One of the best gifts you can give your body is to feed it nourishing food full of immune strengthening phytochemicals and traditional nutrients. But what if the apple you eat everyday is hurting you rather than helping? Is it possible for a fiber-filled fruit packed with beneficial antioxidants to kick your immune system into a constant and harmful state of overdrive?

It certainly is! In fact, people are finding everyday the food they once thought supported their health, is slowly deteriorating it. Biochemical individuality plays an enormous role in how our bodies react to certain food and environmental stimuli making what we eat and breathe critical factors in our overall health including, injury recovery, sleeping patterns and weight management.

We also know that eating the same foods everyday, as opposed to rotating foods, can create intolerances and nutritional deficiencies leading to a host of undesirable problems due to an overactive and exhausted immune system. Digestive problems, migraines, sore joints, allergy symptoms, and sinusitis, just to name a few. Can’t loose the 15 pounds that has taken up residence in your body for the past two years? It may not be that you are eating too much; you may just be eating the wrong foods for your body.

Since 80% of the immune system (white blood cells) resides in the gut, food compatibility is crucial. Ingesting incompatible foods pushes the body into a constant “fight mode,” where it continually tries to win over the enemy food invaders. This creates a chronic state of inflammation, and the body loses its ability to properly process ingested foods. This means that instead of efficiently burning fat, the body stores it. The immune system’s job is to attack enemy invaders, but food shouldn’t be one of them.

Medical science now has the tools to detect food, chemical and environmental invaders at a cellular level, in turn, allowing us to assist each patient in customizing their food and lifestyle choices. Typically, within days of initiating an optimum food rotation and irritant elimination plan, patients feel less pain, experience better recovery, begin losing unwanted pounds, and are on the road to a speedy recovery.

The ALCAT Test is one of the amazing tools we use at FORMA that helps pinpoint diet and environmental culprits wreaking havoc on certain bodies. Because the technology measures the body’s cellular response to challenges, the results are incredibly specific making food selection and environmental management easy.

A 2009 study conducted at Baylor University Sports Medicine and Performance Institute in Houston, Texas, found that 98 percent of participants either lost weight and/or improved body composition by following the ALCAT Test.

The ALCAT helps us target each patient’s compatible and incompatible foods, chemicals, and environmental stimuli, as well as outlines a way to utilize this new information. Over 350 foods, medicinal herbs, chemicals, molds, antibiotics, and additives are tested. The process is simple.

• Your doctor at FORMA determines at what point an ALCAT is indicated to aid in your wellness and injury recovery.
• A blood sample is taken in our office and sent to a lab where it is combined with various food, chemicals and other factors.
• Changes in the volume and size of white blood cells are measured in response to the stimuli.
• Results are available in two weeks and outlined in an easy-to-read format showing incompatible and safe foods/elements, which are broken down by level of reaction.
• Each patient receives the Standard Test Results, a Rotation Diet, Results Guide, and Wallet-Size Results Card.
• A four-day rotation diet is specified as a way to reduce or eliminate sensitivities and intolerances over time.
• Each patient meets with Dr. Carvalho to discuss his or her personalized results and to establish an “action plan.”
• Most insurance companies cover the ALCAT Test.

There is often confusion about the difference between food allergies and intolerances/sensitivities. A true food or environmental allergy is typically brought on immediately after ingestion or exposure causing severe symptoms such as shortness of breath, swollen tongue, hives and intense diarrhea. Even a small amount of the offender can’t be tolerated. If you know or suspect you have true allergies to certain foods, chemicals or medications, please check with your primary care physician to undergo specific allergy tests (IgE anti-body tests).

Sensitivities and intolerances generally cause delayed reactions sometimes up to two weeks after ingesting errant food or coming in contact with incompatible stimuli. Because of this delay, targeting the offenders can be difficult and time consuming unless a testing tool such as the ALCAT is utilized.

The ALCAT Test is just one of the many tools available at FORMA to help your doctors treat the whole body in efforts to optimize recovery time, and promote long-term well-being and overall quality of life. There is nothing more rewarding or emotionally charging than seeing a patient’s life change dramatically as he or she moves from a pain-filled to a pain-free life.

For more information on the ALCAT Test, or to find out if the FORMA medical staff feels it’s right for you, please call 949.999.0777 today.

References:

Middle East Journal of Family Medicine, 2009; http://www.mejfm.com/mejfmApr09_vol7-iss3/alcat.htm

ALCAT Worldwide, 2012; https://www.alcat.com/clinical_info.php