Whining About Food Allergies

[Guest Recluse]

I have extensive food allergies. I've posted before about them, so writing this feels a bit like overkill - but it's on my mind today.

Cheating on my food allergies, eating things I shouldn't, is a regular part of my day. I wish it were easy to avoid the foods I love so much, but the allergens are all so common to my pre-onset diet that it's still hard, even after three years, to sit down and make two separate meals. I usually just make dinner for him and end up eating whatever I made, damn the consequences. Laziness? Probably.

Constant exposure to allergens has started to make some of the reactions less powerful. They're still present, but weaker...while at first this seemed like a very good thing, what I'm experiencing now is a wider range of less obvious reaction symptoms on top of the already present ones. It's as though, having ignored my immune system's warnings, it's trying to find other ways of making the problem known.

For a while, I believed that the malaise, brain-fog, fatigue, minor nausea, and little digestive twinges were just in my head. I reasoned that, since I knew consuming these allergens was supposed to be harmful, that even when they didn't outwardly appear to be causing a reaction, I was manufacturing symptoms anyway. I believed that I was just making myself sick, and that I needed to get over it and enjoy my good fortune in not having such strong reactions anymore.

I'm starting to think that might not be the case after all. Maybe there's something to it.

Because I've been sifting through old blog entries to look for medicinal patterns, I decided to try and sort things out according to what I'd written about eating. I frequently talk about food on my external blog, so I'd find an entry featuring an allergen heavy meal, then read the two entries after it. Each time with amazing consistency, after eating a 'forbidden' food, I'd have emotional upset and physical illness for two or three days afterward. Meaning, I'm miserable almost all the time.

So perhaps through over-exposure, I've traded topical reactions like hives, eczema, and fevers for more deeply seated issues, or at the very least, made my MI worse. It doesn't help that while constantly cheating on food allergies, my blood pressure rises, my heart beats harder and more quickly, I stop losing weight, and my muscles and skin restlessly 'crawl' for hours afterward. Even more troubling: I've started developing allergic food-type reactions even when I haven't recently eaten. I'll wake up after 12 hours of sleeping on an empty stomach with hives on my palms, hands, and body.

In Summary: I really need to stop cheating, it's making me sick, but my allergens are literally -everywhere-.

[AnneMarie]

When I was a teen, I was tested for all types of allergies. I tested as being allergic to almost all foods and spices except lamb, peanuts, a few fruits and some veggies which is all I ate for a month or two. I now hate broccoli and am glad I didn't eat too much lamb. Afterwards, we slowly added stuff back in. What caused a bad reaction, I gave up for the most part. What didn't, went back into my list of foods. Mostly I figured if I could still breath, it was okay. My overt problem was asthma, so it seemed a reasonable measure. Today, some foods give me headaches, others make me tired, and some upset my stomach. A few still sometimes make it hard to breath. My body has it's own clock for how much is too much when. Usually, I'm okay with a little or I have no desire to eat the food.

Maybe it is time for you to step back and figure out which foods you can do how often and which ones aren't worth the reactions. Based on that, come up with your menus. If hubby is left wanting, perhaps he could take a turn cooking, too.

[WinterRosie]

I get delayed reactions sometimes. It isn't uncommon for me to wake up with hives on my face - then I need to figure out what I did/ate/touched the previous day. The time delay is very strange, though.

[SashaSue]

I know nothing about food allergies, but your subtitle made me laugh.

That is all.

[nalgas]

Over the years, I have come to the conclusion that I am some kind of freak of nature for having no difficulty at all sticking to not eating the things I know I can't/shouldn't eat (although it does drive my family nuts at times). Pretty much everyone else I've talked to is more like you, or at least somewhere in the middle.

A lot of people have a hard time sticking to it all the time, especially when the reactions they have are less obvious like that. It's very easy to attribute relatively ambiguous/non-specific things that basically add up to "just generally not feeling great" to a different cause or write them off as not a big deal, especially compared to a more immediate and dramatic reaction like hives or going into shock.

Actually, I think what probably helped me deal with it in my case the way I did is that I'm really anal about keeping records of things, so I already had a detailed log of the kinds of patterns you've been noticing going through your blog entries before I changed my diet in the first place. That's not to say that it was fun or easy or anything like that, but having a chart staring back at you that conclusively says "every time you eat X, bad thing Y happens" was pretty decent motivation.

The list of things I can't eat has some irritatingly common things, too. Most restaurants are a bitch to find anything I can eat on the menu, especially anything that's actually appealing. Sometimes it's impossible. With some effort/experimenting, though, eating at home is not at all a big deal anymore, after the initial adjustment period. I did have to accept that I couldn't have some things anymore that I really liked, but for the most part I've come up with enough other stuff that it's ok.

