The good the good and the bad (recent experiences with restaurants)
Disney World of Adventure-good!!
Last week we took our vacation in Orlando and went to Disney, Epcot specifically. I was very apprehensive about what I would be able to eat. I even took a suitcase full of emergency food with me. You can't bring food into the Disney parks, though I did actually sneak in a coco loco bar, just in case. I ended up eating at the Japanese pavillion. They were extra nice and let me see the ingredients in there food items. it turns out that there is corn in the sticky rice. I never would have known that. They made me steamed salmon, no seasoning with lots of yummy steamed veggies. it was very good.
Red Lobster-good!
While we were in Orlando, we also ventured out to the Red Lobster that was across the street from where we stayed at the Peabody Hotel. I explained my allergy situation to our waiter, Jacob. He said that he understood completely and that his mom had Celiac disease. I ended up getting a steak, baked potato and salad with no dressing. He also told me that they put seasoning on the steak that I should avoid. This was delicious! He was a very caring waiter!
The Olive Garden-bad!!!
Yesterday we went to the Olive Garden. I had heard that they had gluten free noodles so was excited to try. When I first arrived, I asked the hostess if she could please check the ingredients in the noodles, since I am also allergic to corn. She came back 10 minutes later and assured me that there was no corn in it. Now we were seated. Again, I asked the waiter if he could please recheck the ingredients in the pasta. He came back and said that there was no corn. Hmmmmmmmm.... Well I ordered the penne pomadoro. The noodles were YELLOW! I tasted them and boy they sure tasted like corn. I must have been making faces because the manager came over and asked if everything was ok. I asked if he could please actually look at the label and tell me if there was corn in the ingredients. I explained to him the importance of knowing, how I didn't want to wake up tomorrow and bleed. He came back and said that there was no label because when they receive the box they just pour it into a bin and then throw the box away!!! Yikes! But, he assured me, the cook is 100% sure that it's not corn!
Needless to say, I did not eat the pasta. After researching on the internet, it turns out that these were corn noodles!!! BTW, they didn't even taste good! My daughter got them also and said they were terrible. Moral of the story: Don't trust other people to look after your food needs. There is a lot of human error. Be safe out there!!
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Today I ran a mile! I did 4 complete laps around the track without stopping. I've actually been working toward this goal for months now. 6 years ago I could barely walk one lap due to the exhaustion I felt from my Crohn's disease. The right foods can literally make the difference between energy and absolute exhaustion.
How did I do it? I figured out my trigger foods and then completely eliminated them from my diet. In order to do this I kept a food logue of everything I ate and drank. I then noted the results, in the bathroom. I started to make connections. I found that if I eliminate all wheat, gluten and corn from my diet, my Crohns is in complete remission. I also eliminated all derivatives of these foods, such as white vinegar, which comes from corn.
Now, broadening my theory, I believe that many "auto-immune" diseases are nothing but food allergies, or intolerances. I also was diagnosed with relapsing polychodritis. Relapsing Polychondritis is also one of those auto-immune diseases. This has also gone completely into remission.
It may be worth looking into. Please let me know if you try to eliminate certain foods and if it works for you. Corn, wheat, gluten, fish, milk, tree nuts, peanuts and citric acid are some common allergens. One allergen can be eliminate for a few days to see if there is a change. It takes a lot of time and patience.
My email if you want to send a message:
lynne1408@earthlink.net
How did I do it? I figured out my trigger foods and then completely eliminated them from my diet. In order to do this I kept a food logue of everything I ate and drank. I then noted the results, in the bathroom. I started to make connections. I found that if I eliminate all wheat, gluten and corn from my diet, my Crohns is in complete remission. I also eliminated all derivatives of these foods, such as white vinegar, which comes from corn.
Now, broadening my theory, I believe that many "auto-immune" diseases are nothing but food allergies, or intolerances. I also was diagnosed with relapsing polychodritis. Relapsing Polychondritis is also one of those auto-immune diseases. This has also gone completely into remission.
