Hi,

just thought about opening a thread about food intolerances, allergies and digestion. Id like to hear your experiences and also want to share mine. The main reason why I do this is because I need input on my problem. In the beginning I thought that I was allergic to some foods and just had to avoid them. Now I think that I'm allergic to every food but instead of just eating the least problematic there is a mixture of foods that works in some way. I give you examples:

Gluten and milk can be a huge problem and the avoidance of them can lead to an astounding improvement of some PWCs. What I can say is that I really have problems with milk, it gives me very dry skin and eczema and moreover makes me depressed.
Gluten however is a totally different thing. I don't tolerate bread but on the other side I tolerate pasta pretty well. Why? I first thought that it's because pasta is warm and contains less ingredients.

Then I tried pasta without any sauce and guess what, my skin became horrible. So it's the sauce? I tried eating chicken and a little rice with tomato sauce. This worked kind of in the beginning but after day 3 I became allergic to the tomato sauce. This allergy goes away. The same problem with all vegetables, if I eat them on consecutive days I develop a strong allergy towards them. If I stop for 4-5 days the allergy goes away and I can start all over again.

Salad is a catastrophy. In my eyes a huge problem for my digestion is that it is so weak and cannot digest fibers correctly. So even fiber is good for normal people it is hard on digestion for others.

Sugar always gives me depression and I dont know why. Maybe some bacteria transform sugars into endotoxins in my intestines or something else but I try to stay away from suger.

And this is where the funny things start. I have been studying at UCLA and had to eat at Sproul Hall there. They used some kind of olive oil plus another oil (I cannot remember the name). However I could not tolerate the oil. They put it on many foods and always on pasta. Everytime I ate a little bit too much of it I got acid reflux and felt that food was lying in my stomach all day (I had to burp often). I thought that maybe I lack enzymes BUT I tolerate all other oils.
In addition to that I took some Align (probiotic) every day and I was convinced that the Align helped me BECAUSE my skin got better and better and I tolerated more and more things.
I felt pretty good. There were still tons of food I couldnt tolerate (like cheese and milk and bread) but it was much better. The best thing I could get in the morning were waffles. Even they contain all the stuff I normally cannot tolerate like eggs, gluten and suger I ate them and my skin stayed well, became even better and I felt good. Biochemistry was working. I had one donut after lunch and had no problems. I still was underweight but at least my skin was good and I felt nice.

As soon as I came home things got worse. I thought that it is because of mold or sth in my house but I have been staying at different places (including hotels) for weeks and there was no change so I think I can break it down to the food. The sun in LA was definetly a good thing but we have sun here too. I normally have a cold even during the sumemr but when I was in LA it went away after the first week.

To sum things up:

Suger - very bad
Cheese, milk - very bad
salad and vegetables - very bad
bread - very bad
Chicken and rice - ok but still not good
meat - bad
90% of supplements (including enzymes, folic acid, vitamin a, b, c, d, e) and medication - very, very bad

So I came to another conclusion. In my eyes it mabye has to do with how long the food has contact to the intestine. If I eat a chicken wrap or burritos they somehow dont cause many problems. They not only contain salad which normally is very bad for me but they also contain sauce, suger, vegetables, gluten and milk.
So when I eat a chicken wrap my skin gets better BUT it also depresses my mood. It's a tradeoff but I dont know the mechanism behind it.
The tomato sauce etc. seems to increase digestion by increasing bowel movement. The wrap works a lot better than pasta with sauce but I'm still not sure what is causing my problems.
It's better with probiotics but I still havent found any solution.

I remember that one person here made a post about antihistamines and lactose or sth. that increases digestion. Does anyone know how to increase digestion or what the cause for my problems could be? Does anyone have similar problems and food intolerances?

Greets

spiro

I thought I would mention congee. I cook white rice, salt and lots of water, it really helps me when I can't tolerate other food. I cook it in the micro wave so each time I get up I just set it to cook a little more -

love glen

these nuts are grown in the ground and can be moldy. I don't eat peanuts and very little peanut butter if any. Many are allergic to peanuts.

Sugar also, keep it to a min. Nothing good about sugar in our bodies.

I've gone pretty much gluten free and just ate a yummy gluten free pizza. It was very small but quite tasty.

I don't eat much dairy, but do eat some cheese and goatmilk yogurt.

Oh, I almost forgot, SOY, try not to touch it. For one it inhibits thyroid hormone production. But it's in so many of our foods, especially processed foods.

[This Message was Edited on 11/06/2009]

not necessarily to the specifics, but the general idea of being less and less tolerant of all sorts of foods and having that seem to randomly change.......one day i can eat something, the next day no way, and the following day it might be ok again....the general trend, though, is that overall I am able to eat far fewer foods than I used to be able to eat

another thing, is that foods sometimes seem to taste different.....even if my stomach is managing to tolerate something sometimes I will start eating it and it will taste ok, and then a few bites in all of a sudden I will be gagging on it and just cannot eat any more (this has happened with several of my favorite foods, too - and they are healthy foods, even, so it is really frustrating)