflammation as well as fasting insulin and HgbA1C% to assess blood sugar metabolism. This test also looks at an OmegaCheck score which assesses your omega-3 anti-inflammatory to omega-6 proinflammatory ratio providing guidance on omega-3 supplementation need and diet strategy to reduce proinflammatory food sources.
