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How MRT Testing Transformed My Health — From the Inside Out
I’ve been a registered dietitian for over 20 years. But it took a blood test called MRT — and a deep look at my own inflammatory foods — to finally quiet my vestibular migraines, clear my sinuses, eliminate hormonal hot flashes, and help me sleep through the night.
As a registered dietitian and nutrition researcher, I’ve guided hundreds of clients through elimination diets and food sensitivity protocols. I know the science. I know the research. And yet, for years I struggled with a constellation of symptoms that I couldn’t fully connect to what I was eating.
Vestibular migraines that left me intolerant of motion and prone to dizziness. Chronic post-nasal drip I just assumed was seasonal — all year round. Achy joints I chalked up to training hard. Restless, unrefreshing sleep. Skin that would itch and flare in ways that antihistamines barely touched. It seemed like I was reactive to everything around me due to histamine issues. I managed these symptoms with supplements, lifestyle changes, and willpower — but I never actually solved them.
Then I did an MRT test. And everything changed.
Table of Contents
- 1.What Is MRT Testing?
- 2.My Symptoms Before MRT — The Baseline
- 3.My MRT Results — And What They Revealed
- 4.The LEAP Protocol: A Roadmap, Not a Restriction
- 5.The Symptoms That Finally Resolved
- 6.An Unexpected Bonus: Weight Loss
- 7.The Proof That It Was the Food
- 8.The Moment I Knew Everything Had Changed
- 9.I Am in Your Corner — All the Way
- 10.Why Standard Allergy Tests Miss This
- 11.Who Should Consider MRT Testing?
- 12.Working With a Professional
Data from my self-case study (Moretti HD, MS, RD, CLT. MRT® Food Sensitivity Testing & LEAP Protocol: Resolution of Multi-System Inflammatory Symptoms Through Personalized Dietary Intervention. The Healthy RD, 2026.)
What Is MRT Testing?
MRT stands for the Mediator Release Test — a patented blood test developed by Oxford Biomedical Technologies that measures your immune system’s inflammatory response to 176 different foods and food chemicals. It’s not an allergy test. It’s not testing IgE antibodies. It’s measuring something far more nuanced: the actual release of inflammatory mediators from your white blood cells when exposed to specific foods.
The Science Behind It
When you eat a food you’re sensitive to, your white blood cells — neutrophils, monocytes, eosinophils, and lymphocytes — release a cascade of chemical mediators: cytokines, histamine, leukotrienes, and prostaglandins. These chemicals flood the body and can trigger symptoms almost anywhere: your joints, your sinuses, your skin, your gut, your brain.
The MRT measures the volumetric change in white blood cells after exposure to each food antigen. The greater the cell shrinkage, the more inflammatory the food. This makes it the only sensitivity blood test in the world that quantifies the degree of inflammatory response — not just a binary yes/no, but an actual reactivity score for every food tested.
It’s also important to understand that histamine is only one of many mediators MRT captures. The test measures the total aggregate release of all pro-inflammatory and pro-algesic mediators simultaneously — which is why the LEAP protocol resolves symptoms spanning multiple organ systems, including those not classically linked to histamine, such as joint stiffness, insomnia, and vestibular migraines.
Independent studies have confirmed MRT’s accuracy at 94.5% sensitivity and 91.8% specificity — the highest of any food sensitivity blood test available.
MRT results are then used to build a personalized LEAP eating plan — the Lifestyle Eating and Performance protocol — which phases in your safest, least-reactive foods first, allowing the body to calm its inflammatory response before gradually reintroducing more foods. The focus is always on what you can eat, not just what to avoid.
Blood Draw
A simple blood sample is sent to Oxford Biomedical’s certified laboratory for analysis.
Reactivity Scored
Each of 176 foods and chemicals gets a Leukocyte Reactivity Index (LRI) score from low to high.
LEAP Plan Built
A Certified LEAP Therapist builds your phased eating plan starting with your best — lowest-reactive — foods.
Reintroduction
Foods are added back one per day after day 11, then maintained across phases if well-tolerated.
My Symptoms Before MRT — The Baseline
Before I share my results, I want to give you a real picture of where I started. As part of my formal case study documentation, I scored my symptoms at baseline using a standardized multi-system survey. Every symptom was rated 0 (absent) to 4 (severe), and my grand total on February 16, 2026 was 45 points across nine body systems.
