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Tests for Immune Health Print E-mail
Written by Susan McCreadie, MD   
One of the most common questions we hear from parents is "How do I strengthen my child's immune system?"Answer? Improve your child's digestive health, because 70% of your child's immune system is in his/her gut! This part of the immune system is referred to as GALT (Gut-Associated Lymphoid Tissue). While absorbing nutrition from the food we eat, our digestive system must discriminate safe nutrients from infectious or toxic intruders. To do so, the intestines rely on an effective barrier (healthy gut lining, mucus secretions and peristaltic movement) and the immune system within the gut or GALT.  

Surprisingly, many children with unhealthy guts won't complain of stomachaches, diarrhea or constipation.  So you can't rely on digestive symptoms as an indicator of poor digestive health.  A better indicator of poor digestive health is poor immune health.  Children with immune system problems (allergies, asthma, eczema, inflammatory bowel disease, auto-immune diseases, and others) usually have poor digestive health.

Your digestive health is key to your overall health. If your digestive system is not functionally optimally, the rest of “yourself” is compromised.  

People know their digestive system is responsible for digesting and absorbing their food, but most don’t realize that this sacred process of “digestion” is how we nourish every cell in our body. What is more important than the way we “feed” our cells?  Not much. The cell is where it all happens ~ the functional basic unit of life. Each of us have about 100 trillion!  Cells are the building blocks for every organ in your body, such as your heart, your lungs, your brain, etc. We feed our cells through proper digestion of food and absorption of nutrients. This all takes place in your gut . Our digestive system should be armed with healthy gut flora.  These microorganisms together are busy doing a host of “chores” for our body including fermenting food, training our immune system, keeping growth of harmful pathogenic organisms in check, producing vitamins and hormones for our body, and more. The gut flora have been called the “forgotten organ”. We never forget our heart beats, our lungs breath, our brain thinks, but we do forget that our digestive tract has ten times the amount of microorganisms (bacteria, fungi and protozoa) than cells in the entire body and plays a major role in the normal functioning of our body.

Digestive Stool Analysis
A helpful test I use to evaluate a patient’s digestive health is a comprehensive digestive stool analysis. Genova Diagnostics does this test - find a practitioner in your area to order this test for your child. This test evaluates digestion, absorption, bacterial balance and tests for yeasts as well as parasites. I find it helpful as a beginning “snapshot” of my patients’ digestive starting point to see how imbalanced or balanced the are currently, and then I re-test them after therapeutic interventions to see in black and whie how their digestive health has improved. Improving a child's gut health dramatically improves the child's symptoms and overall health. 


Food Protein Intolerances
A major road block in improving a child's digestive health, and therefore immune health, are food protein intolerances.  Blood testing is helpful to check for food protein intolerances. I test true food allergies (IgE-mediated) and food sensitivities (IgG-mediated). Be sure to use a lab that tests for all four subclasses of IgG such as ImmunoLabs and Alletess Medical Laboratory.  You can contact both these labs to find a practitioner in your area to order food allergy and sensitivity testing for your child. 

Be sure your child is thoroughly tested for issues with milk and gluten with blood testing. Helpful tests include IgE for cow’s milk, and testing for the sub-fractions of milk with IgG and IgA testing. Sub-fractions of milk include: casein and whey. Children who test positive to casein should not eat cheese, and children who test positive to any of the 4 proteins of whey, should eliminate whey protein from their diet as well. When looking for gluten intolerance,  it's best to be very thorough. Check IgG to gluten, IgG and IgA anti-gliadin antibodies, IgA antibodies to tissue transglutaminase, anti-endomysial IgA, total IgA, and HLA typing for celiac disease (a genetic mutation test). Some of these tests can be run through standard labs, while others are run through specialty labs such as ImmunoLabs and Alletess Medical Laboratory. Depending on the clinical situation, I also test the child’s stool for gluten and cow’s milk in addition to the blood testing mentioned above. Since the immune system reactions to foods are centered within the intestinal tract, an earlier way to detect gluten and milk sensitive individuals can be through specialized stool testing done through EnteroLab.
  
Susan McCreadie, MD is a Holistic Pediatrician and co-founder of nourishMD. She shows parents how to find REAL health for their child, so they can stop treating their child's symptoms and instead find solutions that help their child heal from the inside out.