The Results Are In

I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness.” -- James Thurber

A VERY interesting Saturday Dear Reader, very interesting indeed. In short, no bloody wonder I've made no progress whatsoever on my allergy diet. I'm still eating things that I am sensitive to. To wit, my intolerances were revealed to be the following:

Severe Intolerance

Aspartame
Avocado
Banana
Buttermilk
Camembert
Curds
Edam cheese
Emmenthal cheese
Kiwi
Leerdam cheese
Mozzarella
Orange
Parmesan
Roquefort
Tangerine
Tilsit Cheese
Whey

Moderate Intolerance

Carrots
Chicken Egg White and Yolk
Cocoa Beans - Noooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Coffee --- AACK!! ACCKK! AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!
Cottage cheese - whatevah.
Cow mil
Cream Cheese
Goat cheese
Gouda
Grape
Honey
Onion
Potato
Raisins
Ricotta
Sheep Cheese
Strawberry
Sugar Cane - no breaks whatsoever apparently.
Tomato
Yeast
Yogurt - thank Christ I didn't get that all natural yogurt maker I had my eye on.

So the really big news here is Milk. Didn't show up at all with my allergist. Other things like coffee, kiwi, banana, eggs, carrots, onions didn't either. These are all things I eat quite a bit of.

I also learned two interesting things. The first is that I now have to combine this with my allergist's work. An allergist tests for immediate reactions only. This test shows those items I'll react to within 72 hours. So allergists test for something called IgE antibodies. This test show something called IgG antibodies. The difference, according to the package they gave me is that IgG reactions develop because of a disturbed digestive tract and lack of variety in the diet. IgE reactions are pretty much with you for life. Brutal. [Thank God chocolate isn't IgE for me!]

The second thing I learned about is how important it is to rotate your foods. Apparently, from start to finish it takes 72 hours for your body to ingest, assimilate and expel the waste of anything you eat. So if you are having the same thing every day, you're essentially bombarding yourself and setting your immune system up for dysfunction.

I have to admit that I felt quite overwhelmed and bummed out initially. "How am I going to put both this and my allergist's work together?" I thought. But at the same time, it made a lot of things make sense in terms of the challenges I've had with my energy levels, particularly the last 15 years. So I just decided to jump in and do it in pieces. I'm focusing on what I CAN eat and went to Whole Foods today to stock up and make sure I had a variety of things, and also because they're pretty much the only store that stocks all the freakadoo stuff I need in one place.

So instead of just peanut butter, I now have macadamia and hazlenut butter too. Instead of just olive oil, I've got some sesame, which the Marine and I used to make the most amazing stirfry tonight for dinner. Instead of green tea and black tea, I've also got lemon white tea and ginger root tea.

The biggest challenge will be the inconvenience factor. I won't be able to just grab anything if I'm hungry. But ultimately, this is really just a year of my life, a year of work that could pay off big time. There's a whole other process you go through to reintroduce foods to see what you still have an issue with and I figure if I can really stick with this, it will help me achieve many other things that I have wanted to do. Plus, I don't get very excited about cooking, but it looks like I'm on my own so to speak, and the idea of going through my recipe books to see what I can cook and adapt for myself is, dare I say it, somewhat exciting. Usually I'm neither here nor there about cooking.

At any rate, I'm going to try my best to stay positive and just take things as they come on a daily basis. I'm just really grateful that financially I could get this testing done and now have more information to help myself.

So on that note, onward. As the French say: Little by little, the bird builds his nest.