Why So Many Intolerances?

[Mazzy0]

Is it okay to vent on this forum? I just registered, even though I've been reading the forum posts for about 8 months now. But, I'm getting to my wits end with food. I'm starting to feel like an orthorexic, having to analyze and obsess about every little thing I put into my mouth.

So far, I know that I cannot eat the following:

1. caffeine, even slightest amount - so no regular coffee, decaf coffee, regular tea, decaf tea (I can have herbal), regular colas, even cocoa and sometimes chocolate. (Caffeine results in a reverse reaction - I become a zombie for 3 days, unable to function, very depressed and weird, with squeezing sensation in my head, not exactly a headache, that lasts the entire 3 days)

2. milk products - milk, ice cream, yogurt (causes diarrhea, bloating, gas, and severe depression) Up to recently, I pushed the envelope by eating cheese.

3. milk substitutes - lactaid, soy milk, almond milk, hemp milk, rice milk, goat milk, you name it - I've tried it (all of these seem to cause bloating, gas, or diarrhea, and a general feeling of illness that lasts an entire day) WHY? I don't see any relationship between these different milks, other than the same consistency.

4. Peanut butter - I absolutely, unequivocally cannot eat it due to immediate vomiting

5. Eggs - also can cause vomiting, but sometimes I am able to get away with eggs if they are cooked into something and I eat it late in the day.

6. Wheat - I have tested positive (blood, but not biopsy). Funny thing is that wheat does not give me any immediate reactions. I still don't eat it because I suspect it is the reason why I have hashimoto's and weight issues, and hope that in a couple of years the thyroid antibodies will disappear.

7. Heavy fats in general - cause dumping syndrome

Okay, so that's my list so far. If I stay away from all the items above, I can rest easy knowing I will not throw up or have explosive diarrhea. But, still, every once in a while, I will feel icky. I started suspecting a casein issue, so I've been off casein this week, and it has helped some. But, this morning, after breakfast, I started to have problems again - that general weird, icky, awful feeling. The only thing I ate that may have been a problem was the soy butter. I had a bunch of soy butter in my dinner last night, and I had it this morning on my rice flour pancake.

Is it me, or is this possibly too many intolerances for 1 person? I feel like I must be crazy or there's something else wrong that has nothing to do with the food itself.

If I go off of soy also, I will have nothing left but meat, fruits, and vegetables, rice, potatoes. Okay, so I can live on that, and yeah, it's super healthy which is great! but it's very hard for "grab and go" when you work 60 hours a week and have to cook 2 meals for me/husband. Not to mention, I'm pregnant right now, and all I want is junk food. I was living on baked potato chips - which were great gluten free/dairy free/lowfat alternative to those nasty rice crackers, but they have soy in them!

Help! I don't like to complain, but I am getting frustrated...

[lynnelise]

A lot of people on the forums do have many intolerances so yes it is possible that you just can't tolerate any of the items listed.

As for the alternatives to dairy do the brands you use have carrageenan as an ingredient? A lot of people have issues with that. Also a few brands of rice milk could have undeclared barley in them. Not sure of the brands right now but if you search the forums you could find it.

Could some of these be pregnancy related? Many people have things that their body won't tolerate while pregnant but they can usually add back after baby. So if you didn't have these issues before getting pregnant then that could be a factor.

[GlutenFreeManna]

Is it okay to vent on this forum? I just registered, even though I've been reading the forum posts for about 8 months now. But, I'm getting to my wits end with food. I'm starting to feel like an orthorexic, having to analyze and obsess about every little thing I put into my mouth.

So far, I know that I cannot eat the following:

1. caffeine, even slightest amount - so no regular coffee, decaf coffee, regular tea, decaf tea (I can have herbal), regular colas, even cocoa and sometimes chocolate. (Caffeine results in a reverse reaction - I become a zombie for 3 days, unable to function, very depressed and weird, with squeezing sensation in my head, not exactly a headache, that lasts the entire 3 days)

2. milk products - milk, ice cream, yogurt (causes diarrhea, bloating, gas, and severe depression) Up to recently, I pushed the envelope by eating cheese.

3. milk substitutes - lactaid, soy milk, almond milk, hemp milk, rice milk, goat milk, you name it - I've tried it (all of these seem to cause bloating, gas, or diarrhea, and a general feeling of illness that lasts an entire day) WHY? I don't see any relationship between these different milks, other than the same consistency.

4. Peanut butter - I absolutely, unequivocally cannot eat it due to immediate vomiting

5. Eggs - also can cause vomiting, but sometimes I am able to get away with eggs if they are cooked into something and I eat it late in the day.

6. Wheat - I have tested positive (blood, but not biopsy). Funny thing is that wheat does not give me any immediate reactions. I still don't eat it because I suspect it is the reason why I have hashimoto's and weight issues, and hope that in a couple of years the thyroid antibodies will disappear.

