conuly | Today, somebody asked elsewhere about starting their kid on fish.

I KNOW! And when people post questions about eczema and skin cream and yadda yadda and I suggest that maybe something topical isn't the answer, they act like I'm completely crazy! What? Food cause a rash? It isn't so!

Can't convince some folks.

Hell, I had that pre-eczema thing with flaky skin that wouldn't go away no matter how much I slathered lotions on it, and it finally vanished after I started taking vitamin E supplements.

I absolutely realize that ice cream and desserts are what cause my intestinal issues. I just think it's worth it. ;)

Fair enough :)

It took me until my twenties to realise that caffeine and food coloring were causing my digestive and mood problems, because they're just so ubiquitous and I wasn't getting hives or throwing up (my impressions of what 'allergic' meant). And now, when I tell people with similar symptoms that they might want to try cutting them out for a week or two to see if it helps, I get a reaction like I'm sort of crunchy granola whacko. In my case, I think people get defensive because they think I'm lecturing them on the healthiness of their diet. Honestly, I don't care what they eat, but if you're complaining to me about anxiety while knocking back 150 mg. of a stimulant every day...

Oh, god. I posted about this in the original comment.

I have a very high success rate in internet diagnoses of dairy intolerance. Even I don't believe it!

Unfortunately... nobody ever remembers. It goes like this. A friend complains about having some problem that I know can be linked to dairy intolerance - eczema, asthma, congestion, mood swings. I mention that it can be linked to dairy. They go "Oh, no, that's silly". When it comes up again, I mention it again and say it's a long shot, but they might try a simple elimination diet. "Oh, no, I eat too much dairy, there'd be nothing left to eat!" Eventually they get fed up enough to try it, it works - and they come back to me and go "WOW! I took dairy out of my diet and it really worked! I wish somebody had told me!"

...

At this point I mention, you know, that I kinda told them that, and do you know what they universally say?

"Oh, no, I'm sure I read it somewhere". Or maybe they're sure they "saw it on TV" or something.

I could scream.

Makes me kind of wonder how many (if any) of my mood and sleep-related issues are actually food allergies in disguise.

:/

Could be none. Could be all of them.

And, of course, you can overthink this. If you end up controlling your whole life to avoid problem foods you may solve the sleep and mood problems but get a whole *new* set of problems to replace them.

I have a friend whose main food allergy symptom is severe, can't-think-can't-sleep-curl-up-in-a-ball-and-cry earaches. And she's also allergic to all common painkillers. It took three or four years to figure that out.

And my dog has pretty extensive food intolerances that manifest mostly as uncontrollable behavior issues. Now that she's on a poultry-free, wheat-free diet, she's much more manageable.

BTW, I'm curious--have you, personally, ever tried the gluten/dairy-free thing to see if it affects AS symptoms? G. says there's a double-blind study currently in the works (how you'd do that, I have absolutely no idea) and he doesn't want to try it until the results of that come out, but I'm curious.

No, I haven't.

I know that dairy affects me. When I care, I take it out of my diet - it dulls some senses (good!) but it also makes me prone to mood swings (bad!).

As for gluten, I looked at the sheer amount of effort it would take to remove gluten from my diet without making everything - and I mean *everything* - from scratch and decided I didn't care at all to try.

Edit: Once again, I'm suffering from failure to SEE WHO WAS COMMENTED TO before replying. Oops.

Yeah, I think that's G's thinking—why even try it without some actual evidence it's going to work?

Well, of course, that's how you get the evidence in the first... place...?

I just don't have any serious enough problems that I think it's worth going through that level of effort.

Hm, I might try that out.

I do know that I'm sensitive to caffeine, and I figured that out in college back when I was drinking WAY too much Dr. Pepper and I was getting severe panic attacks. Cutting out the Dr. Pepper really heped. And now I don't drink anthing with caffeine unless I know I'm going to be active for a while, and even then I make sure not to have another cup of coffee, for instance.

Also in college, I suddenly got such bad stomach upset that even if I was hungry, I couldn't walk up to the cafeteria without becoming too queasy to even think of food. If I didn't eat something easy on my stomach during a certain hunger window, the hunger would go away and leave me with this "no can't eat now" dull queasy pain. I talked to a campus nurse about my suspicion of the cafeteria food, namely the over-preserved salad fixings, and another nurse who overheard said "IT'S NOT THE CAFETERIA FOOD." I've known for a long time that I'm hypersensitive to various preservatives, thanks to Mom's cleverness in figuring out what was making me a grumpy toddler. I quit relying on the cafeteria as my main food sourse, went to it only for their pasta nights (and avoiding the salad bar, but oh I love custom-fixed salad), and went to other campus food sources while keeping notes on what I was getting. It's taken my system a LONG time to recover from that, almost 10 years now, but I'm doing better. It really IS a challenge to figure out very common ingredients and such to avoid, and I'm sure I have yet more to discover.

I've tried to sort of edge this concept into conversations with my room mates, but it always comes back to the same rationale that people use about smoking or drinking.

"Yeah, it's probably causing a problem, but it's not really that bad."

Right, like the crippling anxiety attacks, insomnia, dry skin, fatigue and intestinal problems aren't "really that bad."

I hear you. My wheat allergy was masked for most of my life as gas/ upset tummy/ intestinal colic(when it was bad).

Yes, my soy allergy gives me migraines. Horrible, make-me-puke migraines. I have to explain to people that "No, I won't die I'll just wish I was dead" if I eat to much of the stuff.

Funny story- I have a family history of dairy intolerance, so when I was a newborn the doctor put me on soy formula. After three weeks of Puky the Wonder-Baby, my mom frantically when back to the doctor for an allergy test. She was *not* amused by the results.