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My Food Allergy and How I Learned to Manage It

Several years ago while waiting for someone at a doctor's office, I was reading a story in a health magazine about a teenage girl who had been diagnosed with allergies to dairy products. The article was in fact about how very few allergists really understood how allergies affect the body and consequently don't diagnose most of the allergies people have. The skin test is a minuscule portion of what types of allergies people actually suffer from.

This teenage girl had been a straight-A student all her life, very outgoing and active and always had a cheery temperament. Suddenly in her early teens, everything changed. She began to develop daily intestinal problems and nausea, migraine headaches and her grades dropped. Because of the patient profile, the allergist recommended an elimination diet excluding all dairy products from the girls diet. After sticking to the restrictions for a month, the girls grades were again Straight-A's and her health problems had stopped. This started me thinking about my own health.

At this time, I was suffering from awful headaches at least once, and often twice per month. They would last for 2-3 days during which time I functioned at a very low level, often going to bed for hours with Benadryl to escape the pain. I was also unable to work in the garden for more than a few minutes without having terrible sneezing and watery eyes. Peripherally, every time I used any household chemicals, I would become sick to my stomach and start sneezing and itching. I remembered that during my high school years, I was unable to eat ice cream without getting a very upset stomach, and pizza was about the same.

To think I might have an allergy to dairy products was about the last thing I wanted to think about, since I absolutely love milk in my coffee, vanilla custard, buttery bread and let's face it...I'm addicted to cheese! In fact, I could live on Wine and Cheese and Bread.

However, the headaches alone were disabling enough for me to decide to try an elimination diet. Now, these things are complicated, especially when it comes to dairy products. I'm someone who has coffee every morning and really enjoy it. I also always used butter in my cooking as well as having finally mastered the ice cream problem and indulged in that periodically. Then there's the cheese. Cheese featured in most of my days at some point. This is my weakness and boy did that one hurt to contemplate. None the less, I decided to find some substitutes and just go cold turkey on the rest.

I read up on elimination dieting and learned that this requires a minimum of one month before you really know if you have an allergy or sensitivity to a particular food. This is a long time, but not only does the food in question have to be entirely out of your system, but in order to get a clear idea of how a food affects you, you need to let your body 'recover' from it, or rebalance itself before introducing it again. So I did it. After a week I got used to the soy milk in my coffee. After two weeks, I wasn't craving milk, cheese or butter (thank God). When the month had passed and I hadn't had a headache at all, or any sinus difficulty I decided it was an unmistakable result. I am allergic to dairy products.

To reinforce my conclusion, all the conditions I now attribute to dairy allergy are consistent. If I am 'clean' and have dairy one day, it often won't have any effect at all. Sadly for me, this often traps me into thinking 'what will another day hurt?'. Wrong, wrong, wrong attitude! If I continue to have small amounts on an ongoing basis, everything returns. No matter how often I put this to the test, it comes out the same. One of the good things to come out of learning about my allergy is that over 4 months I lost 10 pounds. This was not due to dieting, because I really do eat a lot. Over the next 7 or 8 months I lost another 15 pounds. I don't necessarily eat less fat or calories, but my body is able to use the food I eat for my benefit.

Here's what I think happens. An allergy is an immune system response to something that your body believes to be harmful. This is a natural response, but when your body is out of balance, this response can be overactive, or can respond to something that really isn't a threat. In my case of dairy allergy, I have noticed that when I'm not eating dairy products, I almost never have hay fever, sneezing, cough or watery eyes. I also have insignificant, if any digestive problems. I don't crave carbs, sweets or high fat foods, and my body seems to process the food I do eat more efficiently. It feels to me when I'm eating dairy products, my immune system is in overdrive, which causes my body to use it's reserves to combat the dairy that it can't process, leaving insufficient resources for maintenance.

Here are some of the in's and out's of deciding and trying elimination dieting to determine if you have a food allergy:

  1. There are different schools of thought on whether people are in fact 'allergic' to foods or just 'sensitive' to them
  2. Many foods cause a huge range of health conditions in people, many of which you would never guess to be associated with the food in question (hence some of the disagreement about 'allergic' vs. 'sensitive') For example, dry skin, exzema, migraines, intestinal disorders and sinus allergies, inability to concentrate.
  3. One of the pitfalls of trying an elimination diet is that you have to read the labels of every food item you purchase, and eating out becomes nightmarish - either you don't do it at all, or get brave enough to ask whether the food you want contains anything you are trying to eliminate. You have to be very specific about what you ask. Way big hassle!
  4. You need to find substitutes for as many of the things you normally use as you can, but be careful, sometimes things aren't what they seem. Here's an example... I had heard for years about how Mocha Mix was a non-dairy milk substitute so I thought that would be an easy answer to my coffee. Well guess what? Mocha Mix and many other touted 'non-dairy' solutions contain Casein, one of the components of milk that many people are very allergic to. Frankly, most non-dairy products have Casein. While doing a dairy elimination diet, you should avoid this.
  5. Set up your alternatives and mentally prepare yourself in advance, then pick the day and start.
  6. You can only eliminate one food at a time, (so choose wisely). By food, I mean the foundational food item. Many people are allergic to corn. In addition to fresh, frozen or canned corn, they may also have to eliminate cornstarch (paper cups and milk cartons are coated with cornstarch), ale, beers, corn sugar (dextrose, glucose, dextrin, dextrimaltose, and fructose), corn meal, corn syrup, corn oil which are only the most obvious ones. If you discover eliminating the obvious items makes enough difference, you need to study what other products you may use that can be causing you problems. If you're trying an elimination diet for dairy, you should not use any prepared foods, (canned soups, boxed or packaged mixes for anything, certain condiments, etc.) because dairy and dairy derivatives are very often part of these products.
  7. Keep a food journal - it's amazing how easy it is to slip without thinking about it. A journal will also help you analyze whether the item you think is a problem is in fact the problem - it could be a combination of things. The journal should include everything (snacks and nibbles too) you eat, but also how you feel throughout the day including energy levels, how you sleep and wake, and any unusual health conditions.
  8. Once you've determined whether you have a problem food, you need to stay off of it for a while, before reintroducing it into your diet. Why reintroduce it? Because once your 'clean' you can try the food again to see how much a controlled amount affects you. Why do you care? Because it's really tough to live without accidentally or 'on-purpose' eating something you shouldn't. If when you reintroduce it, it makes you really sick right away...well you can guess. If you don't have much trouble, if any, a little won't hurt from time to time.

Buying a book on food allergies and/or elimination dieting is really very helpful.

A Note on Preservatives

Over the past 10 years, I've started only buying food items if I understand what the list of ingredients is. If I don't know what something listed on a label is, I typically put it back on the shelf. Due to an unpleasant incident with an allergy product a couple of years ago, I have discovered that preservatives in foods can cause very serious reactions in certain people. Below are a couple of links to read about preservatives and food additives which is interesting.

Food Additives Chart

Recommended reading: Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. If you don't want to know about the entire food industry or fast foods, go to the library and read Chapter 5 Why the Fries Taste Good. Otherwise buy the book...it's important reading for those who purchase and prepare food.

Dairy Allergy Information
Food allergy as defined by the conventional medical field
Food Allergy vs. Food Intollerance

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