This section contains articles about environmental illnesses.
These are not allergies. They are the body’s reaction to pollution, chemicals and toxins (some natural, most synthetic).
Environmental illness can cause allergies, and is closely related with them, although it is possible to have environmental illnesses without allergies.
Doctors who practice environmental medicine often treat allergies as well.
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I have just expanded the article on allergy symptoms.
Beyond a simple explanation of symptoms, there is also a long list of symptoms that can possibly ocure due to allergies.
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Following a restrictive diet is no fun, especially when faced with the necessary but depressing lists of things you can not eat.
If you are following a yeast-free diet, this article provides a list of foods you can eat.
It is by no means complete, and quite honestly never will be. There are an endless number of prepared foods. This varies country by country and region by region.
So do please add your comments with lists of foods you know to be safe for a yeast-free diet. Also, feel free to add corrections and caveats if you notice any errors on this list.
If you are doing your own cooking, it is relatively easy to avoid yeast. This is more of a general description of foods you can eat since most basic ingredients are find (with a few exceptions, covered in Foods that Contain Yeast.
All meat is yeast-free (unless it is spoiled, in which case you will get food poisoning as well as a possible dose of yeast).
As long as you cook with fresh meat, you have nothing to worry about.
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All vegetables are safe.
If parts of the vegetable go rotten, cut it out. Usually the rest of the vegetable is fine. As long as it is firm and not discoloured, it should be perfectly yeast-free.
NOTE: Some food that are commonly referred to as vegetables, such as bell peppers and eggplant, are actually fruits.
Exceptions:
You have to be more careful with fruit than meat or vegetables. Because of the high sugar content of most fruits, yeast growth is possible.
Dried fruits often contain yeast. The following list applies only to fresh fruit.
Some fruits have yeast on the skin. If you can remove the skin of a fruit (fresh and unspoiled) then you can eat what’s left.
The following fruit are fine, as long as they are fresh and free of spoilage:
All nuts and seeds are yeast-free
This section to be added soon.
Mean while, please add your favorite prepared foods (that you know to be yeast-free) in the comments section.
This article is a work in progress. Please leave a comment if you see anything missing or any errors. Thanks!
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I just received the following comment, posted under the Self-Testing for Food Allergies page.
I decided to provide the reply as a separate article, rather than burying it in the comments, because there are a few important points here that I think you will find useful, and I want to make sure you can easily find this article.
Here is my reply:
[click to continue…]
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A peanut allergy is caused by certain proteins, which trigger your immune system to over-react to what is (for most people) a harmless substance.
Normally, your immune system completely ignores these peanut proteins. Peanuts are food after all.
For some reason, some people develop a strong reaction to peanuts. For some people, even the tiniest fragment of peanut – barely visible to the naked eye – can trigger a big reaction.
The only danger for such people is the reaction itself, but the reaction can be strong enough for some people to be very serious.
For people with a highly sensitive peanut allergy, just 2mg of certain peanut proteins is enough to set them off.
The average peanut has about 200mg of these proteins, so one hundredth of a peanut is enough to cause a problem for the most sensitive of people with a peanut allergy.
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Can you believe that up to 1.5 million people in the USA alone might be allergic to peanuts?
These numbers seem to be typical – on a per capita basis – in other Western countries as well.
Of all the fatal allergic reactions, peanut allergies top the list. This actually amounts to about 100 people per year in the USA, which is 100 people too many, but hardly compares to the risk of driving, or being born for that matter.
Still, with roughly 150 fatalities related to allergies per year in the USA, the 100 related to a peanut allergy makes this particular allergy seem very dangerous.
More common are the less severe, but still alarming (or at least annoying) symptoms that many peanut allergy sufferers must endure should any peanut fragment cross their lips.
Certainly, the 15,0000 emergency room visits per year demonstrates that a peanut allergy is by no means trivial.
Roughly 0.5% of the adult and child population has a peanut allergy. 25% of children with a peanut allergy can be expected to grow out of it by their teens or early adult years. The rest are stuck with having a peanut allergy for the rest of their lives.
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According to studies, the most widely suffered food allergy in the West is to peanuts.
You may assume this includes other kinds of nuts, but a peanut is actually not a kind of nut.
Peanuts are a kind of legume and are closely related to soy beans, kidney beans, peas and lentils.
A tree nut is a kind of fruit, with a hard shell and relatively dry had hard inside.
Tree nut allergies can be as severe as peanut allergies, but are less common.
It is possible to be allergic to both peanuts and tree nuts, but this is not a given – they are entirely different types of allergy.
There does seem to be some correlation between peanut and tree nut allergies. No one knows why.
Children who have a peanut allergy are more likely to have other food allergies (including tree nuts). These allergies may last into adulthood.
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This article will explain what pollen is, where it comes from, and how it relates to allergies.
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Asthma is strongly linked to environmental irritants and allergens. It is often triggered by physical exertion. Wheat or gluten may also be a factor.
Typical asthma triggers include smoke (tobacco, wood fires etc.), chemicals, pollen, dust and dust mites, mold, pet dander and cockroaches.
Here are hidden asthma factors that no one is talking about: wheat and gluten.
These foods are probably not direct asthma triggers for most people.
A surprising number of people may be experiencing asthma from wheat and gluten, but indirectly.
Some studies have show a link between gluten sensitivity and asthma. For example, children with asthma have a higher incidence of celiac, according to one study.
Other studies have shown that when some people eliminate wheat from their diet, their exercise-induced anaphylaxis symptoms stop.
Numerous reports and anecdotal stories are showing a strong link between wheat or gluten, and asthma.
A reaction to wheat and a reaction to gluten may be two different things. What they have in common, besides the high levels of gluten in wheat, is that they are common foods, nearly impossible to avoid.
Because they are likely to be in your diet on a multiple-times-per-day basis, and because their effects are delayed, as are the benefits when these foods are removed from your diet, it is unlikely that you would notice the connection between wheat or gluten, and asthma.
However, if you eliminate all gluten-containing foods for three to four weeks, you may notice a big improvement in your asthma symptoms. I sure hope you do. Please add a comment with your story after you have tried this.
Note that traditional allergy tests may come up negative for wheat and gluten.
There are several reasons why you should ignore the results of such tests and try eliminating gluten from your diet instead. This is of course the ultimate test.
For one thing, if you have celiac, you don’t have an allergy, you have a specific reaction to gluten in your gut. This is a very serious condition that can do tremendous damage over time. There are tests for celiac disease.
Another reason tests are not that accurate. They give false positives, false negatives, and may miss other immune reactions such as delayed food reactions, food sensitivities etc.
So forget the tests, if you have asthma, try a gluten-free diet, and see what happens.
“My doctor thinks I’m crazy” you might say. In deed, I copied and pasted this phrase from one of the many comments below. Many doctors think in a linear way: asthma, cause unknown –> take asthma medication and avoid air borne allergens like dust and pet dander. The idea of celiac disease is starting to take hold among doctors, but only if you have stomach ailments. The idea that a gluten allergy or some other mechanism may somehow be connected to asthma won’t enter most of their brains, and if it does, they will assume you are crazy, not that they are ignorant.
If you find that a gluten free diet reduces or eliminated asthma symptoms, you may choose to tell your doctor about it, but think about it as a test to see if he is open-minded; don’t ask him for permission to treat you or your child’s asthma by avoiding gluten.
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This section has articles related to asthma and allergies. Although text describing asthma and allergies has not yet been completed, there are some related articles below.
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