Food Sensitivity Test Review: Check My Body Health
This is a PR review of Check My Body Health’s food sensitivity test. This post contains affiliate links.
Are you struggling to work out which foods you’re intolerant to?
Same here!
I decided to review Check My Body Health’s food sensitivity test after spending over half my life eliminating the wrong foods from my diet.
Check My Body Health uses bioresonance testing to measure a hair sample against 970 food and non-food items to see what you are sensitive to.
It tests against substances that are hard to work out, like vegetable oils, E numbers and types of pollen.
You will also be informed if you have heavy metals present or nutrient deficiencies.
Before reviewing Check My Body Health’s food sensitivity test, I had no idea what bioresonance was. As it’s a holistic therapy, I’m going to reveal what I found out about it and share why I decided to give hair analysis a go.
Read to the end if you want to find out if my family’s results were what I expected them to be.
COMING UP
Why do a food sensitivity test?
What is the difference between an allergy and a sensitivity
About Check My Body Health
What is bioresonance testing
Is Check My Body Health accurate?
Why I decided to try Check My Body Health
What I suspect I am sensitive to
What my results showed.
My review of Check My Body Health - What I liked- What could be improved
How to do an elimination diet using your results
Disclosure: I’m not a dietician and this article is not medical advice. This service was provided to me for free in exchange for a review and contains affiliate links however, no one has told me what to write and all thoughts are my own.
1. Why do a food sensitivity test?
Sometimes, eating certain foods can give you unwanted digestive symptoms, like bloating, gas, heartburn, cramps, or diarrhoea.
If you’re feeling unwell after eating, you may have a food sensitivity.
As a blood test will not detect a food intolerance, the only way to work out if you’re sensitive to something is to do an elimination diet.
This is where you remove the problem foods from your diet for several weeks and then reintroduce them one at a time to see if symptoms appear. It is recommended to do this with the support of a dietician.
“The problem I’ve had (for myself and both my children) is not knowing what foods to give up, even after keeping food diaries. There is also an extremely long waiting list for an NHS appointment since the pandemic.”
I decided to see if a food sensitivity test could help me discover the foods my family is sensitive to in the hopes we can do an effective elimination diet.
Currently, Check My Body Health have two food sensitivity tests:
Complete sensitivity (970 items tested) - £112 reduced to £28
Essentials sensitivity (400 items tested) - £80 reduced to £20
Click here to compare tests
2. What is the difference between an allergy and a sensitivity?
The food sensitivity test by Check My Body Health that I’m reviewing today does not test for allergies.
If you think you have an allergy, you’ll need to choose the Food Allergy Blood Test Kit instead (which is currently £30 off at this moment in time).
If you’re unsure which test you need, I’m going to quickly explain the two types of allergies vs food sensitivities. I’m not a doctor, but we are a multiple allergy household so I have a lot of personal experience.
IgE food Allergies
When you have an allergy, your immune system behaves as if you’ve eaten something harmful and produces antibodies to fight it. There are two types of allergy.
If an allergy produces instant symptoms, it means your body has produced an antibody called Immunoglobulin E (IgE).
Symptoms of an IgE-mediated allergy can affect different bodily systems, not just gastrointestinal.
For example, moments after my partner accidentally eats something containing nuts he gets a tingling sensation in his mouth and a feeling he describes as “impending doom.”
Here are the most common IgE symptoms:
Hives
Eczema/dermatitis
Itching
Swelling (of the face, mouth, or throat),
Diarrhoea
Wheezing/shortness of breath
Low blood pressure
In some cases anaphylaxis.
The only way to diagnose an IgE allergy is through a test which measures the IgE antibodies in the blood. You can ask to be tested for a specific allergen, like wheat or dairy, through your doctor.
Please note: the deal above has nothing to do with Sustainably Lazy so if you view the product page and the deal is no longer on then unfortunately it has ended.
Check My Body Health’s food allergy kit tests IgE levels in the blood against 38 food items and is worth £99.
