Normal Girls Eat Cheeseburgers

I grew up eating meat.  We were poor and ground beef was inexpensive and versatile.  I never really considered myself much of a meat eater, however, and always said I would easily be able to give it up.  In December 2010, I did.  I knew I needed to make some changes to my diet but just couldn't motivate myself to do so.  So, when a friend said he was "going vegan" for a week to make amends for upsetting the girl he was dating at the time, I said it would be easier for me to be vegetarian for a week than for him to be vegan-despite his being a lifelong vegetarian. 

The timing worked out well for this.  I had a sinus infection at the time but despite following the directions, I kept throwing up my Amoxicillin-and everything I ate.  Ultimately, I had to be taken off of it.  So, my system had been cleansed, though not in a traditional manner, as recommended before starting a diet lifestyle change.
Other than missing bacon (mmm bacon) and  the convenience of meat, I did not find it hard to be vegetarian, though I did find a few chain restaurants to not be vegetarian-friendly.  But overall, Portland is very vegetarian friendly.  Actually, it's pretty friendly to most lifestyles. 

Over time,  I started to notice I kept getting sick and finally was able to attribute it to onions.  My dad was allergic to them and it turns out as much as I love them, they don't love me.  It also turns out that onions are used to flavor about 95% of vegetarian dishes and cannot always be left out.  So this added an extra challenge-vegetarian without onions. 

Then I had LASIK in October, and I came out allergic to food.  I've never been particularly healthy-not necessarily sick, but not really healthy either so chances are the food allergies have always been there; it just never occurred to anyone that perhaps I should be tested for them.  In November, an IgE blood test revealed an allergy to Baker's yeast with the antibodies present for several other items.  Researching that was frustrating, to say the least.  It's not a common allergy (of course not) and it's controversial.  Not to mention, most research is centered around the bacterial yeast, Candida, that naturally occurs in our bodies and I'm allergic to the fungal yeast found in the yummy goodness known as bread, pretzels, pizza dough, vineger, etc. 

So now I can't eat onions, bread products, condiments, salad dressing, most sauces, alcohol (also allergic to sulfites), and grapes.  I started to eat chicken and pork again.  I quickly learned you can't be allergic to yeast and highly intolerant to onions and be a vegetarian.  Unless, of course, you only want to eat dairy, fruits, veggies, and pasta. 

Armed with a better understanding of food allergies and their symptoms (which strongly resemble what you go through when you are grieving), I realized there was something that was still making me sick.  So I made an appointment with an allergist for the skin-prick test.  It revealed I'm allergic to yeast (I wanted a second opinion), almonds, hazelnuts, and pistachios with a mild allergy to spinach (seriously?  How is that even possible??), potatoes and peaches.  Sigh...although I seem to be fine eating potatoes, and I don't really care for hazelnuts and peaches so no loss there.

Neither of these tests were what I considered to be comprehensive as they only tested a limited range of items: 23 for the IgE test and 56 for the skin prick test.  So on the recommendation of a naturopath, I went in for the EAV method of allergy testing, which is an electroacupuncture method and pretty much tests everything you can think of.  According to this test, I'm allergic to wheat, which came up negative on the skin prick test but positive on the IgE test; however, I do not have Celiac Disease.  This test also showed positives for sugar (not tested previously but she said almost everyone tests positive on this), dairy (negative on the other two tests), tomatoes (also positive on the IgE test) and chocolate (um, not just no, but HELL no).  On the environmental side, I'm pretty much allergic to leaving the house.  Negative for yeast, alcohol and sulfites. 

Frustrated, I asked how I could test positive for something on two tests but not the third.  She said she considered the EAV method to be 85-90% accurate and if I tested positive two out of three times, I should assume I'm allergic to it.  I should also assume an allergy or intolerance to foods I know to make me sick-which is what I'm trying to narrow down with all these tests.  Again, sigh.

