When Food Becomes The Enemy; Why Proper Testing Is Important
Can you imagine living in fear of a bread crumb?
It sounds crazy, but it is a sad reality for millions of Americans. One in every 133 people suffers from celiac disease, and most of them haven’t even been properly diagnosed. That can lead to long-term health complications.
Researchers are working on vaccine therapy to help those with celiac disease, but the first step is spreading awareness and getting a proper diagnosis. Any Lab Test Now can help with that. The Celiac, IBS, Crohn’s Test can help you determine if you have celiac disease or some other gastrointestinal disorder so that you can treat your symptoms properly.
What is celiac disease?
Celiac disease is NOT an allergy — it’s an autoimmune disorder that’s triggered when a sufferer eats gluten. That culprit is a protein that you’ll find in a lot of foods and in some other very unexpected places. It’s found in wheat, barley, rye, and other grains, so people most often think of breads, dough, cakes, pasta, and cereals. But celiac sufferers have to be real detectives! That’s because gluten can be found in a wide range of ingestible stuff, like medications and toothpaste — even lipsticks and envelope glue!
When someone with celiac ingests something with gluten, their body overreacts and their intestines are ground zero. They’ll often experience stomach pain and nausea, but the reaction can also include:
- Diarrhea or constipation
- Headaches and fatigue
- Bone and joint pain
- Heartburn
- Itchy rashes
- Anemia
- Mouth ulcers
What’s happening inside your small intestine is slow to develop, but devastating over time. The villi that line your small intestine are damaged with every reaction. Eventually, they won’t be able to absorb nutrients from your food.
The damage to the undiagnosed.
For the millions of people walking around with undiagnosed celiac disease, the damage is growing. The Celiac, IBS, Crohn’s Test (sometimes referred to as the CICA Test) measures your gut health on the genetic, antibody, and cellular levels, taking these often hard-to-diagnose diseases down to the most in-depth levels so you can get to the bottom of your symptoms. The CICA includes the following tests:
- Genetic – HLA Typing for Celiac Disease (HLA-DQ2.5 AND HLA-DQ8; ATB16L1 + N0D20) – The genetic testing portion of the profile determines the likelihood that what you are suffering is celiac disease, as opposed to gluten intolerance. 95 percent of people who have either the HLA-DQ2.5 OR HLA-DQ8 genes will have celiac disease.
- Antibody/Serological – This test will indicate whether specific antibodies are missing and others have developed. This could cause damage to the small intestine and can indicate the presence of celiac disease as well as differentiate between ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease, both of which have similar symptoms to celiac disease.
- Total Serum IgA
- Tissue Transgluatminase Antibody (tTG) – IgA and IgG
- Deamidated Gliadin Peptide (DGP) Antibody – IgA and IgG
- Anti-Saccharomyces Cerevisiae Antibody (ASCA)
You don’t need a doctor’s order to take the test, but if your CICA Test comes back indicating celiac disease, it’s a good idea to share those results with your doctor so you can get professional guidance on how to best move forward.
What you don’t know can hurt you.
Celiac disease can develop at any age. If you leave it undiagnosed and untreated, you could leave yourself open to some additional serious health problems down the road. These include:
- Type 1 diabetes
- Multiple sclerosis
- Osteoporosis
- Infertility
- Miscarriage
- Epilepsy
- Migraines
- Intestinal cancers
If you’re suffering from abdominal discomfort or have a family history of celiac disease, it may well be worth considering the Celiac, IBS, Crohn’s Test at your nearby Any Lab Test Now. There may not be a cure, but with a proper diagnosis, there can be relief.
Tests to Consider for the New Year
This time of year, many people are making resolutions to change their lives for the better. Resolutions give people a sense of new beginnings for themselves, and a chance to look forward to the progress they will make toward becoming a healthier, happier individual. Most people who make a New Year’s resolution are thinking of their health – they want to make positive changes in their appearance and overall livelihood.
