My MRT Test Experience: Part 1

There’s something you guys should know about me: I’m a weirdo.

My weirdo-ness exhibits itself in many ways, but right now I’m talking about the type of weird that leads me down strange rabbit holes and makes me rather obsessed about something until I try it. (My friend Jodi calls this trait “curiosity,” which is kind of her.) In this case, it has to do with a food sensitivity test called an MRT.

Y’all know I’m hooked on Pure Barre, and I often read blog posts about fellow Pure Barre lovers. In a blog post back in March, I was reading about a Pure Barre goer’s experience doing Pure Barre while pregnant, and she just mentioned having taken an MRT test, in a bit of a fleeting way. (“I was wavering around a size 8 and later dropped to a size 4 after my dedication to Pure Barre and the results of my MRT test,” she wrote.) I’d never heard of this test before, but became interested as I read more about it.

Essentially, MRT is a blood test that gauges whether certain foods and chemicals/colorings/spices used in foods cause an immune reaction in your body. That immune reaction could exhibit itself in the form of migraines, IBS, poor sleep patterns, and more.

The more I read about others’ experiences with taking the MRT test, the more interested I became in taking it myself. I don’t experience the standard symptoms of having food sensitivities (I don’t have intestinal issues, I tend to sleep well, I don’t have skin problems, etc.), but I kept thinking back to when I was doing the Conscious Cleanse a couple of years ago, which is all about food elimination with the purpose of identifying sensitivities. I’ve never felt better than when I was on that cleanse. I was sleeping better than ever, had tons of energy, and felt strong and healthy.

This is me at my sister’s wedding right after finishing the Conscious Cleanse. I felt great!:

It was that feeling that I got when I was doing the Conscious Cleanse, coupled with the fact that I love all things personalized medicine (knowing what’s right for MY body, not just what’s healthy for MOST people), that made me pull the trigger on getting the MRT test done. Plus, it’s more accurate and complete than traditional elimination diets, and that was appealing. I wanted to learn what foods I should — and shouldn’t — be eating in order to feel my best.

A couple of weeks ago, I got my blood drawn, sent it off to a lab in Florida to be analyzed, and received my test results over the weekend. The results are split into three categories: reactive (red), moderately reactive (yellow), and non-reactive (green). You get a report showing categories of food split into these three categories, along with a card containing all your red and yellow items for you to carry with you for reference:

A couple of my reactive items (avocado! strawberries!) were a little sad, but I was most upset by my moderately reactive items. Many of those foods are things I consume daily, like grapes, lettuce, apples, and caffeine. The good news was, my red and yellow foods were free of grain, most dairy (aside from cottage cheese), and bean/nut (aside from pintos) sensitivities. I thought it was pretty funny that the chemical I’m LEAST sensitive to of all the ones they tested for was…wait for it…MSG. Ha!

Here’s what the Fruits section of the report itself looks like (for me) to give you a sense of how that information is laid out:

The next step will be for me to work with a certified nutritionist to work through a few phases of diet, where I try eliminating all reactive and moderately reactive foods for a while, then try introducing moderately reactive foods to see what the right balance is for me to feel my best. I’ll be carefully monitoring what I’m eating and recording how I feel when I eat those things. Eventually, I hope I’ll be able to eat moderately reactive foods from time to time, but may not want to move them back to the “everyday” category for me. I’m interested to see if I notice a change during this process. (I’ll keep y’all posted!)

Have any of y’all taken an MRT test? If so, what was your experience with the test and its results?