Inflammation & Allergy Panels
The silent over-forty lever most programs ignore.
Problem
You're over forty. You feel subtly off — low-grade fatigue, stubborn weight, brain fog that moves around. Your standard bloodwork comes back "normal." What's actually going on, and what do you test to find it?
Solution
IgE + IgA + a GI panel at baseline. Repeat every three years.
Inflammatory load shifts substantially in the fourth and fifth decade of life, often without obvious symptoms. Most of it is silent. Once, at baseline, measure the three layers that expose it.
| Panel | Cost | Evidence | What it catches |
|---|---|---|---|
| IgE environmental & food | $200–$400 | B+ | Environmental and food triggers driving chronic low-grade reactivity. |
| IgA mucosal / GI | (bundled) | B+ | Mucosal inflammation that often presents as low-grade GI dysfunction. |
| GI food-sensitivity panel | $150–$300 | B | Dietary triggers that do not show up on standard IgE alone. |
| hs-CRP | (part of bloodwork) | A | Chronic inflammation barometer. Pairs with everything above. |
Discussion
The cohorts taught me two things about this layer. The first is that it is genuinely underweighted in most programs — including Peter Attia's and David Sinclair's — and that is a miss, because for the over-40 population it is where a lot of the headroom sits. The second is that it is the easiest layer to overcorrect on. Panels that flag thirty foods are effectively noise. Panels combined with bloodwork and genetics, distilled to two or three food changes, are signal.
Improvement target: the aggregate across my cohorts was a 9–57% reduction in GI inflammatory markers within the measurement window — see § 6.1. That range depends entirely on how honest the dietary trial is.
See Also
- § 6.4 · The Biotin Case — canonical example of IgE + genetics + strength combining
- § 3.2 · Personalized Supplements — narrowing from panel flags to specific doses