But what many people don’t realize when they’re staring in the mirror is that good health starts on the inside. To appear healthier on the outside, you must first make healthy, internal changes. If you’re looking to make a change, but don’t know where to start, Any Lab Test Now has several tests that can help you accomplish your resolutions for 2017:
Sensitivity and Intolerance Tests
One great way to make a healthy change is to finally find out what’s been causing your unexplained ailments or discomfort. Often, people with a food sensitivity or intolerance don’t realize what is causing their health issues. That’s because it’s hard to isolate just one food as the cause of your pain. This is where Sensitivity and Intolerance Tests can help! These tests can help you determine any food sensitivities or intolerances you may have, letting you get to the bottom of what is causing your health problems.
Sexual Health Lab Tests
If you are sexually active, it is important to make sure you are healthy and disease-free. Most people know they should get tested for STDs, but continually put it off. The thing is, by putting off getting tested, you’ll continue to feel that nagging worry in the back of your mind – “Do I have a disease?” Give yourself peace of mind by finding out for sure in 2017, and taking care of your health from head to toe. Any Lab Test Now’s Sexual Health Lab Tests will help you check off that big “to-do” item lingering in your thoughts.
Diabetes Lab Tests and Cholesterol Lab Tests
Before you can look healthy on the outside, you must address the issues going on inside your body. If you are concerned you might have high cholesterol, diabetes or pre-diabetes, it’s time to get tested and find out for sure. Dangerous complications can arise from having these conditions, including a higher risk of heart disease, heart attack and stroke. Make 2017 the year you take control of your heart health, starting with a Diabetes Lab Test and Cholesterol Lab Test.
Get started on your 2017 New Year’s resolution to be healthier by getting some much needed answers to your nagging health questions. Once you better understand your health today, you can start taking steps towards achieving better health this year. Talk to the experts at Any Lab Test Now to learn what testing options are right for you, and take the first step towards a healthier, happier you.
The 5 Best Tests to Use Your FSA On
HSA and FSA accounts can help you budget for your healthcare, and ensure you always have the money you need to pay for any unexpected health events. But if you still have money in your FSA, it will expire at the end of the year. Instead of letting your money vanish, put it to use by getting some testing or immunizations you’ve been putting off. Wrap up lingering health concerns now so you can start fresh in the new year.
Allergy Test
The holidays coincide with peak cold and flu season, but if your sniffles won’t go away, you might look into allergy testing. Up to 50 million Americans suffer from allergies. If you experience emotional or physical reactions after you eat, or if you frequently have symptoms like a stuffy nose or trouble breathing, you might have an allergy to something you ate. The Allergy Test goes through as many as 45 different foods and 45 environmental triggers to identify the root of your symptoms.
Intolerance Test
If you’ve been noticing symptoms that aren’t associated with an allergic reaction, then you might have a food intolerance. If you experience fatigue, gas or diarrhea, depression or anxiety, weight gain or a general chronic discomfort, you may want to get a food intolerance test. This becomes especially important as you grow older, because you can develop new food sensitivities or intolerances later in life.
Blood Cortisol Test
If your stress levels are through the roof, the holiday season will likely only make it worse — it can seem like your to-do list never ends! To see if your stress is starting to cause problems for your body, get a blood cortisol test. High levels of cortisol are dangerous, because over time they can lead to high blood pressure, inflammation, compromised immune response and weight gain.
Thyroid Test
The holiday meals sure are delicious, but do you know what isn’t so great? The holiday pounds. If your weight gain tends to stick around a bit too long after the holidays, you should get your thyroid tested. Your thyroid controls metabolic activity, which is vital for maintaining a healthy weight. Poor thyroid health is associated with symptoms like fatigue, short attention span, weight gain and numbness or cold intolerance. Thyroid disorders can also cause conditions like osteoporosis and heart disease.