Non-IgE allergies
If your allergy symptoms start hours or days after consuming the suspected food it is called a non-IgE-mediated allergy (delayed allergy is a term used casually).
Symptoms are caused by T-cell reactions in the immune system and can take between 4 and 28 hours to develop (although some sources say longer than this). Non-IgE allergies are not usually life-threatening and are typically related to the digestive system.
Common symptoms of a non-IgE allergy:
Diarrhoea
Vomiting
Constipation
Bloating
Eczema
Colic in infants
Blood or mucus in stools
A blood test won’t detect a delayed onset allergy because there aren’t any IgE antibodies in the blood. Usually, a doctor will get you to keep a food diary to find out what foods are triggering the symptoms and then refer you to a dietician to support you with an elimination diet.
Food Sensitivity
When you have a food sensitivity or intolerance, it does not involve your immune system so it is much less serious. It just means your body cannot digest or process the food.
This could be because you lack a certain enzyme, for example, if you have lactose intolerance it means you can’t digest the sugar in milk. Lactose intolerance is not a milk allergy.
With a food sensitivity, your body could be reacting to a specific ingredient or additive, like caffeine, artificial preservatives, flavourings, dyes or a type of sugar that occurs naturally in foods.
Symptoms of food sensitivity:
Bloating or gas
Brain fog
Fatigue
Nausea
Heartburn
Joint problems
Stomach pain
Rashes
3. About Check my Body Health
Check My Body Health is a health and wellness company that offers a variety of tests in the UK and USA. Its values are based on functional medicine which is becoming popular with people with chronic illness and anyone that prefers a holistic approach to healthcare.
Functional medicine looks to identify and treat the root causes of disease, instead of treating the symptoms with medication.
Check My Body Health uses bioresonance hair analysis to perform its food sensitivity tests. This is a type of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) meaning it falls outside of mainstream healthcare. Some other types of CAM are acupuncture, aromatherapy, and chiropractic.
Holistic therapies aren’t usually available on the NHS because they lack scientific research, however, many people are turning to alternative medicine because they are not getting what they need from modern medicine.
In my case, it’s because I’ve tried everything the underfunded NHS has offered and would rather find what is causing my issues than take medication forever.
Obviously, Check My Body Health should not be used to replace medical advice and if you think you have a health problem you should visit the GP to rule out anything serious.
4. What is bioresonance testing?
Bioresonance testing is based on quantum physics theory which recognises that everything emits a frequency.
If you’re not knowledgeable about quantum physics then it all sounds quite bizarre and confusing so I’m going to keep it simple.
You submit a few strands of your hair which get scanned using specialist equipment to measure the frequencies and Check My Body Health test them against various food, drink, and environmental factors.
(For more information on Bioresonance and how it works click here)
Check My Body Health testing It is an extremely simple process:
Order the test online (important - no kit is sent to you)
Fill out the submission form using your reference number
Print your mailing slip and cut out the barcode (you can write down the reference number if you don’t have a printer)
Attach the barcode to a small plastic bag (like seen in the photo below)
Cut 4-6 strands of your hair close to the root and pop it into the small bag
Pop the bag of hair into an envelope and post it to the address provided
Wait 3-5 days for your results to be emailed to you
Start an elimination diet by removing the reactive foods from your diet for 4-6 weeks and then reintroduce them one at a time to see if they cause you symptoms
For a step-by-step guide with images, click here.
5. Is Check My Body Health accurate?
Check My Body Health is as legit as all the other hair analysis tests on the market and has 4.3 stars on Trustpilot (from 903 reviews). So while there is not scientific proof that it is accurate, it does have a high amount of customer satisfaction.
6. Why I decided to try Check My Body Health
I started getting awful pain and nausea after eating completely out of the blue when I was 19.
I saw several doctors over the next 5 years who ordered various tests but could find nothing wrong with me.
“One GP advised me to give up dairy and gluten and to eat six small meals a day. Another doctor claimed it was all in my head because I also had anxiety. Instead of helping me find the cause of my symptoms, the doctors prescribed 3 different medications.”