7. Heavy fats in general - cause dumping syndrome

Okay, so that's my list so far. If I stay away from all the items above, I can rest easy knowing I will not throw up or have explosive diarrhea. But, still, every once in a while, I will feel icky. I started suspecting a casein issue, so I've been off casein this week, and it has helped some. But, this morning, after breakfast, I started to have problems again - that general weird, icky, awful feeling. The only thing I ate that may have been a problem was the soy butter. I had a bunch of soy butter in my dinner last night, and I had it this morning on my rice flour pancake.

Is it me, or is this possibly too many intolerances for 1 person? I feel like I must be crazy or there's something else wrong that has nothing to do with the food itself.

If I go off of soy also, I will have nothing left but meat, fruits, and vegetables, rice, potatoes. Okay, so I can live on that, and yeah, it's super healthy which is great! but it's very hard for "grab and go" when you work 60 hours a week and have to cook 2 meals for me/husband. Not to mention, I'm pregnant right now, and all I want is junk food. I was living on baked potato chips - which were great gluten free/dairy free/lowfat alternative to those nasty rice crackers, but they have soy in them!

Help! I don't like to complain, but I am getting frustrated...

You are not alone--see my signature.

I agree with the PP about the milk subs, perhaps there is an additive in them you cannot tolerate. Have you tried makign your own rice milk or almond milk? It's really easy to do.

For meals--have you seen Open Original Shared Link ? The crock pot can really help you make meals that are "normal" and things your husband will eat as well so you aren't coooking two meals. If you don't have time in the morning, many times you can chop everything you need the night before, put it in a bowl in the fridge and just dump in the slow cooker in the morning. If you buy a new slow cooker you might want to get one that has an auto warm feature after so many hours so if you have to work longer hours than the food cooks it won't over-cook. Another thing for you to look into is once a month cooking--you do big batches of food on the weekends and fill up the freezer with meals. Then all you have to do is pull the food and reheat or finish cooking.

Re: the soy. You probably already know this but since you have Hashi's soy can really mess with your thyroid. You should really consider dropping it. There are potato chips that don't have soy--I know because I can't eat soy either--some brands I get are Lays and Kettle chips. There are also lots of other non-peanut alternatives to soy butter--sunflower butter, cashew butter, hazelnut spread, pumpkin butter, apple butter, hummus, jam, jellies and fruit spreads...avocado even. For oil I use light Olive oil for cooking everything. To grease pans I use Palm shortening or coconut oil.

Finally, do you take any probiotics? I have just started them but I have heard they can help some people overcome intolerances that are gut-related.

[jenngolightly]

A note: you might be getting delayed reactions to foods you've eaten, so don't suspect it was something that you just ate or recently ate. Some people get delays of one or two days!

I suggest keeping a food diary of everything you eat and when symptoms occur. You may find that a particular symptom always happens one day after you eat [blank].

Another comment - There might be some common ingredient in those foods you can't eat that is making you sick. It might be corn. That's what happened to me. A lot of foods have corn in them - even peanut butter and most definitely most chocolates. High fructose corn syrup is in a lot of colas and is even in the vanilla you use to make cookies! Maybe it's hidden in some of those dairy substitutes (not sure). Or there could be another common ingredient in many of those foods you can't eat. So what I'm saying is that you might not be intolerant to all of those foods, but a single ingredient in those foods. I was elated this year to find out that instead of being intolerant to a really long list of foods (like yours), and therefore needing a very restrictive diet that makes you cry now-and-again, it was just a corn-intolerance and nut allergy. So now I have a world of food options and I just have to find corn-free and nut-free foods. What a relief. I sincerely hope you have the same luck.

So, there are heavy hitters in the intolerance group - at least as far as I've noticed as a frequent reader on this forum: gluten (of course), dairy (lactose, not usually casein luckily!), soy, corn, eggs, and nightshades. There are lots of other ones, but not so common as these. You can take all of these off your list for 2 weeks and then add one group in at a time to see if you get a reaction.

But I still suggest that you keep a food diary because even if you take these food groups out of your diet, you might be reacting to something else. Maybe even a specific brand of something. And it's cool to see what kind of crap you're feeding your body (if you are). That was a real eye-opener for me. I didn't realize how unhealthy I was eating, and how much junk I was feeding my kids. I got a ton of self-induced-mom-guilt and started to eat more healthy not really for me, but mostly so my kids would have a healthy diet and grow up to eat healthy foods as adults.

Good luck. It's really great that you are a long-time reader and first-time poster. It's kind of addicting, eh?

[mushroom]

How long have you been gluten free, and have you done anything to heal your gut? We can keep developing additional intolerances so long as our gut is still leaking through only partially digested foods, which the autoimmune system recognizes as non-self and attacks. These tend to be the foods we eat most often and to which the antibodies are most exposed. If you check my sig I had a long progressive history of additional intolerances until I addressed this issue.

The cure is not easy, but generally involves taking a good probiotic, sometimes L-glutamine, sometimes digestive enzymes to make up for the pancreas being lazy in its output, and definitely making sure that all your nutrient levels are up to par. Since you are pregnant you have probably had these checked anyway and are probably taking folate and other things. But leaky gut may be something that needs addressing for you - it is caused by gluten and doesn't automatically go away for some of us just because we stop eating gluten.