Proof of Immunizations
Are you traveling for the holidays or early next year? The first thing on your list should be to make sure your immunizations are up-to-date, which you can do by getting a proof of immunization test. These tests ensure that you have gotten the immunizations you need and provide valid paperwork to prove that you are immunized, which can be helpful if you’ve lost any documentation.
Don’t wait for the new year to address your lingering health concerns. If you have an FSA that is going to expire soon, get the important lab tests you need before 2017! For more information, visit your local Any Lab Test Now.
The Top 5 Things To Avoid This Holiday Season
What do you do when your food won’t treat you right? From causing digestive problems or headaches to giving you long-term health concerns, sometimes the simple act of eating what we love can make us feel horrible. And while there are about 40 foods that are known to cause reactions for people, the five on this list are the most notorious trouble-makers. If you don’t feel so hot after consuming some of these foods, you might want to avoid them over the holidays. And if you’re not sure what food is making you feel ill, visit your local Any Lab Test Now for an ALCAT test that will pinpoint your food sensitivity!
Dairy
Dairy foods are notoriously hard to process. According to Medline Plus, a division of the U.S. National Library of Medicine, about 30 million Americans have some degree of lactose intolerance by the time they reach age 20. The most common symptoms of lactose intolerance are gas, bloating, diarrhea and cramping, beginning within 30 minutes of consuming dairy. You can work around lactose intolerance by consuming different types of dairy products, by consuming them in smaller amounts or by consuming products made with soy or nut milks. You can also use supplements of the enzyme lactase to help you digest dairy more easily. The ALCAT panel offered by Any Lab Test Now can help you pinpoint whether your digestive distress is caused by lactose intolerance.
Food additives
Food additives can be any substance, natural or man-made, that brings about a certain change to taste, texture or nutritional content. These can include vitamins and minerals, flavorings, colors, preservatives and chemicals that change the acidity or texture of foods. The adverse effects of food additives can be as varied as the additives themselves. Eight additives are responsible for most adverse reactions: sulfites, parabens, nitrates, BHT and benzoates, which are preservatives; monosodium glutamate (MSG) and aspartame, which are flavor enhancers; and tartrazine, a yellow dye. According to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America, some symptoms of adverse reactions can be hives, difficulty breathing, digestive troubles and nausea.
High saturated fat
Foods that are high in saturated fat can contribute to high cholesterol and heart disease. High cholesterol is a gradual, chronic condition that makes your heart work a lot harder to pump blood throughout your body, but doesn’t present very many noticeable symptoms at first. But foods with high saturated fat contents can also cause some immediate digestive distress if you’re sensitive to it. Inflammation is a likely result of eating too many foods high in saturated fat, because they irritate your stomach as you digest them. You can experience heartburn, coughing and even shortness of breath after eating these foods. Foods like butter, fatty meat products, lard and full-fat dairy products, and foods made with any of those products, are all foods you might be sensitive to. In addition to the ALCAT panel, which will let you know if these foods irritate your digestive system, the lipid panel or Lipoprotein Particle Profile at Any Lab Test Now can show you your risk of high cholesterol and heart disease.
Wheat
A growing number of people are being diagnosed with wheat sensitivity or celiac disease. Celiac disease is a relatively recent discovery in the field of digestive health, and many who have struggled their whole lives with confusing symptoms are finally getting the answers they’ve sought. According to Beyond Celiac, while about 3 million Americans suffer from celiac disease, it is estimated that six times that amount have some form of gluten sensitivity. Gluten sensitivity involves an immune response a few hours or days after eating gluten and the symptoms can include confusion, joint pain, numbness of the arms, legs or fingers, and headache.
Red Wine
Some people have reactions when they drink alcohol that go beyond the typical symptoms of drunkenness. Experiencing anything from trouble breathing to flushing and headaches, people with a sensitivity to alcohol do not enjoy a night of drinking as much as some others might. The sensitivity could be brought on by the alcohol, or by a specific drink, like red wine. Additionally, the alcohol could simply be triggering a food sensitivity, rather than causing the reaction itself. The only way to know for sure is to get tested!
