3 Days Of Allergic Reactions

[JSegura226]

For the past 3 days I have been getting a swollen/tight throat after eating. I actually ended up in the ER for the first reaction. CT scan showed some swelling but it went down with a bendryl IV injection..I have only been gluten free 4 days and at first I thought it was my digestive enzyme I was taking giving me this reaction. Well this morning I decided to skip the enzyme and just eat.. sure enough.. swollen throat! Checked my trusty food journal to see what else I have been eating and sure enough I found a common denominator.. AVOCADO! NOO!!!!! I love avocados... Why after going Gluten free do avocados give me this reaction?! Anybody else experience this? My body seems to be reacting strangely to all kinds of things since going gluten-free..

[lynnelise]

After going gluten free I developed a mild coffee allergy. It's been a year and half and I added coffee back regularly a few weeks ago with no reactions so far. Hopefully these issues will clear up once you heal! Sorry you are going through this. I love avocado too!

[hnybny91]

It could be that you have always had a slight reaction to avocados before but now that gluten is not screaming it head off the avocado allergy can be heard. Since going gluten free I have realized that I am also sensitive to eggs, dairy, almost all fish, yeast, beans and a hand full of spices. It really is kind of depressing when I stop to think about it.

[mercury6]

  On 4/1/2011 at 5:36 PM, JSegura226 said:

For the past 3 days I have been getting a swollen/tight throat after eating. I actually ended up in the ER for the first reaction. CT scan showed some swelling but it went down with a bendryl IV injection..I have only been gluten free 4 days and at first I thought it was my digestive enzyme I was taking giving me this reaction. Well this morning I decided to skip the enzyme and just eat.. sure enough.. swollen throat! Checked my trusty food journal to see what else I have been eating and sure enough I found a common denominator.. AVOCADO! NOO!!!!! I love avocados... Why after going Gluten free do avocados give me this reaction?! Anybody else experience this? My body seems to be reacting strangely to all kinds of things since going gluten-free..

After going gluten free I changed my diet and experienced some difficulty breathing for a while. I had repeated bronchial infections so my doctor prescribed an inhaler for asthma. I'd never had a problem like that in my life. I had to look at everything I was eating, so I started with the eight most common allergens.

Tortilla chips with avocado had become a frequent snack for me. I thought it was the avocado, but avocado never came up on my allergy tests. As it turns out, it was soy in the tortilla chips. i have an intolerance to soy, not a 'true' allergy, but since it affects my breathing, that's enough reason to avoid it.

many gluten free food items use soy, if you've noticed. i was also getting soy from soy lecithin in chocolate, teas, and lip balms. once i removed all that from my diet, my breathing went back to normal.

Lots of folks recommend elimination diets to identify a problem food, but if you've already gone gluten free, you've probably done that to a certain extent. Try looking at the most common allergens for starters. I mentioned the tortilla chips since they seem to go hand in hand with avocado. Hope you're feeling better!

[annegirl]

I feel your pain! I've lost several food groups over the last 2 months. It can be depressing. (yeah, I should never have said, "they can pry Coke from my cold dead fingers!" dang high fructose corn syrup)

I think some of it is that you probably have other intolerances that just added to the whole "sick" overall feeling. Some could also be that your body is just hyper sensitive to everything. I'm in the process of getting some pro biotics and researching "leaky gut" to see if I can get some relief before I become intolerant of something crazy....like water.

[mushroom]

  On 4/2/2011 at 5:52 AM, annegirl said:

I feel your pain! I've lost several food groups over the last 2 months. It can be depressing. (yeah, I should never have said, "they can pry Coke from my cold dead fingers!" dang high fructose corn syrup)

I think some of it is that you probably have other intolerances that just added to the whole "sick" overall feeling. Some could also be that your body is just hyper sensitive to everything. I'm in the process of getting some pro biotics and researching "leaky gut" to see if I can get some relief before I become intolerant of something crazy....like water.

The water thing is not too crazy. We did a thread on here to see if we could find something that everybody could eat, that everyone tolerated, and I said the same thing, pretty soon we will end up with only water , and I seem to recall someone having a problem with it

Leaky gut is a key to a lot of these additional reactions that show up. A leaky gut allows food into the blood stream in a partially digested state and the body recognizes it as non-self and therefore foreign, and the immune system mounts an attack. If you can heal your gut (probiotics are the first line of defense) and stop these partially digested foods entering the bloodstream you can prevent further intolerances. That is why it is suggested not to eat the same things all the time, to use a rotational diet of every four days so that the body does not say, oh no, not THAT again and attack it. There are also things that have been there for quite a while but masked by the screaming of the gluten so that their voices could not be heard.

It is amazing what you can learn by trying to understand what your body is telling you.

[ladymiss]

hang in there, J! sounds like you've been having a very rough couple of days! i read your other post on benedryl.

i've been dealing with food sensitivities, before and after going gluten free. i still don't have it figured out. seems like it's just going to take time and healing.

just wanted to send positive wishes! feel better soon.

[T.H.]

Much sympathy on losing a food! Yeah, I had the same thing. Started reacting like crazy to some allergies, and then to gluten, until it was crazy trying to tell which was which for a long while!

Just to help you avoid a problem I had, though, you might want to make sure you check what brands you were eating, if possible. Probably don't really want to try it on your own if the throat's swelling, but I've found a couple things that I thought were trouble, but turned out to be a common coating on the outside of a veggie/fruit, that was present in organic and non-organic, so I got it every time until I found a farm that didn't use this.

  On 4/2/2011 at 6:31 AM, mushroom said:

The water thing is not too crazy. We did a thread on here to see if we could find something that everybody could eat, that everyone tolerated, and I said the same thing, pretty soon we will end up with only water , and I seem to recall someone having a problem with it

Yes! I have met one lovely gal whose little girl was very sick, and it turned out to be their water. The little one was allergic to coconut, and pretty much all the carbon used in those carbon filters (including filters often installed for the water that is going into the reverse osmosis filters) is coconut based.

Once they avoided carbon filters in the water, the little girl has started to improve significantly.

Just crazy what happens, isn't it?