Yorktest - have done one?

[Pitchounette]

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Ds had it earlier than that. Good thing about York test is that you get to test for 113 allergens in one go. Bad thing is that the test is not extremely reliable and it could give you fake negatives or fake positives results.

DS had it, and it came with a worryingly high level of things he was intolerant to. We took note of the foods which displayed a Grade 3 or 4 and order a RAST test for them. All were confirmed as allergies.

DS had a bad time with constipation and in DS' case this was due to milk. As soon as we removed the milk from his diet the constipation, bloated tummy, eczema disapeared, his asthma also got much better.

I have had 2 Yorktests done but they were for myself.
I also had the more indepth one at 113 and it came back that I had a few intollerances,mainly being gluten,wheat and chocolate.By cutting these foods out my health vastly improved so I do think the test definately helped me.Saying that,my gp thought it was a load of nonsense!

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I tried a home test once and got a false negative. Wouldn't trust them personally but they might suggest things for an exclusion diet.

Ds was about 2.5, I think, mind you many of the confirmed positives are things that he will be outgrowing anyway. (they are still getting to terms with the new foods)

I think the one and main advantage of York test is that it is a good place to start if you don't have any clue about what may be causing the problem, and you can order it even if your GP finds it difficult to believe that you need it (why I say that? because it took me 6 months and a private RAST test to convince the idiot GP that what DS had had was a reaction to peanuts... ) But as I said, it will be good to be prepared to corroborate the results with a more reliable test.

The test DS had was for intolerances (113), they said that they wouldn't do the allergy one for a child that young. However, and as I said, everything that scored high in DS's York Test was confirmed as a proper allergy by RAST and Skin Prick Test.

For the allergy test I think that you need to take a large sample of blood (may need a nurse to do it), for the intolernace one you get a little pack with a lancet and a tiny container with a rod similar in size to half a toothpick. You only need to hit the skin with the lancet and collect a few drops of blood with the little rod provider, send it back by post and they will send the report in a month with the contacts of the nutritionist whose consultation is included in the fee.

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I'm with tatt - wouldn't trust them. Health Which? once ran a test, sending blood samples from the same person but labelled with different names. Results came back different. Also failed to pick up people with properly diagnosed allergies and claimed people who had no allergies did have problems.

Waste of time. If you think your child is allergic to or properly intolerant of a food he should be seen by a consultant allergist/immunologist. York tests have been shown to be a load of rubbish by Which and by Watchdog.

Hope he gets some relief from the constipation.

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chronic constipation is as likely to be not drinking enough liquid as a food intolerance. Of course if he drinks gallons you could try avoiding bananasa and introducing soemthing like prune juice or figs. If that fails try digestive enzymes.

Agree with Tat. My MiL gets constipated all the time but for some reason cannot get her head around the connection between that and drinking lots of water. She looks at us like we are mad (I think she thinks water = peeing!?!). Pitchounette am sure you are making sure your DS is drinking enough water, and have tried pear juice, dried apricots etc etc etc....

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Pitchounette

My sons constipation was caused by wheat and dairy intoerance and was fuck all to do with dehydration as he drank ( and still drinks) plain water all day - lots of it.

Personally I think the York test screening is more reliable that any of the high street testing but the best way to get to the bottom of intolerances is to do the boring but effective food diary and food rotation and elimination.

As there is no absoloute test for intolerances that was the toute I went.

I think if I had to approach it now I would do the Yorktest as an indication of most likely suspects but then do diary/withdrawal/re-introduction thing

Good luck.
Constipation is distressing in a little one.

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If your DS has been referred to paed do not take wheat/gluten out of his diet until you have discussed this with the paed as they may want to test for coeliac disease to rule that out and he has to be on a normal gluten containing diet for the blood test to be accurate. Constipation can be an indication of coeliac disease (which surprises a lot of people).

As for cooking without dairy, gluten and soya - no problem. Dove's Farm Glutenfree flour can be substituted directly for most recipes (except yeast ones when you should use the recipes on the Dove Farm pack), Rice Milk can be substituted for ordinary milk. It's amazing how you can adapt recipes - the cakes and buns I bake for my son are free of dairy, gluten and eggs. There is a lot of hidden gluten about but, when you need it, you will get a lot of help here:

members2.boardhost.com/glutenfree/

and the attached supplementary board has thousands of gf recipes saved on it:

coeliac.info/suppboard/

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Pitchouette
I use this

My DS also has ASD but the recipes are greatfor anyone who has to avoid G&C.

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total bobbins

(not you pitchounette, the "test")

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Not growing, dropping down centiles, triedness begins to sound like coeliac. When is your paed appointment? If you don't have a date yet then he needs to go on eating wheat but if it was months away you could try gluten free then go back onto it for 6 weeks.

sorry - have just seen a post on another thread saying the advice is now 12 weeks back on gluten before tests - and you should be seen within that time.

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