I did as I was told and took the medications for years. Over the next decade, I studied nutrition and improved my diet on my own. I even managed to heal some of my symptoms (like pain), but they’d just change to different ones.
When things got particularly bad again in my late 20s, I was close to being underweight. The doctors did lots of blood tests again and referred me to a dietician after I mentioned I was trying the low FODMAP diet (an incredibly strict elimination diet).
Unfortunately, the pandemic meant my dietician appointment got cancelled and I had no success in getting rid of my symptoms. My son recently waited a whole year for a dietician appointment, only to discover we weren’t on the list because of an admin error.
I may be criticised by some for trying unconventional methods, but what else are you supposed to do when the NHS is critically underfunded?
I’m now in my thirties and I’m exhausted from failed elimination diets. I just want to be able to stick to a simple meal plan for my whole family.
I’m going to give it one last shot with Check My Body Health’s food sensitivity test.
7. Before: What I suspect we are sensitive to
Something in sweets
Since I was a kid, I always got a bad stomach ache from eating sweets, like Haribo or Jelly Babies. While I don’t eat sweets at all anymore (I’m vegetarian), it will be interesting to see if I’m sensitive to some colourings or flavourings.
Dairy
I tried to give up dairy many times in my 20s but I found it so hard (massive chocolate lover) and I never saw results quickly enough to know if it was a problem. I suspect the issue was that I was eating more than one “problem food” back then.
Because of my food sensitivity history and my partner’s IgE peanut allergy, I wasn’t surprised to learn my children had allergies too.
Our neonatal dietician told me to cut dairy and soya from my diet because it was probably causing my breastfed son’s symptoms. Guess what - it worked! My son’s symptoms all went. A perfect example of an elimination diet working for an allergy.
I breastfed my son for almost two years and stayed dairy-free. I am planning to stay this way forever because the worst symptoms have gone now.
Pollen
I’ve got a dust mite allergy so I can get hay fever symptoms year-round, but I’m pretty sure I’m sensitive to a specific pollen that triggers my asthma in the summer. My skin prick test came back negative for pollen, but my “under control” asthma always gets triggered randomly in the summer when I haven’t been ill.
It’s not like I can give up pollen, but it’ll be interesting to know nonetheless.
Gluten
My partner suspects he is sensitive to wheat. He’s never had any allergy testing (other than for nuts as he has an IgE peanut allergy) but he suspects bread is the culprit of his digestive issues.
Soya
We are currently eliminating soya for my daughter (again) so we can do the “soya ladder” properly to see if she is reacting to it. As her symptoms are delayed, they won’t do allergy testing, but the dietician is treating it as a delayed allergy. Therefore, it may not come up in her food sensitivity test.
I am confident that we will be able to find out the answer to this by doing the soya ladder once she is symptom-free.
My families results
Check My Body Health uses a traffic light system to show the level of sensitivity. Red is high reactivity, amber is moderate reactivity and green is none.
Mine
These are my main reactive foods
Food: Just as I suspected, they said I was highly sensitive to dairy.
There were also a few other foods that I eat every week *cries,* like tomatoes and mushrooms that I’m sensitive to. Other high-reacting foods were rye, coconut and sunflower seeds.
I had moderate reactions to some specific types of beans, including soya. And to drinks, like cola and wine (nooo!).
I have had my blood tested for gluten allergies and celiac disease 4 times in the last ten years (always negative) but I was never sure that I was intolerant. There have been times when I strongly thought gluten was impacting me, but other times it seems fine - like now. I never ever would have considered avoiding rye on its own, but I imagine it’s in some of the products I have eaten a lot of in the past, like store-bought wholegrain bread.
Dairy and cheese (not shown in image) stood out the most with the entire category in red. Good thing I drink oat milk, eh?!
Additives: This is one area I was really interested and I had quite a few red and amber E numbers. I also got highly reactive to gelatin, which I’d never considered but would have been in the sweets that gave me a stomach ache as a child.