My Symptom Severity: Baseline → Follow-Up #1 (2 weeks) → Follow-Up #2 (10 weeks)
| Body System | Baseline 2/16 | Follow-Up #1 3/1 | Follow-Up #2 4/14 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Head / Ears (migraines, tinnitus, sound sensitivity) | 6 | 0 | 0 | −6 100% |
| Skin (eczema, itching, flushing, hives) | 8 | 2 | 0 | −8 100% |
| Digestive (heartburn, bloating, gas) | 5 | 0 | 1 | −4 80% |
| Musculoskeletal (stiff joints & muscles) | 4 | 1 | 0 | −4 100% |
| Nasal / Sinus (post-nasal drip, sinus pain, runny nose) | 4 | 0 | 0 | −4 100% |
| Eyes (watery, dark circles, light sensitivity) | 4 | 0 | 0 | −4 100% |
| Constitutional (insomnia, daytime fatigue, restlessness) | 3 | 1 | 1 | −2 67% |
| Emotional / Mental (mood swings, irritability, low libido) | 3 | 1 | 0 | −3 100% |
| Mouth / Throat (throat clearing, sore throat) | 3 | 0 | 0 | −3 100% |
| Genitourinary (urinary frequency) | 2 | 1 | 0 | −2 100% |
| GRAND TOTAL | 45 | 7 | 2 | −43 96% |
My MRT Results — And What They Revealed
My test covered 176 foods and chemicals, scored on a Leukocyte Reactivity Index (LRI). The higher the LRI score, the more inflammatory the food. The results were eye-opening. Here’s a snapshot of my highest-reacting foods — the ones I completely eliminated:
My High-Reactivity Foods to Avoid
These items tested at moderate to high reactivity (LRI scores shown) and were removed from my diet entirely during the elimination phases:
Some of these surprised me enormously. Sunflower seeds? I was putting those in salads multiple times a week and snacking on them — and they also appeared in many of my dietary supplements. Mustard, a staple of my “healthy” diet. Raspberry tea, my nightly wind-down ritual. Cow’s milk, which I had always “tolerated.” Wheat, which appeared in almost every weekend meal. Soybean, hidden in countless processed foods and supplements. Each of these was quietly stoking the fire inside my body every single day.
Meanwhile, my safest foods — the ones forming the foundation of my LEAP plan — included turkey, collagen, chicken, watermelon, blueberries, sesame, almonds, walnuts, beef, oats, and dozens of other foods I love. The plan felt surprisingly abundant, not restrictive. I became more creative in the kitchen and a better chef as a result.
Within the first few days of following my Phase 1 LEAP plan, the constant haze behind my eyes started to lift. The vestibular migraines that had been a regular occurrence became non-existent. My sinuses, which I’d assumed were just chronically inflamed, cleared almost completely.
The LEAP Protocol: A Roadmap, Not a Restriction
One of the things I love most about the MRT + LEAP approach is that the focus is on the patient’s best foods. MRT is the only sensitivity blood test that quantifies the degree of inflammatory response, which means it identifies not just the most reactive foods but — more importantly — the foods with the lowest degree of reaction. Your best foods. The ones most likely to be well-tolerated.
Here’s how my personal protocol unfolded:
- Personalized to your unique immune response — not a one-size-fits-all protocol
- Focuses on foods you can eat, building abundance and variety from the start
- Phased reintroduction identifies which foods are safe to bring back long-term
- Addresses food chemicals and additives — not just whole foods — as potential triggers
- Supports gut microbiome diversity through systematic food variety
- Most clients notice significant symptom reduction within 10–14 days
The Symptoms That Finally Resolved
What Changed for Me
After removing my high-reactivity foods and following the LEAP reintroduction protocol (baseline → 10 weeks):
Let me say more about the vestibular migraines specifically, because these were debilitating. Vestibular migraines don’t just bring pain — they bring vertigo, disorientation, and a sense that the room is moving when it isn’t. They’re notoriously difficult to treat medically. What the research increasingly shows — and what I experienced firsthand — is that diet-induced inflammation is a significant driver of migraine in many people. Inflammatory mediators like histamine, leukotrienes, and prostaglandins can lower the brain’s inflammatory threshold, rendering the vestibular system susceptible to triggering. Complete resolution of vestibular migraine symptoms — including full travel tolerance — was achieved through dietary modification alone, without any new pharmaceutical intervention.
