Hi R.,
I belong to an email list of mom's that have been discussing this very issue and how it relates to food intolerances. I am going to cut and paste a part of that discussion for you. Hope it helps!
Take care, S.
My older son has dairy, wheat, sugar, and yeast issues and blood tests
never picked them up. They might for you, since she has hives as a
reaction. His are behavioral/sleep things. I learned about a saliva test
that can test for intolerances AND allergies, and I was blown away. It was
the answers we¹d been looking for. The naturopath who does them is out of
GA, and a number of moms on our list have used her. You wet Qtips with
saliva and send them back to her and she¹s able to analyze it that way. Same
science of blood in many ways, but even more expansive because it can pick
up intolerances and not just ³true² allergies.
Here¹s her contact info and I¹m sure she¹d welcome any questions. If you
have any for me, just let me know!
Darlene Betsill
###-###-####
Natural Health Research and Consulting
167 Wentworth Way
Griffin, GA 30224
And here¹s a writeup that discusses the science behind saliva:
Why is saliva used in our testing? While mostly water, saliva contains
electrolytes, buffers, antibodies, hormones, enzymes, sugar-coated molecules
known as mucin, proteins, and a host of minerals. The elements found in
blood that can be tested can also be tested on saliva. It, too, is like a
blue-print of the body on a cellular level. These facts were referred to in
an article that appeared in the Health/Science section of the Boston Globe
on March 04, 2003. Stated in part in her article: ³Saliva Offers a Mouthful
of Promising Science², Vivien Marx notes:
...biomedical researchers are finding that this bodily secretion offers a
mouthful of promising science. Last month, some of these scientists
presented their newest work at the Gordon Research Conference and Symposium
on Salivary Glands and Saliva in Ventura, Calif.
Lawrence Tabak is the director of the National Institute of Dental and
Craniofacial Research, part of the National Institute of Health. He is also
a diabetic and has pricked his finger more often than he would like to
count. He envisions a device so small that it could be integrated into a
tooth and would use saliva to monitor his blood sugar level. What sounds
perhaps like science fiction is actually a research program involving
several universities around the country to develop lab-on-a-chip technology
for salival diagnostic tests.
³Anything you can measure in blood² Tabak explained, ³you can figure out how
to measure in saliva.² Collecting saliva samples is much less invasive and
it might lower people¹s fears about going to the doctor, he said ²These
methods hold tremendous promise.²
For example, at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson,
Charles F. Streckfus and his colleagues are working on various ways to
compare saliva in healthy and cancer patients. One saliva test he is working
on measures levels of HER2/neu protein, which is important in normal cell
growth, but is overproduced in aggressive breast cancer cells. These
elevated HER2/neu levels can be detected in saliva, and research shows this
test can potentially reduce the number of false positives and negatives in
breast cancer detection. The test also offers a noninvasive way to see how a
treatment regiment is working.
Saliva can deliver insights into the body¹s immune response, Joe A. Bosch of
Ohio state University stated in the International Review of Neurology.
Intrigued by the connection between stress, periodontal diseases, and
impaired wound healing, he looked at variations in the level of an antibody
called Immunoglobin A, or IgA in saliva.
With all it has to offer biomedical research, saliva is currently garnering
more respect than ridicule.
