but even NICE (who one assumes aren’t at the Daily Mail “YOU’LL DIE IF YOU TRY THIS” end of the scale when it comes to clinical evaluation of medical stuff) warn against it?

I’ve got an open mind, we don’t know what test was carried out (or it’s clinically proven accuracy) but I do tend to take the view that a shop assistant in Holland and Barrett or wherever isn’t going to be the best person to carry out tests and give follow up advice etc the results of which can have life changing effects on the people being tested.

[edit] I guess it’s about ‘appropriateness’ for me, I’m not goign to trust someone wearing a white coat just because they have Dr. in front of their name but, equally, there’s sometimes too close a commercial tie between ‘diagnosis’ and ‘treatment’ in a non-clinical (maybe even non-NHS?) environment.

Who said anything about Holland & Barrett? Most of the people posting on this thread have leapt to conclusion that because a “health food shop” was mentioned it must be bollox. There’s plenty of health food shops out there that have a really good quorum of well trained, extremely knowledgeable therapsists. I’ll bet there’s as many good therapists as thee are crap doctors 🙂

The only person that can really comment is Mrs Ricky. Does she feel any better?

john-l are these highly trained therapists trained,tested,and licensed by a government body?Do they have real clinical verification to back up their testing?

I tried to make it a ‘wherever’ statement and stress the lack of info on the type of test carried out.

I think there’s a, imo, justifiable, scepticism around high street testing. Yes there are likely to be a number of trained, knowledgeable people doing it and as long as the tests have been through a formal, peer reviewed, series of blind tests etc and their effectiveness matches those done in a more clinical environment then there’s no problem. If it’s just ‘give us a drop of blood and we’ll tell you you’re allergic to peas and beetroot’ then I think people need to be cautious.

It’s about the consequences, should people be cutting out whole food groups etc based on a test they have no real knowledge about? If people are informed and understand what is being done, why and are given suitable follow up care and advice (perhaps including a referral for more, errm, formal/traditional testing) then fair enough.

My wife was ‘diagnosed’ as a coeliac by an alternative practitioner. We had huge dietary change, other expensive treatment etc and symptoms persisted. When she left a stressful job sometime later all of the symptoms disappeared. I guess it’s left me more questioning of alternate medicines as a result.

I’m not disagreeing, I just think it’s sad that people are dismissing it out of hand when there are probably thousands of people that are better off. I can think of plenty of times I’ve come away from the doctor feeling no better & with no further clue about what’s wrong.

Of course more and more people are proving sensitive to a great many things such as food stuffs and chemicals.

Coeliac disease can be diagnosed by the NHS but we’re seeing more intolerances, for example gluten. My daughter has a severe reaction to some foodstuffs, the NHS Gastroenterologist prescribed AD’s.

I’ve stopped using fluoride toothpaste and mouthwash as well as antibacterial products.

We all need to educate ourselves to make appropriate choices.

Hmmm… OP didn’t actually want his question answered honestly…

To those who think this could be ok – show me more than a very few Health Food shops doing proper allergy testing, not Vega or hair analysis.

And show any evidence that systemic candida (outside oculomucocutaneous candidiasis, and people with proven SCID or short bowel syndrome etc)is a genuine issue.