Food is not my friend
Sep. 8th, 2008 09:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marydellReason #1 food is not my friend is, of course, that it doesn't respect my boundaries. We've had a good time together over the years, but it has insisted on making me fat, despite my repeated explanations that I'd prefer to stay slender.
Reason #2, and the real problem at the moment, is that I'm allergic to it. Not all of it, just the stuff I like. The full list:
Milk (allergic AND lactose-intolerant)
Cheese (it's a different protein so it's not actually the same allergy)
Garlic
Oranges
Soy
Peanuts (not the lethal-shock type of allergy; just reflux & athsma...so far)
Mangoes (very)
Bananas
Chocolate
Some dyes used in candy
So, the way allergies work is that you can tolerate a certain amount of exposure, but exposures stack up on you, so if you hit a saturation level you'll have a reaction. I mostly don't have reactions, because I mostly manage my allergies as follows:
-had 3 years of allergy shots for grass, mold, dust mites, cats, which significantly reduced my sensitivity
-only have 1 cat, and always wash my hands after petting him. Also don't allow him in the bedroom. Poor kitty. Mike doesn't have this problem so kitty gets most of his love from daddy.
-don't open bedroom windows at night, or much generally--just often enough to air things out
-no carpeting, and rugs get vacuumed a lot
-leather upholstery
-NO CHOCOLATE, *weep.* I haven't touched chocolate in almost 5 years. This made a HUGE difference because prior to that I was eating it daily. Moderation+Chocolate=impossible
-No mangoes
-Moderate intake of other foods from the list above, with a few days of careful avoidance after eating any particularly intolerable foods like garlic, peanuts, or uncooked milk.
Everything's been hunky-dory for a while now, except for the fat thing, which is partly allergy-related because you tend to become addicted to the foods you're allergic to, because they produce a histhamine high. So I eat a lot of cheese and yogurt, and mostly tolerate it pretty well, as long as I pay attention to my total-bad-food intake.
Unfortunately, recently being new-mom tired and frazzled all the time has made my limited moderation ability go right out the window, because I feel entitled to constant treats and pick-me-ups at the moment, and I also lose track of whatever it is I've eaten.
Yesterday I had part of a milkshake with lunch. I only had about a third of it, because I could feel it doing bad things to my esophagus. Many of my allergy-foods will basically unscrew the clamp on my esophagus and leave it off for 12 hours at a time, resulting in really atrocious reflux that triggers athsma attacks. So I stopped having the milkshake, took zantac and tums, and should have been fine. Except that then I forgot all about it, and had a peanut-butter sandwich for dinner. Last night wasn't fun.
So today I'm home sick, partly to catch up on sleep and partly to work out a method for controlling my exposure to allergens, while still managing to eat foods I like. But for the next couple of weeks, it's bye-bye to everything on the list except small amounts of cheese and cooked milk (i.e. muffins and the like), until all of the inflammation and whatnot has gotten better. Rice and fish without soy sauce? Bleh. But it beats having to eat tums and graham crackers all night long.
Reason #2, and the real problem at the moment, is that I'm allergic to it. Not all of it, just the stuff I like. The full list:
Milk (allergic AND lactose-intolerant)
Cheese (it's a different protein so it's not actually the same allergy)
Garlic
Oranges
Soy
Peanuts (not the lethal-shock type of allergy; just reflux & athsma...so far)
Mangoes (very)
Bananas
Chocolate
Some dyes used in candy
So, the way allergies work is that you can tolerate a certain amount of exposure, but exposures stack up on you, so if you hit a saturation level you'll have a reaction. I mostly don't have reactions, because I mostly manage my allergies as follows:
-had 3 years of allergy shots for grass, mold, dust mites, cats, which significantly reduced my sensitivity
-only have 1 cat, and always wash my hands after petting him. Also don't allow him in the bedroom. Poor kitty. Mike doesn't have this problem so kitty gets most of his love from daddy.
-don't open bedroom windows at night, or much generally--just often enough to air things out
-no carpeting, and rugs get vacuumed a lot
-leather upholstery
-NO CHOCOLATE, *weep.* I haven't touched chocolate in almost 5 years. This made a HUGE difference because prior to that I was eating it daily. Moderation+Chocolate=impossible
-No mangoes
-Moderate intake of other foods from the list above, with a few days of careful avoidance after eating any particularly intolerable foods like garlic, peanuts, or uncooked milk.
Everything's been hunky-dory for a while now, except for the fat thing, which is partly allergy-related because you tend to become addicted to the foods you're allergic to, because they produce a histhamine high. So I eat a lot of cheese and yogurt, and mostly tolerate it pretty well, as long as I pay attention to my total-bad-food intake.
Unfortunately, recently being new-mom tired and frazzled all the time has made my limited moderation ability go right out the window, because I feel entitled to constant treats and pick-me-ups at the moment, and I also lose track of whatever it is I've eaten.
Yesterday I had part of a milkshake with lunch. I only had about a third of it, because I could feel it doing bad things to my esophagus. Many of my allergy-foods will basically unscrew the clamp on my esophagus and leave it off for 12 hours at a time, resulting in really atrocious reflux that triggers athsma attacks. So I stopped having the milkshake, took zantac and tums, and should have been fine. Except that then I forgot all about it, and had a peanut-butter sandwich for dinner. Last night wasn't fun.
So today I'm home sick, partly to catch up on sleep and partly to work out a method for controlling my exposure to allergens, while still managing to eat foods I like. But for the next couple of weeks, it's bye-bye to everything on the list except small amounts of cheese and cooked milk (i.e. muffins and the like), until all of the inflammation and whatnot has gotten better. Rice and fish without soy sauce? Bleh. But it beats having to eat tums and graham crackers all night long.