Also, I solved the "other people wanting to eat stuff I can't" thing by telling them to just go ahead and do it when they really want to. I keep some simple stuff around I can throw together for myself quickly/easily for occasions like that, and it usually works out fine in the end, even if it is a little inconvenient.

[Guest Recluse]

The list of things I can't eat has some irritatingly common things, too.

This is especially annoying for me, since I have almost all of the most common eight and so many cross reactivities. Wheat, spelt, all nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, any pepper or chili), all citrus, beef, pork, sheep, goat, dairy, artichoke, asparagus, celery, carrot, onion, garlic, shellfish, tree-nuts, stone-fruits, peanuts, avocado, banana, papaya, and I'm sure I'm leaving a few out. There are so few safe foods that my diet is pretty limited.

I eat mostly fish, poultry, venison, berries, sweet potato, (which thankfully isn't related to the nightshade family), rice, corn, beans, a few vegetables, a few fruits, and soy products. That's really about it. I get so tired of the same flavors over and over, and although there are plenty of ways to dress those flavors, it gets really damned old, and the majority of pre-packaged food is inedible unless I cheat, so eating isn't simple either.

*whine whine whine*

[nalgas]

This is especially annoying for me, since I have almost all of the most common eight and so many cross reactivities. Wheat, spelt, all nightshades (potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, any pepper or chili), all citrus, beef, pork, sheep, goat, dairy, artichoke, asparagus, celery, carrot, onion, garlic, shellfish, tree-nuts, stone-fruits, peanuts, avocado, banana, papaya, and I'm sure I'm leaving a few out. There are so few safe foods that my diet is pretty limited.

I eat mostly fish, poultry, venison, berries, sweet potato, (which thankfully isn't related to the nightshade family), rice, corn, beans, a few vegetables, a few fruits, and soy products. That's really about it. I get so tired of the same flavors over and over, and although there are plenty of ways to dress those flavors, it gets really damned old, and the majority of pre-packaged food is inedible unless I cheat, so eating isn't simple either.

I've actually got a decent subset of some of the more annoying ones of those covered myself: gluten, dairy, nightshades (although I would like to test a couple of them again at some point, because I'm not entirely sure about all of them), shellfish, anything more than small amounts of soy and eggs, and artificial dyes (only a couple are really a problem, but it's not like it comes up often anyway with the other stuff).

I probably eat somewhat similarly to you as a result, swapping red meat for soy and adding a few more fruits and vegetables. Plenty of sweet potatoes, rice, corn, and beans in my diet. Doesn't leave a whole lot of pre-packaged stuff for me, either, but that doesn't mean I can't still throw something together in a hurry if I need to. Sure, it gets old if I do it too often, but it only takes a few minutes to toss some frozen vegetables (corn or peas or whatever) in the microwave while pulling a burger out of the freezer and cooking it on the stove or to throw together some kind of wacky bean- or tuna-based salad in a big bowl. I'd rather have something more interesting, but if everyone else is eating something I can't and there isn't enough time (or free space in the kitchen, or I'm feeling lazy, or whatever other reason) to do something else, it beats either going hungry or making myself feel for the next few days by eating crap I know I shouldn't.

I totally agree that it sucks, but it is possible, and for me it's been worth it just for how much less time I spend incapacitated by being sick to my stomach, even ignoring everything else.

[SolitaryDawn]

I have extensive food allergies. I've posted before about them, so writing this feels a bit like overkill - but it's on my mind today.

Cheating on my food allergies, eating things I shouldn't, is a regular part of my day. I wish it were easy to avoid the foods I love so much, but the allergens are all so common to my pre-onset diet that it's still hard, even after three years, to sit down and make two separate meals. I usually just make dinner for him and end up eating whatever I made, damn the consequences. Laziness? Probably.

Constant exposure to allergens has started to make some of the reactions less powerful. They're still present, but weaker...while at first this seemed like a very good thing, what I'm experiencing now is a wider range of less obvious reaction symptoms on top of the already present ones. It's as though, having ignored my immune system's warnings, it's trying to find other ways of making the problem known.

In Summary: I really need to stop cheating, it's making me sick, but my allergens are literally -everywhere-.

Hey Recluse. I am bad for this. I haven't found out everything that I'm allergic to yet. I am currently testing, but even before that I knew that some things were hurting me and I still ate them. Since you have so few things that you can safely eat, how about a rotation diet? After my detox I ate both cheese and bread (12 grain at that). I still had a reaction, but it was not as bad as it had been when it was something i was normally eating. Rotation diets are based on not having a food more than every 4th day - or in more complicated diets - a food family. Stacia, perhaps the same would be beneficial to you.

I get delayed reactions sometimes. It isn't uncommon for me to wake up with hives on my face - then I need to figure out what I did/ate/touched the previous day. The time delay is very strange, though.

It isn't uncommon for reactions to be delayed - even 24-48 hrs (alternately they can be immediate).