The holidays are a time for fun, family and of course, lots and lots of food. This holiday season, don’t let your food sensitivities make mealtimes a pain. Visit your local Any Lab Test Now for a lipid panel and ALCAT food panel to find out what foods don’t sit right with your body!
What are the Differences between a Lipid Panel, VAP® Test and PLAC Test?
So you’ve been told you may need to have some cholesterol tests done. Or, maybe you are getting ready to get in shape and eat right, and want to set a baseline to measure what’s going on inside. Getting tested is the first step to becoming a healthier, happier you. Any Lab Test Now is here to help you Take Control of your Health® with the Lipid Panel, VAP Test or PLAC Test – three different tests to measure your cardiovascular health. But which test is right for you? Read on to learn more about each of these tests.
Lipid Panel
A Lipid Panel is used to determine if you have abnormal cholesterol or triglyceride levels. These measurements can help your doctor determine if you are at risk for heart disease or other coronary illnesses. A Lipid Panel includes five tests: Total Cholesterol, HDL, LDL, HDL/LDL ratio and triglycerides. When evaluated together, these tests can help your doctor determine if you would benefit from a cholesterol maintenance medication. You are required to fast for at least eight hours prior to the tests. A Lipid Panel costs only $49 at Any Lab Test Now.
VAP Test
A VAP Test, or Vertical Auto Profile test, is used to provide an extremely accurate picture of an individual’s potential for heart disease and diabetes. Not only does this test include the basic cholesterol tests seen in the Lipid Panel, but it also gives a detailed report of individual lipoprotein subclasses and apolipoprotein subclasses. It identifies any cholesterol abnormalities that may be a precursor to heart disease or diabetes and can help your doctor provide the proper care to prevent future heart attacks. Best of all, you are not required to fast for this test so can come in anytime during the day. A VAP Test costs $79 at Any Lab Test Now.
PLAC Test
A PLAC Test measures the increase of an enzyme present when your arteries are inflamed. This test can help your doctor better assess your risk for heart attack and stroke, as well as determine any necessary medication or lifestyle changes. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration uses this test to assess the risk of coronary heart disease and ischemic stroke, associated with atherosclerosis. The PLAC Test is usually an “add on” to other tests, and no additional blood work is necessary if done with another blood test or panel. You are not required to fast for this test. A PLAC Test costs $139 at Any Lab Test Now.
Ignoring it won’t make it better! If you haven’t had your cholesterol checked lately, now is the time to do it – for you and your family.
National Nutrition Month: Are you getting the nutrients your body needs?
In our world of fast-paced living, we understand how difficult it can be to eat healthy. On days where it seems like 24 hours isn’t enough, the idea of grabbing a #1 from the nearest fast-food restaurant seems like a good choice. Although it may seem smart at the time, our bodies depend on essential nutrients and those will not be found in the average “happy meal”.
Medical Daily recently referenced a study that researched the eating habits of Americans. Researchers from this study found that U.S.adults eat far more saturated fat, cholesterol and sodium than needed. They also found that most Americans do not meet their recommended daily levels of 10 essentialnutrients including vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin D, calcium and iron. Lacking these proper nutrients can lead to severe deficiencies causing serious health problems like anemia, osteoporosis, depression and other chronic diseases.
With March being recognized as National Nutrition Month by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Any Lab Test Now® is joining with them to promote the importance of making informed food choices and developing sound eating and exercise habits. One of the first steps you can take to Take Control of Your Health® is to determine if you might have a vitamin or mineral deficiency. Our Micronutrient Test will measure your body’s ability to absorb vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and other essential nutrients. This blood test will be able to tell you if you have a vitamin deficiency and if so, will give you a plan for how to correct it. Schedule an appointment with your local Any Lab Test Now® this March and get a clear picture of your current nutritional profile to help jumpstart your plan towards a healthier future.
