Please see my page on Health Issues.
When I first had skin rashes when I was little, I was tested for allergies. My mother was told I was allergic to dust and pollen and mold. Back in those days, food wasn't on the list, at least with the doctor I went to. The only questioning of sugar came in the form of dentists' admonitions to try baking with Sucaryl, which my mother did for awhile.
Mom made dessert for us to have after supper almost every day, and as the old Pillsbury jingle said, "Nothin' says lovin' like somethin' from the oven" and we did love her for it. Mmmm, chocolate cake with creamy white frosting an inch thick! On a weeknight, yet! Gumdrop cookies, sweet date muffins, cooked chocolate pudding, Jell-o with fruit canned in heavy syrup.
The good news? Unlike today's kids (including mine, ten or fifteen years ago) we didn't have unlimited access to these goodies. They were for dessert, which we didn't get if we refused to eat our obligatory two colors of vegetables. We spent our weekly allowance on penny candy - a small paper bag filled with blackballs, bubble gum, licorice shoestrings, and gummy bears. The good thing was, we only had 25 cents a week and once we'd scarfed down that bagful, it was gone.
What I recall is that I was almost always constipated, in fact it was considered a natural state, since I was advised by female relatives not to strain too much on the john. I used to have 'tummy aches', which were also considered a normal kid thing. And when I was a young adult and had enough earned income to keep myself in plenty of chocolate bars and cough drops, I had a series of nasty carbuncles. I now know these were all caused by bunging up my bowel with an excessive amount of white flour and white sugar. They all disappeared when I started eating whole foods in a vegetarian diet while in college. So, you could call that a sensitivity or you could say that these are just bad foods to eat very much of.
I went a bit farther when my kids had various symptoms of food
sensitivities while they were toddlers. Dr. Crook explains in his book
Tracking Down Hidden Food Allergies how to perform an elimination diet.
You remove all traces of, say, wheat or dairy or sugar or food coloring
or corn from the kid's diet for two solid weeks, no cheating. Then you
reintroduce it in fairly large quantities and see what happens. (Those
were some of the most exciting tantrums ever! And then there were the
whole nights of coughing.) Once you've figured out where the troubled
areas are, you put them on the Rotary Diversified Diet so that they're
not getting the same foods every day. Lots of us are used to eating
some form of wheat three or four times a day, which can instigate
sensitivities. And try eliminating corn or dairy if you're used to
buying packaged food. Nearly impossible. Dr. Crook says the thing you crave the most is
very likely exactly where the problem is.
My current view of this meshes with Dr. Crook's 'allergic load', which
means it's not just one wrong food ingredient that causes reactions.
It's a combination of stress, food, and environment (dust, pollen,
pollution, mold, etc.) Not to mention the damage done if, like me,
you've followed doctors' orders for decades and used drugs like
corticosteroid creams to treat symptoms. The side effects loop back and
cause the problem again. So, I have thinned my skin with those creams
and now the slightest bit of stress makes it flare up. Eating very
little sugar and not taking alcohol helps a lot. But we live in a
polluted world and I tend to think that obsessing too much about food
'allergies' (a term used too loosely) acts as a stressor, adds tension
to your life, causing the problem again.
I'm a big believer in stress management. It improves our lives in every way, not just a few physical symptoms.
Cheap Suppers Recipes to Print Eating Beans My Road to 10in10
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