Food Sensitivity Test and Food Allergy Testing

You bloat after meals and you can’t predict which meals. You’re foggy by two in the afternoon. Your skin flares and it has nothing to do with your skincare. You feel puffy, heavy, and not like yourself, and every standard test came back normal.

Here’s the short answer. Food can drive inflammation in your body, and inflammation is what’s producing those symptoms. A food sensitivity test is a blood test that shows me which foods your immune system is responding to, so we can narrow the field instead of guessing. I use it as a starting map, then we confirm the real answers by removing specific foods and reintroducing them one at a time. That’s how you find out what’s actually bothering you, without cutting out half your diet and learning nothing.

The symptoms that bring women in for food testing

Here’s what I hear every week at my practice in Lafayette, and from women driving in from Walnut Creek, Danville, Alamo, and across Lamorinda:

  • Bloating after meals, and it doesn’t follow an obvious pattern

  • Brain fog in the afternoon that you’ve been blaming on sleep, your kids, or your job

  • Skin that flares, breaks out, or stays red and irritated for no clear reason

  • Puffiness, especially in your face and hands, that comes and goes

  • Joint aches and stiffness that don’t match your activity level

  • Fatigue after eating, the kind where you need to lie down

  • Digestion that changed in your forties and nobody connected it to anything

  • Headaches you’ve stopped mentioning because nobody had an answer

  • Weight that won’t move no matter how carefully you eat

That last group is the one that makes women cry in my office. You’re not imagining it. Something real is happening, and “normal” on a standard lab panel and “feeling like yourself” are two very different things.

Can food cause inflammation? Yes. Food is one of the biggest daily inputs your immune system deals with, and when your body is reacting to something you’re eating three times a day, you feel it everywhere. In your gut. In your energy. In your skin. In your joints.

The problem isn’t that you don’t know food matters. The problem is that you don’t know which food.

What a food sensitivity test actually does

This is the part I want you to understand, because it’s what makes the test worth doing.

A food sensitivity test measures your immune system’s antibody response to specific foods. It gives me a list. That list is a starting map, not a verdict, and here’s how I use it:

We test. The panel shows me which foods your immune system is reacting to.

We narrow the field. Instead of a vague instruction to cut out gluten and dairy and see how you feel, we’re working from your body’s actual data. That takes you from a hundred possibilities down to a handful.

We remove those specific foods for a defined window. Not forever. A set period, with a plan.

We reintroduce them one at a time and watch what your body does. This is where the real answers come from. Your symptoms are the data that matters. The panel just tells us where to look first.

And here’s something the list tells me that most people miss. If a lot of foods come back reactive, that’s information too. A long list of reactions usually isn’t a long list of food problems. It’s a sign of deeper gut inflammation, and that changes the plan completely. In that case, chasing individual foods is the wrong move. We work on the gut first, and the reactivity settles down on its own.

That’s why I don’t hand you a printout and send you home. A result you can’t interpret is worse than no result, because it turns into six months of eliminating twenty foods and learning nothing.

We test. We don’t guess. And then we confirm.

Research supports this approach. A randomized controlled trial published in Gut found that patients with IBS who eliminated foods based on their antibody test results had significantly greater symptom improvement than those following a sham elimination diet (Atkinson et al., 2004).

‍Food allergy, food sensitivity, and food intolerance: how to tell them apart

Allergy, sensitivity, and intolerance get talked about as if they’re the same thing. They aren’t, and knowing which one you’re dealing with is what tells us which test to run. Here’s how to tell them apart.

Food allergy Food sensitivity Food intolerance Celiac disease
What’s happening IgE immune reaction to a food protein Immune response to a food, usually IgG, driving low-grade inflammation Enzyme or digestive issue, no antibodies involved Autoimmune reaction to gluten that damages the small intestine
How fast Minutes to two hours Hours to days, delayed and hard to trace Usually within hours of eating Ongoing with continued gluten exposure
Typical symptoms Hives, swelling, throat tightness, vomiting Bloating, brain fog, fatigue, joint aches, skin flares, headaches Gas, bloating, cramping, diarrhea Digestive symptoms, anemia, fatigue, nutrient deficiencies, skin rash
How it’s tested Blood test, run here Blood panel, run here Breath test, or guided elimination and reintroduction Blood screening here, with biopsy as the gold standard for confirmation

I test for all of this here, including true IgE allergy testing. You don’t need one appointment for allergy testing, a different provider for sensitivity testing, and a third place for celiac screening. Same doctor, same visit, one plan, one person reading the results. Results generally come back within one to two weeks.

What to expect when you test with me

We talk first. Every food testing conversation starts with a consultation, because the panel I order depends on your history. If your main issue is bloating and irregularity, we may need to look at gut function before we look at foods at all. Sometimes the answer isn’t a food. Sometimes it’s SIBO, low stomach acid, or a hormone shift that slowed your digestion down.

We test what’s actually relevant. That may be a food sensitivity panel on its own, or a comprehensive gut and digestion panel alongside it, or hormone and nutrient testing in the same round. Panels range from a couple of dozen foods up to several hundred, and which one you get depends on your history rather than on a package.

I read your results out loud, with you. Not a PDF in your inbox. I walk you through what’s elevated, what’s meaningful, what’s probably noise, and what we’re going to do about it. You leave with a written plan.

We eliminate, then we reintroduce. A defined window, a specific list, and then foods come back one at a time while we track how you respond.

We rebuild. Restriction is not the goal. Getting foods back on your plate is the goal, alongside gut repair and nutrient support where you need it. I’ve seen too many women stuck on a permanent list of forbidden foods with no plan for getting off it.