Raising Awareness for Health Centers During Health Center Week
Have you ever noticed that when you get sick you always feel the need to find out what’s wrong? Who wants to go another day with a tummy ache, a sore throat or the dreaded sinus headache and congestion? Believe it or not that’s one of the many benefits provided by health centers. You might start asking yourself… “But I don’t have insurance, so how can I get service?” The good news is you have options at your disposal that will empower you to Take Control of Your Health® whether you have high deductible insurance, a Health Savings Account or Flexible Spending Account, or if you are uninsured.
A great example of available options is ANY LAB TEST NOW®. Though ANY LAB TEST NOW® does not treat or diagnose, it does empower its customers to be proactive about managing their health by providing direct access to blood tests, DNA tests, drug and alcohol testing as well as other lab testing services. After you get your lab test results, you can quickly call a physician with our AmeriDoc telemedicine services program. The doctor is just a phone call a way, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and can treat many non-emergent care issues by phone, video call, or chat.
According the National Association of Community Health Centers, there are around 44 million people in the U.S. that are currently uninsured with another 56 million with high deductible insurance. This often makes health take a back seat to cost, which stresses the importance of price transparency. Can you take more good news? ANY LAB TEST NOW®’s affordable, transparent prices fit into a person’s healthcare budget, providing a solution that continues to support overall health and wellness. Don’t let your health take a back seat, without it we are nothing.
During the week of August 11 – 17 the nation celebrates Health Center Week. Why not take the time during this week to stop by a health center near you, check in on your health and thank them for helping to empower you and your loved ones to Take Control of Your Health®?
To learn more about ANY LAB TEST NOW®’s lab testing options stop by an ANY LAB TEST NOW® near you or visit www.anylabtestnow.com
Celebrating National Nutrition Month
Are you known in your social circle as the ‘foodie’ of the group? Who doesn’t enjoy celebrating food, right? Well all throughout the month of March you get a chance to celebrate your passion for food during National Nutrition Month and share your ‘foodie’ experience with your friends. However before you can share your love of food with your family and friends it is important that you know how to make nutritious food choices and that you incorporate them with good physical activity habits.
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has given this year’s celebration the theme of “Eat Right, Your Way, Every Day”, encouraging individuals to personalize their eating habits towards a healthier path and help them to identify the factors that ultimately influence their food choices. Our food choices are influenced by the events in our everyday life, busy lifestyles, cultural traditions and most importantly our health concerns. Health concerns, depending on the condition, should be a main factor in how we personalize our eating plans.
So perhaps your food choices aren’t always the most nutritious. That can be okay, as long as you balance your overall daily intake and combine it with an active lifestyle. Nutrition boils down to learning about how our bodies work and how to create an eating plan that is tailored to our lifestyle, health needs and of course our tastes. In addition knowing how our bodies will react to the meals we enjoy is key to creating a balanced healthy eating plan. Let’s say that during one of your ‘foodie’ adventures you came across a meal that your body just did not agree with. That disagreement could have been caused by a number of things. It could be that your body is intolerant or sensitive, or perhaps you are allergic to one or more of the ingredients in that meal. Even if you are eating healthy, it is still possible that your body is deficient in specific vitamins and minerals.
There is no better time to Take Control of Your Health®. ANY LAB TEST NOW® offers a variety of tests that can help you learn more about your body’s current state and help you reach nutritional wellness. In order to do that, it is important to learn about the different food ingredients your body might be sensitive, intolerant or allergic to. Understanding how your body reacts to food through lab testing can help you truly create a tailored healthy meal plan that works just for you. It is also good to know what vitamins and minerals you might be missing. Use National Nutrition Month to celebrate food in a healthy way and share with your friends and family all you have learned. Why not prepare a feast with the healthy foods you love for them and plan a fun, physical activity for everyone after the meal?
Remember you are what you eat, and ANY LAB TEST NOW® is here to help you Take Control of Your Health®. To learn more about our nutrition-based lab tests including nutrient testing, food sensitivity, intolerance or allergies visit www.anylabtestnow.com.
