Sulfites anyone?

General
1

I was wondering if anyone else thinks that they might have a problem with sulfites?

I'm going to try a sulfite free diet for 4 or 5 weeks and see if it makes any difference. My son was sick awhile back and my kids and I went and got our allergies tested. I showed up as being allergic to onions and pineapple.

Back in 2008, I had to stop drinking 2% milk because of the bad digestion problems. Around the same time, I realized that the lemon juice out of a bottle that my boyfriend was putting in the food was making me sick. Sometime before that I realized I couldn't drink orange juice, because it put sores on my mouth.

Through trial and error I know that I have problems with onions and garlic. The odd thing is, I can drink pineapple but not pineapple juice. I get hives when I drink the juice that they used for mixed drinks at a bar.

I was drinking soy milk as a substitute, but I can't drink that anymore either.

Well, if all else fails it will probably help me loose some weight.

2

Hello gimpyKat You will have to keep us updated on how it goes. Food allergies are horrible. I can eat oranges but orange juice and grape juice upset my digestive system and leave sores in my mouth to.

3

They say that grapes naturally have sulfites. They add sulphites to juices like orange and lemon juice to help the juice stay mixed. Other wise the components seperate, so these are things high in sulphites.

4

Yes, both my Mom and I (she has fibro too) get really sick with sulfites. Makes our pain worse and makes us swell up and gives our hearts problems. Mom is down to eating about 10 foods due to her food allergies. She has to keep switching brands too. She develops an allergy to anything she eats almost every day, so has to vary her diet between those 10 foods. All part of a fibro sensitive body.

5

I thought I would update this. I made my deit very limited. Apples, Chicken, Steak, beef.. after a few days, I added sour dough bread from organic store, unbleached flour and everything. A frew days after, I was craving sweets, so I made apples with organic non-bleached sugar, with my own mix of organic butter, organic milk, organic flour, and more sugar. I put in the oven. I had a bad reaction to it. My nose started running, I sounded stuffed up, I coughed. Then I started to sweat, then I could hear my heart, and I just felt hot and ill. About an hour later a horrible headache set in. I felt generally ill the rest of the night, very intollerant to heat.

I repeated with just sugar the next day, earlier in the day, same problem. I went to the organic food store, got a different brand of sugar, less grade, actually looked brown. Repeated the same mixture the first day, but I think I used less sugar. I had a worse reaction.

Yesterday morning, I put honey on my sourdough bread. Behind my right leg started itching, in the spot it itches when I have an allergic reaction to onions. Sinus problems, and the headache hit faster than the sugar. I had no headache when I woke up. Within a three hour period, the headache went away, by four hours it was completely gone.

After the three days of experimenting with the sugarcane sugar, I looked it up allergy information. They talk about sinus problems and headache as the main symptoms. Someone else had posted that they have a worse reaction to organic sugarcane sugar, because it's less refined. It also says that sugarcane is in the grass family.

Overall my health is feeling better, so I don't regret trying this out. The fatigue is better lately. I went from 3 baclofen a day to 2 baclofen a day. I'm having less pressure pain, in my arm and leg. Sometimes I'm walking halfway normal.

I really want one of my doctors to order a blood allergy test, to see what else I might be allergic to, and see if my thoughts on sugarcane is right. I've read in the past that a lot of people can't eat honey, because of their pollen and grass allergies. This might not be the whole picture of what I'm experiencing, but who cares, if I can cut down a little bit on my overall experience.

Could you imagine if I'm allergic to sugarcane? How much have I been poisoning myself? How many times have my bad days been related to waking up and eating a cookie in the morning?

I've had a few blood sugar tests, they always come out completely normal. At one point drinking non-diet pop was making my muscle spasms go away. No one had any clue why, this stuff is typically made with corn syrup and not sugar. I wonder if it was related.

