The York Test - is this worth paying for?

[crayon]

I have just seen an advert for the York Test - is it worth doing?

If anyone has successfully had it done, could they please advise which one they had?

Many thanks

What is it?

A blood test.

A lot of these intolerance tests were held up to be complete fakes by Which/the consumers association so be careful. I did have that one and why I thought it was good was it found I was allergic to nothing which I think is right and intolerant to one thing (yeast) only which was consistent with what I'd found so I was happy with it.

DD2 had the £100 one which said intolerant to dairy, wheat and citrus - pretty much what we had suspected, cutting out/down on those things has made a big difference.
I did a fair bit of research last year, and it seemed that York were one of the very few "respectable" ones.

Xenia - where did you have yours done?

Thanks everyone else.

hello, when it comes to food testing, I did hear some posisitve coments about york testing, however I recently attended a meeting with a immunologist from the new allergy clinic in london, dr George Tout, who explained how and what york testing does.

This testing is NOT something he would advise, esp for children.

They do not test for IGE rating, and test for another type of IG which inself does not indicate allergy or intolerance.
For instance the same type of IG ( 4 I think) is very high in children from africa , who live on a diet high in peanuts, they dont have an allergy or intolerance to this food. ( people are intolerant to peanuts BTW)
So simply marking the for a high rate of this type of IG is not a clear way to dx food allergy in any form.

The only clear way forward with food intolrances is to stick to the tedious elimination diet.

Thank you William'sMummy - not what I wanted to hear though! We have eliminated so much already.

Ho hum, really useful to know thank you, as they were charging £250

wm sounds as if she knows what she's talking about. I did the york testing knowing there;s been huge public criticism of many of these testing services and lots are a complete. I'm not a scientist and I don't know if the york test is any good but I did find giving up yeast made me feel better - that of course ould be psycosomatic. It was last year I had it done and I ordered it on line. I didn't find the telephone service they offered after - a phone call much good as I couldn't think of much to ask the man.

WM is right. I did some research once, sending blood samples off for testing. Samples labelled with different names but actually from one person came back with different results. And that's just for starters...

Thanks all - back to elimination then.

Itdepends what you expect to get from it. If you have not a clue what may be causing an allergy like sympthom, it is a good place to start as you can test quite a good number of allergens in one go. However, I wouldn't recommend taking thier results too seriously without having further more reliable tests.

DS had the intolerace one and came as positive to 97 of the 113 allergens tested. We decided to order RASTs for those which scored +3 and +4. All of them (but glutten)were confirmed as allergies by the RAST. However DS tested positive to many many things he can eat without problem. If we had taken the YORK test results to the letter DS would have been brought up on mushrooms, meats and apricots!

My main concern about the York test is that, although they include a telephone appointment with a nutritionist in the fee, there is not enough time during that telephone session to provide enough advice to deal with a high number of intolerances which may lead to poor nutrion (in terms of removing too many essential things without adequate advice on what to replace them with.... although, being fair... there is not much advice given by any other instance either)

Thanks Chandra. I'm new to all this - how do I get a RAST test instead?

Many thanks

You can get the test on the NHS but be prepared to wait forever for an appointment (we waited 18m even when DS was in the list for a reaction to peanuts). Your GP can also order them directly if you cover the £8 cost per each allergen tested. However, most GPs would try to avoid this as they are not exactly trained on what to do with the results so the safest bet would be to refer you to an allergy clinic.

If you have BUPA you may get an appointment very quickly.

What is the problem Crayon? do you have an idea of what may be causing the problem? would it help to keep a food-environment/reaction diary?

DS2 is one problem, I am the other one!

We have seen a paed for DS2 and his seems to be improving very very gradually with age. He gets urticaria (sp?) and scratches himself to shreds. This winter he was able to eat fish without problems, so that was a great improvement. He is allergic to lots of other things (tomatoes, citrus fruits, strawberry, eggs, nuts etc) but fish was the one I was worried about in terms of his nutrition.

However, within weeks of him be able to tolerate fish and us beginning to eat like a 'normal' family, I seem to have developed the same problem! It is controllable with steriods, but I don't like using these as I am breastfeeding and obviously am concerned about skin thinning in the long term.

Does this happens only when you eat fish? if the answer is yes, perhaps there's no further need for more test as you would know the answer already.

As for fish and nutrition, it is a pitty not being able to eat it but there are a lot of other sources of protein that you and your DS could have in its place without much itchiness . DS is also allergic to egg, fish, nuts, soya and beans, etc. And so far, as long as he has 2 portions of protein a day (meat, chicken, etc.) he is ok and growing fine.

Chandra: It's worse when I eat fish, but I have a low/medium level of irritation whatever I eat and am still having to use betnovate or scratch my hand to bits.

I guess I have a bit of a hang up about all those fish oils and would like him to get them, though I know some people say children don't eat fish in enough quantity to make much difference anyhow.

I think that in that case perhaps a York test may help (just to identify more suspects in one go). It may be an idea to test yourself and decide whether it is helping before testing DS. I

Fish are a bit of a problem... DS doesn't even tolerate the supplements.

**

No

If anyone has had the york allergy test YOU CANT BELIEVE IT!! My doctors results nhs came back as normal .
NO allergies at all.
York said wheat and milk class 4. plus eggs and soy class 3.

So who is correct..? Nhs or york..I am so confused now!! Paid £200 FOR YORK AND £0 for nhs.