It may be worth looking into. Please let me know if you try to eliminate certain foods and if it works for you. Corn, wheat, gluten, fish, milk, tree nuts, peanuts and citric acid are some common allergens. One allergen can be eliminate for a few days to see if there is a change. It takes a lot of time and patience.
My email if you want to send a message:
lynne1408@earthlink.net
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Neuropathy and allergens
This blog is about how I found a way to control my Crohns disease through diet alone, and get completely off of medications. I did this by eliminating wheat, gluten and corn from my diet. These are my trigger foods. I avoid these allergens and all their derivatives, and I'm fine. In earlier entries I outline my diet and include recipes that I enjoy.
It also came to my attention that allergens could cause other "auto-immune" diseases such as eczema and relapsing polychondritis. My daughter had severe eczema when she was around a year old. The doctor suggested changing our laundry detergent... to no avail. After much experimenting with her diet, I discovered that she had a citric acid allergy. I took her completely off of citric acid. The eczema had completely cleared up. I was diagnosed with Relapsing Polychondritis, which causes inflammation of the cartilage. This was in addition to Crohn's disease. I am also free of this, through my elimination diet. Read further in this blog to see how I was able to clear my daughter's eczema with the elimination of citric acid in her diet.
This brings me to my new entry; Neuropathy. Neuropathy is the inflammation of the nerves. It can cause many symptoms, including tingling, numbness and pain. My daughter had gotten eczema from citric acid, a common addition to many baby foods. I eliminated this from her diet and her skin cleared in 3 days. Completely. As she got older, (she's now 16) she was once again able to eat foods with citric acid with no problem. She outgrew the allergy. Or so we thought.
This takes us to Christmas of last year, 2011. My mother-in-law had made some delicious wassail juice, and we were drinking it like crazy. It's a combination of apple juice, lemon juice, pineapple juice and a few other things. Really good. And my daughter Loved it!
A few days later she started complaining about tingling and numbness on the left side of her head. I didn't think much about it at the time. I was asking her what she was using lately on her skin. She had started wearing a new necklace and I wondered if that might be related. It was an antique and I wasn't sure of the metals in it. The symptoms weren't too bad so I put it to the back of my mind.
A week or so later, she woke me up in the middle of the night. Now her tongue and throat were tingling and parts of her tongue were numb! She was also experiencing tingling in other parts of her body including her hands. She also experienced some pain in different areas of her head that felt "hot". That was enough to scare me, so I took her to the ER. The doctor on call did some neurological testing and said that everything appeared to be normal. They told me to make an appointment with her pediatrician. The following week, we went to the pediatrician. She again did the normal neurological tests and could find nothing. Now came the appointment with the pediatric neurology doctor at Children's Hospital.
This doctor wanted to be thorough. He started with literally about 25 different blood tests. He tested for everything under the sun, vitamin deficiencies, auto-immune diseases, lyme disease... One blood test came back slightly elevated; pyruvic acid. (As a side note. Pyruvic acid has something to do with the citric acid cycle in the body. )They weren't concerned about it. Then they ordered an MRI. Everything there (TG) was normal too. They were at a loss.
Then we had the idea to completely eliminate citric acid from her diet and see if there was an effect. She was allergic as a baby and maybe she still was. There was an effect from eliminating the citric acid. The neuropathy started to fade and was completely gone in a few weeks. As a side note, she also had inflammatory acne that cleared up from the elimination. And she also had had joint pain that went away. Two times she also broke out in hives after drinking the wassail juice, and once again after having orange juice and spaghetti in the same day.
Once again, food allergies causing inflammatory reactions within the body. Could this work for other people with neuropathy? Could different allergens affect different people in different ways? It is worth looking into. I can't say that it is always citric acid that causes neuropathy. I can say that it caused it for my daughter. It would be well worth looking into eliminating common allergens from the diet. One week at a time eliminating one allergen at a time and see if it helps. Common allergens are fish, eggs, wheat, gluten, corn, peanuts, and tree nuts.