I was listed as sensitive to several preservatives, like sulphur dioxide, which is often added to dried fruit and wine.
As sulphur dioxide is a common allergen, it legally has to be listed by name, not by E number (in the UK).
Non-food: Interestingly, clover was one of my high sensitivity which is around June - September. I assumed I was allergic to grass pollen because I’ve woken up camping with swollen eyes, but never considered flowering plants which are also everywhere.
My partner
My partner’s results said both dairy and gluten, which is what I expected. He’s not willing to eliminate bread at this point in his life, so I can’t actually test this. We’ll probably try to reduce it and switch things out in a slow, sustainable way instead.
My daughter
My daughter’s results did not show soya, which isn’t surprising as it’s suspected to be a non-IgE allergy (which Check My Body Health isn’t testing for).
The foods that came up as high reactivity for her were chickpeas, rye, sesame seeds and hazelnuts. Hummus is one of the staples in her diet, so this isn’t good news!
For now, I won’t be removing any foods from her diet that showed up on this test, mainly because we are focusing on the soya ladder (medical advice). However, if her problems become a long-term issue, I now have other options to experiment with.
9. My review of Check My Body Health
What I liked
What could be improved
Overall experience
What I liked
Having spent a really long time trying to work out my food sensitivities, I appreciated how easy Check My Body Health’s process was. The results arrived extremely fast - I received them within 5 days.
The report was in-depth (if anything, more information than I needed), laid out in an easy-to-read way and in a PDF format so you can manoeuvre between pages.
I also like that they include health and nutrition advice in the report, for example, which foods you can find specific nutrients in. This is so important when you are considering eliminating foods from your diet as you’ll need to ensure you are still getting all your vitamins and minerals.
What could be improved
The additive section was the most frustrating part. I really wanted this information, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do with column after column of E-number codes.
They don’t have the actual names so you have to look them up individually which is awkward on a phone.
I found it helpful to view the results on my laptop and have a search engine open on another tab so I could search what each sensitivity was.
This was still quite time-consuming, it would have been easier if they were named in the report.
I also found the vegan food section vague and unhelpful. 12 products are listed, some of which can be made from completely different ingredients. Vegan cheese, which I scored moderately for, is a perfect example of this issue.
Vegan cheese can be made from soya, coconut oil, or cashews. I’m assuming that Check My Body Health is only considering soya-based cheese because soya beans and tofu are listed as moderate reactions on my main food list. But there are no ingredients or information about what cheese they are testing.
The vegan cheese we sometimes buy is actually coconut-based due to my daughter’s allergy (and I’d choose cashew if I could find it because that would be more nutritious). But coconut is listed as one of my high-reacting foods, so in theory, I could be listed as red or amber for vegan cheese, depending on the brand.
Check My Body Health has included useful information about the nutrients you need to focus on when eating a vegan diet, so I understand why they dedicated a section to it. However, it does seem odd that there are only 12 foods included when plenty of plant-based options, like tofu, are on the main list.
The final thing that would have made Check My Body Health’s results more convenient, would have been a printable list of high reactivity foods to make the elimination part easier when meal planning or shopping.
Overall experience
My experience with Check My Body Health’s food sensitivity test was good. It now makes sense why the low FODMAP diet didn’t work for me. The foods I’m sensitive to are low in FODMAPS, like tomatoes, coconut and green beans so I wasn’t eliminating them.
I’m now trying to eliminate the identified foods I react highly to see if it improves how I feel.
I’m doing this quite slowly, by creating meal plans to ensure I’m making sustainable changes that don’t result in nutrient deficiencies (as I am already vegetarian and dairy-free).
Once I’ve eliminated and reintroduced foods, I’ll update this post to let you know how accurate my results have been.
*If the 75% discount is not applied when you click the link then this deal has expired
Do you think you have food sensitivities or intolerances? Have you had any success with elimination diets? Share your struggles and successes below!