I took all of those foods out of my diet for six months, and I later added them back in.

Other foods that I don’t eat as often also showed up – whitefish, melon, and gums, like locust bean gum, in processed foods. Foods that I ate every single day showed up – chicken, eggs, almonds, salmon, tuna, trout. I spit out the money, got a lot of blood drawn, received my test results, and was pretty sad about what I found. The people who’s opinions I trust most in the health world, like Chris Kesser, all seemed to agree that Cyrex had the best technology when it came to food intolerance testing. From my own research, I agreed that if I was going to trust any test (at all…will get to that later…), it would be the Cyrex tests. Because the test is very expensive, I obviously did a lot of research before going through with it. The test that my doctor uses is from Cyrex labs, which tests for both IgG and IgA food intolerance responses. When it comes to the accuracy of food intolerance testing, there are a lot of mixed opinions in the scientific community. When I was first trying to get to the root of my gut issues, I wanted to take a food intolerance test to see if I was eating something I was intolerant to. The symptoms are generally related to digestion, but not always. There are so many symptoms of food intolerances that it can be really hard to tell what’s happening – bloating, constipation, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, join pain, tiredness, rashes, brain fog…the list goes on. Symptoms from food intolerances can take hours or days to pop up, so it’s hard to find a correlation between why you feel a certain way and what you ate. Food intolerances, however, do not require a full-on immune system response. Usually people have no idea that they’re intolerant to certain foods because those foods are sneakily wreaking havoc inside their bodies and showing no external symptoms. Food allergies are immune system responses to certain foods. Food intolerances are not the same as food allergies, and they can be much more difficult to notice on your own. Our gut affects our digestion, yes, but also our brain and the general functioning of our bodies.

As I’ve said time and time again, a healthy gut is the key to overall health. Who cares about food intolerances?! Well, everyone should.

Let’s go back to food intolerances for a sec. The fact that this test is so accessible and so easy is what made everyone do a backflip over it. What’s so exciting about the Pinner Test? The Pinner Test is a test that you can order online, have mailed to you, and perform at home by yourself in order to discover what foods you’re intolerant to. It seemed like every blogger was taking the test, discovering shocking food intolerances, and sadly removing things from her diet. BUT IT’S FINALLY HERE! In case you didn’t know, a food intolerance test called the Pinner Test exploded all over the Internet a few months ago. **Update on THIS post is at the bottom*** **Please read my most recent post on food sensitivity testing for my updated opinions on food sensitivity testing! You can find that post here.**

Pinner test