Already have labs from someone else? Bring them. I’ll read any labs from within the past three to six months, including panels ordered by another provider or bought on your own. You don’t have to start over just because you started somewhere else.

Is a food intolerance test right for me?

It might be, and it might not be the first thing. Here’s how I sort it:

Testing makes sense if your symptoms are clearly tied to eating, they’re delayed and hard to pin down, you’ve already tried elimination on your own without a clear result, or you just want a structured place to start instead of guessing.

We should look at your gut first if you have significant bloating, reflux, constipation, or diarrhea, or a history of IBS or SIBO. Gut permeability and bacterial overgrowth can make you reactive to a long list of foods. Leave the terrain alone and you’ll keep reacting to everything.

We should look at your hormones alongside it if you’re in perimenopause and menopause and your digestion, weight, or skin changed on the same timeline as everything else. Your gut motility and your gut lining are hormone-responsive tissue. That’s not a detour. It’s the same picture.

Why your gut and your skin are the same conversation

Your skin is an organ, and it sits downstream of everything happening inside you. When your gut is inflamed, your immune system stays activated, and activated immune systems show up on the face. Redness. Puffiness. Dullness. Stubborn texture. Breakouts along the jawline that don’t respond to anything you put on them. Those aren’t skincare problems. That’s inflammation you can see.

And it isn’t only skin. The same inflammation that’s irritating your gut lining is the reason your joints ache, your energy crashes in the afternoon, your sleep got lighter, and your weight stopped responding to the things that used to work. One process, showing up in several places at once. Treat those places as separate problems and you’ll be managing symptoms forever.

I’m a functional medicine and naturopathic doctor in Lafayette, CA, and I also do medical aesthetics, under one roof. Almost nobody in the Bay Area does both. That means I’m looking at your gut results and your skin in the same visit, with the same set of eyes, and I catch connections that get missed completely when those two things live in different offices with different doctors who never speak to each other.

Now, this is information, not a requirement. If you want a facial, you get a facial. Nobody here is going to tell you to sort out your digestion first. That’s not how I practice. I just think you should have the whole picture, because when you understand your body inside and outside, everything makes more sense.

If you’re here for aesthetic work, you can add a clinical session at any point: a deep dive into skin-specific bloodwork, minerals, and the vitamins that are so often lacking, so the internal work and the skincare are being considered together instead of separately. Ask me about it at your consultation.

Food allergy testing near me: why women in the East Bay come here

Most of the women I test have already been somewhere else. They’ve been told their labs are normal. They’ve started a low FODMAP handout with no follow-up. They’ve bought a direct to consumer test online, gotten back a page of red bars, and had nobody to interpret it.

What’s different here:

  • I order your testing, I read your testing, and I build your plan. You’re not passed between people.

  • Testing in context. Food doesn’t act alone. I look at your gut, your hormones, your nutrient status, and your symptoms together, because that’s what your body actually is.

  • Honest interpretation. I’ll tell you when a result is meaningful and I’ll tell you when it’s probably noise. I’m not going to eliminate thirty foods from your life because a chart said so.

  • A plan for getting foods back. Reintroduction is built in from day one. I want you to be able to enjoy food. That’s real life.

  • An award winning doctor with fifteen years of practice in the East Bay. I’ve been voted Best Doctor of the East Bay, and I have page after page of five star reviews that show how hard I work for my patients.

I’m in Lafayette, CA, easy to reach from Walnut Creek, Orinda, Moraga, Danville, Alamo, Pleasant Hill, Berkeley, Oakland, and the broader East Bay.

Frequently asked questions

  • A food allergy test measures IgE antibodies and identifies the fast reactions, hives, swelling, throat tightness, that happen within minutes. A food sensitivity test looks at a different immune response and finds the delayed, lower-grade patterns that drive inflammation. They answer different questions, and a sensitivity panel won’t rule out a true allergy. I run both here, so if a true allergy is a concern, I’ll test for it directly rather than sending you elsewhere.

  • The panel is a starting point, not a diagnosis, and I’m upfront about that. What makes it accurate is the process that follows: we remove the foods your results flag, then reintroduce them one at a time while tracking your symptoms. Your body confirms or clears each food. That’s why I don’t sell testing without the plan attached to it.

  • No. You can book a consultation, get tested, get your results explained, and stop there if that’s what you want. Some women use testing as a single step. Others use it as the start of longer work on digestion or hormones. Both are completely fine.

  • Food-driven inflammation can absolutely contribute to skin changes and to how your body holds weight, and I see that pattern constantly. It’s usually not the only factor. Hormones, gut function, sleep, and stress are all in the mix, which is exactly why I don’t look at food in isolation.

  • Yes, bring it. I’ll read any labs from the past three to six months, including tests ordered by another provider or purchased on your own. I’ll tell you what’s useful in it, what isn’t, and whether anything still needs to be tested properly.

Dr. Vera Singleton, ND, MBA Founder, Potentia MedSpa, Lafayette, CA Voted Best Doctor of the East Bay Functional medicine and medical aesthetics under one roof, guided by one philosophy: one body, one doctor, simple answers.

Let’s find out what your body is actually reacting to.

If you’re tired of guessing which food is the problem, book a consultation. We’ll go through your history, decide together what’s worth testing, and build a plan you can follow. You’re allowed to start wherever you want. I’ll meet you there.

Book Your FREE 20 Min Phone Consultation

Potentia MedSpa | 1043 Stuart St #210, Lafayette, CA 94549 | 510-230-2282