EARLY STAGE OF MY SYMPTOMS

                           

   Around age 42, in 1990,  in the heat of summer, a few light episodes began to appear.  They would be infrequent, two day episodes with noise (tinnitus) in my right ear for one day, and then vertigo and vomiting on the second day.  As soon as I vomited, the whole event ended. It would be several weeks before the symptoms reappeared.  This happened three times, which prompted me to see an ENT.   

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      My ENT logged all  my complaints, which also included a continuous small sore throat, drippy nose and perhaps some Eustachian issues.  My hearing was normal - actually excellent.  She concluded  it must be allergies and  gave me the RAST Test (a blood test);  she  felt it was the more accurate test for food allergies at the time.  The results showed a very high response (but not at the anaphylactic level) to:  Eggs (highest), white potato, peanuts (which are legumes), soybean (also legumes), oranges and wheat. (REMEMBER THIS LIST AS IT PLAYS A REAPPEARING ROLE IN 2012, 17 years later.)  With this news, I did not go in for a skin test for other allergies. 

                The doctor's assistant worked with me regarding my diet.  She gave me a chart which showed  all the food families related to each of my "allergic" foods.   The "legume" family and "citrus" groups are quite long.   I followed a severe diet for awhile, maybe 6 months, and then allowed small, rotated amounts of the offending foods.  I would eat 1/2 of an orange but not with an egg and wheat toast.  The eggs in baked goods, when I began to add them to my diet, did not bother me.  All symptoms disappeared - for 17 years.  Never was I told to abstain from alcohol, caffeine, MSG or other nerve agitators and so I did not.  I did not need or take any medication.

                    While I rotated the offending foods and never had large quantities or combinations at any one time, I also read a book by Dr. William Walsh (University of Minnesota) on "Food Allergies" which was informative and useful (and now I realize, prophetic).   He discusses the delayed and cumulative effects of both the chemicals and proteins in foods (this idea will return in force later in this story).  He opened my eyes to our body's threshold levels for allergic responses, or sensitivities, to chemicals and proteins. He named all the different ways "soy" appears in food.  He does the same with MSG.   He was suggesting a role for caffeine, MSG and artificial ingredients in vision problems, headaches, dizziness and nausea.   He definitely was on to something useful, even though his research was anecdotal.  Symptom reduction from an elimination and rotation diet was his science.  Later,  doctors connected these reactions to neurological issues, and to me.   The new methods were both anecdotal and controlled studies.
                 And then I went from Good to Bad  (Click Here)