The post-nasal drip was another revelation. I had assumed for years that it was environmental — pollen, dust, Montana air. But it cleared within 10 days of starting my LEAP plan. That’s too fast for it to be seasonal. It was food.
The hormonal hot flashes deserve special mention. I had long attributed these to perimenopause. But they resolved completely alongside my dietary changes — and at the 60-day follow-up, they remain entirely absent. This strongly suggests that immune-mediated dietary inflammation was contributing to what I assumed was purely hormonal.
And the skin itching — the chronic, maddening itch along my arms and legs that would flare especially in the evenings — faded completely by follow-up #2. Inflammatory skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis are notoriously linked to gut inflammation and immune dysregulation. Remove the dietary triggers, and the skin often follows.
An Unexpected Bonus: The Weight Came Off Without Trying
Here’s something I didn’t expect when I started my LEAP plan: I lost 8 pounds. Without trying. Without counting a single calorie, tracking a macro, or cutting a portion.
If anything, I was eating more abundantly than before — full plates, three meals a day, snacks when I wanted them, foods I genuinely love. I simply removed the ones that were quietly inflaming my system and let my best foods take center stage. The scale moved on its own.
Why Inflammation — Not Willpower — May Be the Real Driver
This isn’t a fluke, and it isn’t really about willpower at all. Chronic low-grade inflammation interferes directly with how the body regulates fat storage and appetite. Inflammatory cytokines like TNF-alpha and IL-6 disrupt insulin signaling, which pushes the body toward storing more fat, particularly around the midsection.
That same inflammatory signaling can also blunt leptin sensitivity — the hormone responsible for telling your brain you’re full — so the body keeps signaling hunger even when energy stores are abundant, driving a cycle that’s very hard to out-diet. Researchers reviewing the mechanisms behind chronic inflammation in obesity describe this as a self-perpetuating loop: inflamed fat tissue produces more inflammatory signals, which drives further metabolic dysfunction and fat storage.
When you remove the specific foods provoking that immune response, you’re not just calming symptoms like migraines or skin flares — you may be removing one of the hidden drivers keeping the whole metabolic system stuck.
For many people, weight isn’t a willpower problem or even a calorie problem. It’s an inflammation problem. Test, don’t guess, and the body often finds its own equilibrium. I go much deeper into the bloating, cortisol, and metabolism side of this connection in my full breakdown of how inflammation causes weight gain, if you want to understand the mechanisms in more detail.
I see this echoed constantly in my clinical practice. My clients come to me expecting to feel less bloated or sleep better — and they do — but weight loss is one of the most common “side effects” I hear about once inflammatory foods come out and the LEAP plan goes in. Easily, and without the misery of restriction.
The Proof That It Was the Food — Not Coincidence
Accidental Rechallenge: An Internal Control
One of the strongest arguments that my outcomes were driven by the dietary intervention — rather than seasonal variation or supplement changes — came from what happened when I accidentally ate reactive foods.
On at least two separate occasions during travel or through accidental ingestion, I consumed foods that were otherwise excluded from my protocol. On both occasions, symptoms returned quickly and dramatically: congestion, headache, and full-body joint aches resumed within a short window of exposure.
Crucially, upon returning to the protocol, symptoms resolved again — mirroring the original treatment response. This dose-response relationship — reactive food in → symptoms return; reactive food out → symptoms resolve — provides compelling within-subject evidence that diet was the primary driver, not coincidence or confounding factors.
The Moment I Knew Everything Had Changed
For years, flying was something I dreaded. Not the travel — the aftermath. The dizziness that would spiral out of control. The nausea I couldn’t outrun. The vomiting that made every flight a nightmare I had to merely survive.
Vestibular migraines and motion are a brutal combination. I had nearly accepted that this was just my life now — that boarding a plane meant paying a physical price I couldn’t avoid.
Then MRT changed everything.
The first time I flew after following my LEAP plan, I braced for the familiar misery. It never came. No dizziness. No nausea. No white-knuckling the armrest. I sat back, looked out at the clouds, and felt something I hadn’t in years — like a completely new person.
I genuinely thought: Is this what flying is supposed to feel like?
