Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Food Allergy!



I've had a rash everywhere for the past week or two, and it's just getting worse. After eliminating other possibilities-- i.e. soap, detergent, etc.-- I have to take into consideration that it could be a food allergy! I haven't added anything new to my diet, but apparently I could be allergic to something that I eat all the time and it's just manifesting now.

So today starts a detox. I'm eliminating wheat and anything with gluten (so no oats or spelt yet), berries, yeast, soy, tomatoes, nuts, peas and citrus fruit. My guess would be that if it is a food sensitivity or allergy, it's to wheat, soy or yeast. Yeast or wheat seems the most likely.

To kick it off, Phil made some yummy stir-fried veggies over quinoa for dinner! He forgot about the soy in soy sauce and used some-- oh well. Can't get everything right on day 1.

The veggies are: broccoli, red pepper, radicchio, onion, shiitake mushrooms, and carrots. The sauce was a brown sauce made from tamari, liquid smoke, water, crushed red pepper, garlic, shiitake mushroom stems, sugar, and then thickened with cornstarch.

I'm also detoxing with psyllium seed husks and burdock root tea! I thought burdock was cool looking (in a gross, fascinating way) so I took a picture. Now half an inch of it is steeping in some boiling water!

If anyone has any insight, please don't hesitate to leave some advice. I have no idea what I'm doing. I know that there are many other food allergens but I've decided to eliminate only the ones I eat regularly, since it must be something I've bee consistently eating these past 2 weeks.
Wish me luck!

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good luck detoxing!

Alicia said...

Well, maybe it's not even a food allergy... Try cutting those out and see if it gets better! but don't panic, it could be something environmental...

EmLit said...

I don't know anything about detoxing, but wouldn't it be better to just remove one of those things at a time? Otherwise, the symptoms may go away, but you won't know which of the many things you removed from your diet caused them. On the other hand, you probably know much more about this than I do.

EmLit said...

Oh, and, you should post the recipe for that chocolate cake you made. Man, that was so good.

Lindsay (Happy Herbivore) said...

good luck! I hope u feel better soon

SueWho said...

yum - chocolate cake. Yes, please post that recipe.
Your food allergy sounds more and more like it could be related to soy but you probably saw the email I sent to you about that.

Binx said...

Emilie-

the idea is to stop symptoms asap by cutting out all possibilities, then add things back in one by one to see which causes a reaction.

Emilie and Mom-

That recipe is from Vegan with a Vengeance, so I can't post it on here! But I'll keep making it (and with a better icing next time).

Lindsay (Happy Herbivore) said...

cut out corn!! (and all products like corn syrup) its a common allergy!

urban vegan said...

I had the same type of symptoms....but I was not as disciplined as you to try the elmination diet. Funny hting is my rash went away when I went to Mexico, and then returned when I went back to my day job (which I've sicne left). That made me beleive mine was stress-related. It's much better now. Hope yours is, too.

And you're so lucky to live near Essene!