Hello Friends! There has been much discussion about the role of inflammation in MD, and the role of the immune system. Many people have found benefit in removing foods that they are allergic/sensitive to from their diets and if I recall correctly, it was recommended in the JOH regimen that wheat was a major problem for many MD sufferers. Most of us are watching our salt intake and that is tough enough, so the thought of having to do an "elimination diet" for several weeks then reintroducing a food one at a time is a painful and lengthy process. I for one don't have the patience for it. Not to mention that sometimes you are on the elimination diet eating "low allergen" foods but you could still be sensitive to one of those too! For example, the AIP Diet (AutoImmune Protocol) has you cutting out pretty much everything but fruits and most vegetables and proteins, but I am very sensitive to most fruits (the citric acid) and garlic too! So even if I followed the AIP Diet for months.... I would be just as bad off because I would not have eliminated everything I was allergic to! Inadvertent failure for nothing! But take heart! There is testing available that can help. It is a blood test that looks for IgG reactions to food. IgG is a class of antibodies that result in delayed immune reactions (versus IgE which are the ones everyone thinks about that give more immediate reactions like anaphylaxis or rashes or hives). IgG reactions are far more subtle and equally if not more likely to contribute to MD. This is the test that naturopathic doctors and medical doctors who specialize in integrative or alternative medicine will order and have been ordering for patients for 20+ years. I know this test is offered through Genova Diagnostics in the States ("Allergix IgG4 Food Antibodies"). If you contact them they may be able to point you to a doctor in your area who will order it. If you live in Canada (as I do), it is offered through LifeLabs in partnership with Rocky Mountain Analytics and is called the RMA FST IgG Food Sensitivity Test (contact Rocky Mountain for practitioners near you). The Enhanced version of that actually does 222 foods/spices and is about $350-450 CAD. What's nice is that they also grade the reactions, where some foods will come in as a 4+ (significant reaction - avoid, avoid these foods) to 1+ (very mild reaction, you can have these once in a while) and of course the no reaction ones that you can eat freely. I did one of these about 15 years ago and it was quite accurate, revealing many things I was for sure allergic/sensitive to .... but being younger and not experiencing any debilitating symptoms from most of the offending foods... I sort of ignored the truth and lived my life. Now with MD, I cannot ignore this element any longer, with the MD forcing me to pay attention. Unfortunately, I can't find my test results from back then so I am going to have this redone next week. I have seen some articles from "medical professionals" who don't believe that IgG testing is an accurate form of food allergy/sensitivy testing but I for one had zero reactions to the test that the Allergist (ie. specialist medical doctor) did (IgE scratch test) and was told I had no food allergies.... only to find that all the things that caused me gastrointestinal upset and other symptoms showed up on the IgG testing. That was enough for me! And I know from reading these forums many of you have no faith in most doctors anyway.... And again, this type of testing has been around for decades and is the "gold standard" in alternative circles. I hope this proves useful for some of you.
I have faith in doctors and I trust that if an explanation ever appears for what Meniere causes and how to cure it, it will be thanks to medical research. What I don't have a lot of faith in, nor the majority here, is the ENT doctors who diagnose and treat Meniere. The explanation is simple: If no one knows what Meniere causes for sure, neither do doctors. And it does not help that each time a different one treats us, they change the diagnosis or the explanation, showing that they really do not know with certainty whether we have Meniere or not. In my case they have already told me that: I have Meniere, after I had an artery with a small malformation that could exert pressure on the nerve, the next doctor without me asking anything told me that I had this malformation, but that it was nothing or the cause of my symptoms and the last doctor said she thought it was stress. Regarding allergies, if you have IgG and IgE results I would simply take both as true and eliminate the foods and materials that I tested positive for either test. What can you lose by not eating a few specific things? It is worse to have to leave entire food groups without knowing which are the ones that cause you allergy as you have explained above with all fruits or all vegetables. By the way, you should also take the gluten intolerance test.
Oh, and by the way, I see on my lab requisition form that they can also do a Candida IgG "add on" test when doing the food allergy testing which checks for Candida antibodies (without requiring any additional bloodwork). This might also be useful to some as it would indicate a past or present infection (if you didn't realize you had Candida and never did anything actively to get rid of it... then you can assume it's still around....). And yes, certainly if you do both the traditional IgE allergy test and this IgG allergy test - and a food comes up on either test - then for sure remove that food one way or another! I'm merely saying that people are being underserved when traditional tests only do IgE and we need to go out of our way to get the IgG testing done....