6

That sounds awful gimpyKat. So sorry. Just a thought, but could a medication be causing an allergic reaction? I was having terrible troubles with several things while taking venlafaxine (effexor). I was also taking too high a dose of Lyrica for me. Now that venlafaxine is gone from my system and Lyrica is reduced (which has not been fun, a nightmare in fact) I have fewer allergic type reactions. Am so much better now, even with physical pain, but still need to get the emotions leveled out.

7

There's a new type of sugar called palm sugar, from palm trees. It's light brown, not as dark as brown sugar. I'm wondering if you reacted to the flour in the sourdough mixture. Or even the sourdough itself. The problem with allergy tests for foods, is that it only shows foods you would have swelling or anaphylactic reaction to. It doesn't show the foods that you have an "intolerance" to, that give you various symptoms.

8

I never new that about the allergy test. The palm sugar is some thing I will have to look into. I am glad your over all health is better. Keep us posted.

9

I'm only taking baclofen, which has very minimal side affects, according to all the sources. Food allergies run in both sides of my family.

10

Yeah, that's why I tried it with just plain sugar. Yeah I want to try some alternative sugar, there is also beet sugar somewhere. It might be fun trying to track it down in my area though. My understanding is an intolerance causes more stomach issues, but not sinuses and headache issues. It seems like a gluten intolerance is the exception?

11

They have IgE tests, they are expensive though. My son was going through a time where the skin allergy test said he was allergic to 17 foods. It didn't compare to his IgE tests. Later we figured out that it was the house we were living in, that had imported chinese drywall(sulphur compounds). He was having a false positive skin test.

12

Beet sugar is from the sugar beet and the area I live in is the largest area of sugar beets in N. America It looks and tastes exactly like cane sugar, so it might be worth trying if you are allergic to cane sugar. I just googled it, and it said they are chemically almost identical. I googled which brands of sugar are made from sugar beets. Maybe you can call around and ask various stores if they carry any of these brands.
U&I sugar
Imperial Sugar
Holly Sugar
Crystal Sugar
Western Sugar
Big Chief Sugar
Pioneer Sugar
White Satin
Spreckels

(Dominoes and C&H are both cane sugar).

13

I had 50 scratch tests on my back, and every single one swelled up, which is not possible, so they decided I was allergic to something in the allergy test solution. So if that ever happens to someone you know, consider they are allergic to the test solution. I'm also allergic to whatever is in injections of all kinds, but sometimes I'd rather have the allergy than the problem I need the shot for.

14

I had food allergy test done about a year ago, all normal , then a month ago another dr ordered food allergy test that was looking for the IGG, this is an antibody that the immune system activates when it recognizes a food as the enemy, the dr office called to tell me I am allergic to eggs, chicken, beef, banana, peanuts, almonds, rice and wheat … I knew almonds caused a headache & I recently took wheat (gluten) out of my diet with good results , but eggs , chicken beef … Really ?? So I asked what can I eat… Tomatoes, dairy and corn… Yipi ! I made an appointment to see a nutrionist & I also asked how important is it that I avoid theses foods… The ans … Very important !!! These allergies have developed since my leaky gut started and it’s all a vicious cycle… The food particles leak through the bowel, the immune system sees them as foreign and produces antibodies against then, when we eat them our body reacts, I have suffered headaches for 30 + years, so the question remains have I had food allergies that can cause leaky gut or did I develope these allergies because of the leaky gut… I think both … Just my feeling I always knew a pizza gave me a headache … The dr’s ans was always " pizza is hard to chew and you have TMJ " ok, never thought it could be a wheat allergy . I always wondered if it was the tomatoes, but now I know it was that yummy crust and I always got the extra thick… Ugh

Get the dr to order the IGG for food allergy… Although just after I had it done the lab I went to stopped doing it … I guess it’s expensive

