The other day I bought this gluten free ube pancake mix. It just requires an egg and oil. No gluten, no dairy.
And I pretty much ate the whole box in 2 days. I am reacting to something in it, so I have to take an antihistamine (might be the sugar or natural flavors, not sure).
But it's been so glorious to be able to have fluffy pancakes with maple syrup and butter. For one batch I added blueberries! I used to eat brunch things like this 20 years ago! So I'm every excited!
Now that the box has run out I won't eat it again, or maybe I'll retest in a few months. But every time I can have something new I get very excited about it!
So about 20 years ago I was told I had "food intolerances", but they were not serious. So I would just eat foods and see how I reacted. I couldn't eat eggs. Dairy, and a few other foods like peanuts, gave me brain fog so bad I thought I had early onset alzheimers. Cane sugar made my skin crawl. For some reason gluten didn't register but I was recommended to try alternatives or limit it.
But because I didn't completely stop gluten, and I didn't get better. In fact I slowly got worse over the years. The gluten didn't seem as severe a reaction as dairy or eggs or other things. I limited it but never stopped. For some reason at one point I cut back hard on gluten, I realized that my anxiety levels dropped about 40%. Still I didn't give it up completely, i just limited it.
About 2015 I started having reactions to more things that didn't make sense. So medications, rashes, my tongue would swell up etc. No one knew what was going on. Had a doctor snap at me that I couldn't possibly be allergic to benedryl! But I had a reaction to it when taking it for an allergic reaction to something else.
It wasn't till about 2021? that an allergist realized I have a severe reaction (not defined as an allergy) to PEG. I had been told to take Miralax (basically pure PEG) for a digestive issue. Fortunately because I was reactive to the tiniest things, I was smart enough to take a tiny amount and not a full dose so I avoided an emergency visit to the hospital. Allergist confirmed my response in office after doign a bunch of skin tests. There was PEG in the benedryl so that explained the problem.
I think it took another year before I realized I had histamine intolerance, someone referred me to this sub. And I saw a remarkable improvement in symtoms I was experiencing. But wasn't sure of the cause of the HI. Later decided to go gluten free. My SO kept eating donuts and breads and similar delicious foods I love in front of me, which I normally ate rarely, but it was hard to say no, and I ate a lot more of it. But looking back to around the time I started that, my symptoms got worse.
Over time I started to have more reactions and reached a point to where I was down to 5-6 foods I could tolerate, rashes, feeling terrible all the time. And realizing that coincided with an increase of gluten in my diet, so I went gluten free completely.
Within a few weeks after going gluten free I was able to start testing a couple foods. And over time I've been adding more and more back. And it was crazy because there were things I hadn't eaten in years, like apples and pears and I started to be able to eat them again.
I think it was around the two year mark of going gluten free that I was able to eat eggs. At first they could only be fried. But later I could have eggs in foods. And I could eat one a day. So I went crazy and did that for a while. It had been about 15 years since I could eat eggs.
Last month my SO randomly bought a brand of butter that turns out I can tolerate. My first dairy product I could tolerate in 3 years after going gluten free! I had given up butter so many years ago!
We also switched to a new brand of rice. So I after all of this eating the same boring foods over and over I had two delicious foods to eat. So I basically ate about a quart of rice and two sticks of butter in ten days.
And then a couple weeks later I discovered this pancake mix and decided to try it and ate way too many pancakes. They are SOOO GOODDDD. It's been so long since I've been able to eat any actually enjoyable foods.
The sad thing is I'm having a lot of bloating issues that are probably related to fodmaps. I had food poisoning a couple months ago and my bloating went down a lot because I was so restricted, could barely eat. I struggled to keep down fluids, but I managed to take some emergen-c and water. Managed chicken broth and rice. It was probably a week before I even tasted a vegetable.
Since the food poisoning incident my bloating has gone crazy and I'm very gassy. I've been limiting my veggies to potatoes, carrots, peas, but it's not getting better. I'm also tired a lot so if I buy any veggies to prep, they just go bad in the fridge and I have to throw them away. So I'm not buying any.
I've been intending to do the FODMAP diet (but I have to combine it with HI, and also look out for oxalyates, lectins (leptins?) and other things) so it just feels overwhelming and complicated. On top of it I don't think I can bring myself to do another restricted diet after being restricted for so long!