Live Blood Analysis, Skin Scanners and IgG Tests: What They Actually Measure

Episode Summary
In this episode, Mikki looks at three tests clients keep bringing to her that sound scientific but don't deliver what they promise: live and dry blood analysis, skin carotenoid scanners and IgG food intolerance panels. For each one she explains what the test actually measures, what it is sold as measuring, and why the gap between the two matters when people end up on a raft of supplements or a long list of foods to avoid.
She also walks through a 2025 randomised, sham-controlled trial of an IgG-guided elimination diet in IBS. The effect was real but modest, and the sham group did well too. Mikki explains why that trial doesn't justify the commercial panels sold online. She finishes with the tests and approaches that are worth your money if you have gut symptoms, fatigue or suspected food reactions.
Key Topics
  • Why live and dry blood analysis is appealing when your standard bloods are "in range" but you still feel unwell, and why what practitioners point to on the slide is clotting and drying artefact
  • Blood pH is tightly regulated at around 7.4, so a test claiming to show your blood is "acidic" isn't measuring anything real
  • Robert O. Young, author of The pH Miracle and a prominent promoter of live blood analysis, was convicted in the US of practising medicine without a licence
  • Skin carotenoid scanners use a genuine technique and measure a real biomarker, but the score mostly reflects fruit and vegetable intake and says nothing about iron, B12, vitamin D, zinc, thyroid or overall antioxidant status
  • The conflict of interest when the scanner's manufacturer also sells the supplements that raise your score
  • IgE versus IgG: why IgG to foods largely tracks what you eat, and why rising IgG4 signals tolerance rather than intolerance
  • Why ASCIA, the European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology and the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology advise against IgG food testing
  • What the 2025 IgG-guided elimination diet trial in IBS did and didn't show: 59.6% vs 42.1% responders, roughly one extra responder for every six people, using an 18-food research assay rather than a commercial panel
  • The costs of unnecessary restriction: avoiding 15–30 everyday foods, food fear in midlife, and months of delay before a proper diagnosis
  • Better routes: specialist assessment and specific IgE for allergy, coeliac serology before removing gluten, breath testing for lactose, and a supervised low FODMAP trial with reintroduction for IBS
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
00:45 Live and dry blood analysis
05:28 Skin carotenoid scanners
07:54 IgG food intolerance panels
11:02 The IgG-guided elimination diet trial
14:28 The harms of unnecessary restriction
16:13 Better ways to investigate symptoms
Guest / Resources
  • Robert O. Young, author of The pH Miracle
  • Dr Jim Faed, haematologist, University of Otago Medical School, quoted in the NZ Herald (April 2025) on clinics offering live blood analysis
  • Pharmanex BioPhotonic Scanner (S3), a Nu Skin skin carotenoid scanner
  • Veggie Meter, a research-grade skin carotenoid device
  • European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI) task force report on IgG4 testing to foods
  • American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (AAAAI)
  • ASCIA, the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy
  • Singh et al. (2025), A Novel, IBS-Specific IgG ELISA-Based Elimination Diet in Irritable Bowel Syndrome: A Randomized, Sham-Controlled Trial, Gastroenterology
  • Low FODMAP diet (supervised, with reintroduction)

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