It was a milestone I had quietly stopped believing I would ever reach again. And I reached it — not through another medication, not through willpower alone, but by finally understanding what my own body was reacting to.
That flight changed me. Food was the missing piece all along.
I Am in Your Corner — All the Way
📣Let me be direct with you: you are not stuck. You are not destined to manage symptoms forever. And you are not alone in this.
I know what it feels like to be the health professional who can’t figure out her own health. To do everything right and still feel like something invisible is working against you. To quietly grieve the version of yourself that you know you could be but don’t know how to get there.
That grief is real. And so is the way out.
I became a Certified LEAP Therapist because I lived this transformation — and I have seen it happen for my clients too. The person who couldn’t get through a workday without a migraine. The person who had severe gut pain for 8 years that the doctor dismissed as stress. The one who stopped traveling because of nausea. The one who ate “perfectly” and still felt terrible.
Those people got their lives back. With data, with a plan, and with someone in their corner cheering them on every step of the way.
That someone is me. I am not here to hand you a list of foods to avoid and send you on your way. I am here to celebrate every win with you — the first night you sleep through, the first trip you take without dread, the first morning you wake up and think: I feel like myself again.
Why Standard Food Allergy Tests Miss This
Most people are familiar with IgE allergy testing — the kind that identifies classic food allergies like peanut anaphylaxis. But food sensitivities are an entirely different immunological category, encompassing non-IgE-mediated immune reactions involving Type III and Type IV pathways. Most conventional tests don’t capture them.
Food sensitivity reactions may be delayed by hours or even days after ingestion — meaning the headache you have right now may have been caused by something you ate yesterday. They’re also dose-related: a small amount of a reactive food may cause no symptoms, but a larger amount does. Or two or three moderately reactive foods eaten together may trigger symptoms that none would cause alone.
The single common component of all diet-induced inflammatory reactions is mediator release from white cells — cytokines, histamine, leukotrienes, prostaglandins — from neutrophils, monocytes, eosinophils, and lymphocytes. Because of the vast array of potential mediators and reacting cells, measuring volumetric changes in all circulating white cells after antigen challenge is the most logical, direct, and comprehensive measure of food sensitivity reactions. MRT captures all of this — including reactions occurring up to 72–96 hours after ingestion — in a single test.
Who Should Consider MRT Testing?
MRT and the LEAP program have helped improve the lives of tens of thousands of patients with IBS, migraine, fibromyalgia, and other conditions caused by diet-induced inflammation. But the applications go well beyond these classic diagnoses. Even “sub-clinical” inflammation — inflammation you can’t yet feel — contributes to chronic conditions including rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, thyroiditis, and multiple sclerosis. It also optimizes physical performance in athletes.
In my clinical experience, MRT testing is especially worth considering if you:
- Have chronic headaches, vestibular migraines, or frequent brain fog
- Struggle with chronic post-nasal drip, sinusitis, or upper respiratory symptoms
- Experience inflammatory skin conditions like eczema, psoriasis, or unexplained itching
- Have joint pain or stiffness that doesn’t fully respond to treatment
- Sleep poorly despite good sleep hygiene
- Eat “clean” but still feel inflamed, bloated, or unwell
- Have IBS, IBD, GERD, or other digestive disorders
- Suspect food triggers but can’t identify them through trial and error
A Note on Working With a Professional
MRT testing is most powerful when interpreted and implemented by a Certified LEAP Therapist (CLT) — a licensed healthcare professional specifically trained in food sensitivity and the LEAP protocol. The test results are nuanced, and building an effective eating plan from them requires expertise. Rushing reintroduction or ignoring borderline reactors can blunt the results.
If you’re looking for a CLT, you can book an appointment with me, or visit nowleap.com for their practitioner directory.
Ready to Find Your Inflammatory Foods?
MRT testing may be one of the most powerful tools available for uncovering the root cause of chronic, diet-driven inflammation. It was for me — a 96% reduction in total symptom burden in 10 weeks.
Learn More at thehealthyrd.com →Supporting Research & Clinical Literature
This blog post reflects my personal experience with MRT testing and the LEAP protocol and draws on my self-case study documentation. It is not intended as medical advice. Please work with a qualified healthcare practitioner before making significant dietary changes, especially if you have existing medical conditions. MRT® is a registered trademark of Oxford Biomedical Technologies, Inc.
