Please educate me about less common testing

amother

Lemon

Wed, Oct 14 2015, 2:38 pm

Trying to do some detective work to figure out whether any deficiencies or physical conditions could be affecting my child's sensory/behavioral/allergy/attention/etc issues. I was talking to someone at a health store who had a lot to say but not quite enough to give me a clear direction. He said there is testing you can do to figure these things out, it isn't all hokum (I was inquiring about naturopathy... DH nixed kinesiology for philosophical reasons...) It was recommended to me by him and also a friend to look for an integrative/biomedical doctor but that would be a real financial stress and might not happen so soon. So I called my regular pediatrician and he said he doesn't generally suggest these things but if the parent wants it he is very willing to perform the tests. His time is covered by insurance and many of the tests are too. Yay. But he suggested I should do a little more homework to come up with a list of what exactly he should give. That's what I would do anyway, because as much as my doctor is cooperative he doesn't really know about these things. He's a great standard medicine doctor and supportive of parents' choices but alternative, more-than-standard testing is not his specialty.

So please help! The following is what the health/supplement store person suggested, but from here I need specific names of tests and what to do with them:
1. Amino acid profile, both blood and urine. He gave me a printout about some amino acid 40 analyte test, but my doc couldn't find that as an option with his lab. He did say they have a basic amino acid test. Is that still worth giving blood (from a young, needle-phobic child)? If not, is there another test name I should be looking for?
2. Enzyme panel because some people are missing the enzymes needed to create the amino acids that make the brain work right. Dr said he did not see any enzyme panel option. Are there specific enzyme tests that make up such a panel that I could ask about individually?
3. Celiac we know. But I was also hearing and reading that there are medical tests that screen for non-celiac gluten sensitivity now as well. Not entirely reliable but if they're positive then at least you know, and if they're negative so then you can play with diets. But what are the tests? Dr only knows of the celiac ones.
4. Suggested to test immunity. Child has allergies, suggesting some kind of immune system irregularity. What kind of test exactly are we looking for?
5. If you've had an integrative/biomedical doctor do testing on your child with similar issues (sensory-seeking, emotional/behavioral difficulties, allergies, some ASD symptoms) do you know what specific tests they did and can share?

I have been trying to do my own research on this but could use some help from someone who's already gone this route. My head spins from all the info and mis-info out there.