Hugs
dee B

15

What a coincidence, I have been studying about leaky gut all evening. They new have a test for it, which they didn't have 10 years ago when I was first told this is probably one of my problems. This page tells other nutritional helps that can improve your quality of life with leaky gut/intestinal permeability. It includes a list of other diseases that can happen due to Leaky Gut, but they forgot to list Fibro. Fibro is the most common illness that can stem from Leaky Gut Syndrome.

http://naturalmedicinejournal.com/article_content.asp?article=106

16

This is all interesting to me, thanks for replying. Wish I could "like" a lot of these posts, lol. It's good to see the actual test, with the numbers. My son's test came back of being mildly allergic to corn, wheat, and rice! I'm thinking, how do you work with that? His was like a 1.28 etc. So when he decides that he doesn't really want to eat the bread, I'm not to worried about it. We go to Innout, and he orders two patty's without the bun. It's actually less than the actual sandwhich!

My son's psych wanted him to take fish oil. After he had his sickness, I decided to wait awhile. I waited long enough that I forgot what I was worried about. He took it for about thirty days. He started getting weird rashes. It was like the allergic reaction built up over time, from him taking it every day. He doesn't eat fish, so I forget that he has fish allergies on his test. Stopped taking it, and the rashes stopped. Those supplements have thirty different fish in them. I had to dig for it online. I think bass is one of the things that came up in my son's test. One of these days, I think I will get some strait cod liver oil, and try it again with that.

I know that food allergies can change all the time, even in normal circumstances. A friend of mine has become very good at detecting hers, and she has lots of them. She is always telling me how they are changing. What she can and can't eat.

My daughter is allergic to something in marinara sauce. I had her skin tested for food allergies and nothing came up. She will have a reaction once every six months. Hives, mood problem, and trouble breathing. Usually, we just think she is upset about something. One of the first times it happened, she was upset and banging her head on the car window. Once I see the hives I give her benodryl which calms it down, but she will start having some throat closing before it completely kicks in. Her last one, she was throwing up like she had the flu. Asked my parents what she ate, marinara! Seems worse when she is traveling, like getting on a plane, or had been on a plane. It started happening when we lived in that stupid chinese drywall -sulfur compound house, and it happened more often when we lived there.

17

My beet sugar test failed miserably. I ended up with a level 9 headache. It built up into the night. I was thinking I was going to have to go to the hospital. Luckily my husband gave me a couple of excedrine. It went down to a level 8 and I drank a diet pepsi, and it was practically gone. 4 hours, I don't want to relive. Before my experiment, I'm used to my level 8's and I just go to sleep. I can one that lasts for several days, and I walk around in a barely alive headache haze.

I happen to have a blood sugar meter. I tried this test out on the internet.

Fasting blood sugar: 84

Eat 6 to 8 oz of carbs

1 hour after: 148

2 hours after 99

It doesn't really seem significant.

I'm going to avoid the sugar for now and slowly add other things back into my diet.

Thanks for listening!

18

GimpyKat, did you know that 80% of people with fibro react badly to aspartame (Nutri-sweet) in diet pop and other diet foods? Some have come close to death with their reactions that only happen after it has built up in their bodies. When aspartame sits in a hot truck or warehouse over 90 degrees, formaldehyde forms in the pop. Very toxic. I wonder how you would feel if you stopped using pop/foods with aspartame.

Speaking of sugar, have you tried Stevia yet? SO YUMMY and 100x sweeter than sugar so you need very little, and have you tried Splenda? Mannitol is another new type of sweetener coming out, not chemically like sugar at all.

19

Nope I didn't know that. I stopped drinking pop when I stopped eating everything else. I had started drinking diet the last 3 or so weeks. Before that I was drinking non-diet pop because I swore it helped keep the muscle spasms down, but that was before it got really bad agian.

No, I've never tried Stevia. I just recently started seeing websites about it. I grew up on Splenda. My older half brother is a type 1 diabetic so my mom made everything she could with Splenda. I've never tried to cook with it though. I love to bake, don't do it very much though.