I'm very frustrated right now and don't know what to do next.  I guess I'll start by looking at the three test results side by side for commonalities and go from there.  The thing I found interesting about this from an emotional standpoint is that for the first time in 4 years, James wasn't the sounding board I want to help me figure out a game plan.  Someone else is-a friend who has become quite the presence in my life in a short amount of time-a definite sign of healing.

Lately, there has been a lot of talk about pink slime in ground beef.  (Eeww).  All the talk, this frustration of still not being sure of what I am and am not allergic to and driving by Carl's Jr on a regular basis has me wanting a nice, big bacon cheeseburger.  However, if you take off all the things I may or may not be allergic to, I can have the hamburger patty and the lettuce-as long as there's no seasoning containing autolyzed yeast extract on the patty.  I haven't had beef in 15 months so it would probably just make me sick if I ate it now.  And it's not so much that I actually want the cheeseburger; I just want it to be an option.  I just want to be normal.  And normal girls eat cheeseburgers.  

Changes I Wasn't Expecting

Part of the fear I had going into LASIK was I felt it would be a life changing event, though when asked I couldn't exactly say why.  I knew the simple aspects of it:  no more going to the eye doctor on an annual basis.  No more glasses, no more contacts. No more expense that goes with wearing contacts.  Being able to see when I open my eyes with no corrective lenses.  Being able to go swimming and actually see-I can take water aerobics now!  Things like that but nothing that was really earth shattering, other than it was change and I'm not a big fan of change. 

So I had it done.  And then I got sick.  It was just a cold; I'd been fighting it leading up to the procedure so it wasn't really a surprise when it hit full on a few days after.  But apparently that wasn't enough because a little over a week after I had LASIK, in addition to the cold, I came down with food poisoning.  Or so I thought.  But it wouldn't go away.  So after 36 hours of throwing up, I went to the doctor (mainly because my co-worker told me too). 

I had an instinctive feeling before I left for the doctor so I checked the item that started the throwing up (vegetarian buffalo wings and yes, they were actually pretty good-until I threw them up) and found onions buried deep in the list.  I then checked the ingredients of the noodles I'd eaten the next day and also threw up.  And found they had onions too. So I told the doctor I was no longer sure it was food poisoning but thought it might be an allergic reaction to onions.  I told him I'd had environmental allergy testing but not food and asked to have that done.  So he sent me to the lab for blood work and told me to eat bland foods, such as bread and crackers until my stomach could tolerate food again.

So I did what the doctor said but just wasn't getting any better.  It was frustrating and getting a little scary wondering why I just wasn't getting over this.  I thought that perhaps healing from eye surgery, the cold and whatever was going on with my stomach was too much for my body to handle all at once.  And then I got a call from the doctor's office.  They had the results of my blood tests:  the CBC and the hydration tests came back normal.  But something popped on the allergy test:  I'm allergic to baker's yeast. 

Naturally, the first thing I did was ask if baker's yeast and regular yeast were the same thing.  Since the advice nurse didn't know, I looked it up.  And found all kinds of contradictory information.  For one thing, there are two types of yeast:  one that is derived from a fungus and is used in baking to make bread rise.  The other is bacterial and grows naturally in our systems.  This is the yeast that causes yeast infections.  The frustration I'm running into with trying to determine what to eat or not eat with being allergic to yeast is that most sites seem to intertwine the two.  What one site says is okay to eat with a yeast allergy is not allowed on another.  The only thing that seems consistent is yeast (obviously), vinegar and anything fermented.

Another thing I have read consistently is the symptoms of a yeast allergy are not your "typical" allergy symptoms.  They include fatigue, depression, nausea, vomiting and "fog head" - feeling light headed or dizzy.  All things I have been experiencing for years and contributed to other things; mainly grief.  So now I'm on a quest to find a nutritionist who specializes in food allergies to find out what I can and cannot eat from a credible source.

I kept saying getting LASIK was going to change my life.  I never expected to go have my eyes done and come out allergic to food!  (Okay, so that's not what happened, just how it came to light).  On one hand, this is a pretty odd allergy and as I said, frustrating at this point.  On the other hand, I am looking forward to hopefully actually feeling good for the first time in years once I get it under control.