Please let me know if you or someone you know has suffered from neuropathy and if you have tried to eliminate common allergens from your diet, and what the results were.
This blog is about how I found a way to control my Crohns disease through diet alone, and get completely off of medications. I did this by eliminating wheat, gluten and corn from my diet. These are my trigger foods. I avoid these allergens and all their derivatives, and I'm fine. In earlier entries I outline my diet and include recipes that I enjoy.
It also came to my attention that allergens could cause other "auto-immune" diseases such as eczema and relapsing polychondritis. My daughter had severe eczema when she was around a year old. The doctor suggested changing our laundry detergent... to no avail. After much experimenting with her diet, I discovered that she had a citric acid allergy. I took her completely off of citric acid. The eczema had completely cleared up. I was diagnosed with Relapsing Polychondritis, which causes inflammation of the cartilage. This was in addition to Crohn's disease. I am also free of this, through my elimination diet. Read further in this blog to see how I was able to clear my daughter's eczema with the elimination of citric acid in her diet.
This brings me to my new entry; Neuropathy. Neuropathy is the inflammation of the nerves. It can cause many symptoms, including tingling, numbness and pain. My daughter had gotten eczema from citric acid, a common addition to many baby foods. I eliminated this from her diet and her skin cleared in 3 days. Completely. As she got older, (she's now 16) she was once again able to eat foods with citric acid with no problem. She outgrew the allergy. Or so we thought.
This takes us to Christmas of last year, 2011. My mother-in-law had made some delicious wassail juice, and we were drinking it like crazy. It's a combination of apple juice, lemon juice, pineapple juice and a few other things. Really good. And my daughter Loved it!
A few days later she started complaining about tingling and numbness on the left side of her head. I didn't think much about it at the time. I was asking her what she was using lately on her skin. She had started wearing a new necklace and I wondered if that might be related. It was an antique and I wasn't sure of the metals in it. The symptoms weren't too bad so I put it to the back of my mind.
A week or so later, she woke me up in the middle of the night. Now her tongue and throat were tingling and parts of her tongue were numb! She was also experiencing tingling in other parts of her body including her hands. She also experienced some pain in different areas of her head that felt "hot". That was enough to scare me, so I took her to the ER. The doctor on call did some neurological testing and said that everything appeared to be normal. They told me to make an appointment with her pediatrician. The following week, we went to the pediatrician. She again did the normal neurological tests and could find nothing. Now came the appointment with the pediatric neurology doctor at Children's Hospital.
This doctor wanted to be thorough. He started with literally about 25 different blood tests. He tested for everything under the sun, vitamin deficiencies, auto-immune diseases, lyme disease... One blood test came back slightly elevated; pyruvic acid. (As a side note. Pyruvic acid has something to do with the citric acid cycle in the body. )They weren't concerned about it. Then they ordered an MRI. Everything there (TG) was normal too. They were at a loss.
Then we had the idea to completely eliminate citric acid from her diet and see if there was an effect. She was allergic as a baby and maybe she still was. There was an effect from eliminating the citric acid. The neuropathy started to fade and was completely gone in a few weeks. As a side note, she also had inflammatory acne that cleared up from the elimination. And she also had had joint pain that went away. Two times she also broke out in hives after drinking the wassail juice, and once again after having orange juice and spaghetti in the same day.
Once again, food allergies causing inflammatory reactions within the body. Could this work for other people with neuropathy? Could different allergens affect different people in different ways? It is worth looking into. I can't say that it is always citric acid that causes neuropathy. I can say that it caused it for my daughter. It would be well worth looking into eliminating common allergens from the diet. One week at a time eliminating one allergen at a time and see if it helps. Common allergens are fish, eggs, wheat, gluten, corn, peanuts, and tree nuts.
Please let me know if you or someone you know has suffered from neuropathy and if you have tried to eliminate common allergens from your diet, and what the results were.
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