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Post by debutante on Oct 25, 2019 10:24:56 GMT -5
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Post by faskew on Nov 4, 2019 9:52:54 GMT -5
I go months at a time without eating any mushrooms, so I doubt that I'm in any danger from any of them. What we are all in danger from is the crap put on our food by corporate farmers and the exposure to bacteria that our food has when it's processed and packaged. Yes, organic products have less stuff on or in them (although insecticides and such may drift over from neighboring farms), but even organic foods can be contaminated with bacteria while being processed and packaged. Even buying local organic only isn't totally safe. We seem to have a food recall of one sort or another every week or two these days. The US, in general, tolerates contaminated and dangerous food more than any other advanced nation in the world. Sigh. Wish I lived in Denmark. 8->
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Post by debutante on Nov 4, 2019 10:30:21 GMT -5
Hi Fred:
Tell me about it. Be glad you're not me. There are 10 common preservatives in most foods. According to the ALCAT tests -- I am allergic to all 10. You can't really avoid them, so I live with it. What can you do?
--Debutante
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Post by faskew on Nov 6, 2019 9:15:29 GMT -5
That sounds horrible. Aside from growing as much of your own food as you can, aren't there any local farmer's markets or such that sell non-processed foods? Austin is an old hippie town (before it became a world high-tech center) and so there are lots of "organic" food stores, farmers markets, etc., here. Unfortunately, just because someone claims that their stuff doesn't have chemicals, that doesn't mean that they're telling the truth. And, like I said, sometimes chemicals from neighboring farms drift over into the organic stuff or flow downhill when it rains. (I vaguely remember an organic farm that was contaminated by a corporate hog farm uphill from them. When it rained, hog waste flowed downhill onto the plants at the organic farm and several people got bacterial infections.) Anyway, can't you find ANY food without those preservatives?
And how bad are your reactions? Are we talking general digestive upset or anaphylactic shock or what?
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Post by debutante on Nov 6, 2019 10:23:36 GMT -5
Hi Fred:
It won't kill me. I am just always sick. I have a real problem with allergies. It would be far easier to tell you what I am not allergic to than to mention everything that sets them off.
When I took the ALCATS, that was a comparatively new test. So new, that I had to get my brother to do it (he's an internist) because most docs never heard of it and nobody in the area was administering the test. So he checked into it and then after giving me the tests shipped them off to Florida (which was the only place evaluating results at the time).
They're right on calling it the "gold standard" of allergy tests. The results came back with three pages listing foods, environmental factors, chemical additives to foods, and chemicals in general.
Up to that time, I had been told (when my husband was still a resident) that I was a "very allergic little girl" by one of his professors that he's arranged for me to see because that summer I seemed to lose my hearing. It was subsequently diagnosed as allergically induced.
There were things I knew for sure -- fresh pineapple for example, that is recently picked gives me hives and congestion. If it isn't too recently harvested, I just get congested. Something like that is obvious, so once i had a reaction, i knew to avoid the offending agent.
But the things that were subtle (or masked by what you might erroneously think was the problem) weren't exposed until I took the ALCATS. For example, I always got sick whenever I went swimming. I attributed it to being wet and perhaps being in a drafty locker room after showering and getting dressed. I would never have thought the actual problem was that I was allergic to the chlorine in the pool. I don't swim anymore because that progressively became worse as I grew older.
Most stuff is easy to control. Some isn't. I am allergic to grass, so whenever a lawn gets cut and particles become airborne -- I am sick for the whole day.
I keep plenty of allergy meds in the house.
I was recently diagnosed with fibromyalgia and discovered quite by accident that if I take a benadryl the horrible aching completely vanishes. So I suspect there is an allergic link to the condition. Somebody ought to research that.
But as of yet, the only thing I have to be really careful with is prescription medicines because all of them react weirdly -- not allergically per se, but a little goes a long way. So I get miniscule doses of what a normal person takes and get the same reaction. Nobody ever explained why that happens. I'm thinking allergies -- but weird reaction.
None of it will kill me (or at least it hasn't yet).
Don't worry. I'll be okay -- I've been dealing with this in one form or another all my life.
--Debutante
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Post by faskew on Nov 7, 2019 8:34:10 GMT -5
Still, sad to hear that you're in misery almost all the time. Austin is where 3 different ecological regions meet, so something is almost always producing pollen. Plus, we get humidity from the Gulf several hundred miles away, so we have bad mold in the air even during droughts. Ad we also get dust from the Sahara at certain times of the year and smoke from Central America when they do their annual slash-and-burn. So every day is mold + whatever. Sigh.
I went to be tested several years ago and they said I had vasomotor rhinitis - I respond as if I'm allergic to pollen and such, but don't actually have any allergies. So taking shots or whatever won't help me. That's the one thing I miss about living on the Panhandle - low humidity - no mold.
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