Allergy — Gluten Allergy / Gluten Free Diet / Yeast Allergy / Asthma / + other Allergies — Page 72

Links

by Allergy Guy

Allergy Information

 

Allergy Alerts

Personal Blogs about Allergies

Health

Information Central

Good places to start

Information About Food

  • whfoods.com – a list of many food ingredients, with both their health benefits and dangers. A great resource.
  • Food Info – Information about food in 30 languages!

Allergy Related Sites

Suggestions welcome.

 

Leave a comment with the URL and a brief explanation as to why the link should be included here. Note that I do not publish comments on this page, but if I like your suggestion, you will see the link appear above.

Link Policy

Websites listed here meet at least one of the following criteria:

  1. They provide really useful, reliable information
  2. They are interesting, and you can leave comments on them
  3. I personally have had a good experience visiting and commenting on those websites

I think that each of the websites listed above will provide something of value to at least some, if not many people.
If you would like to see a website added to the above links, the website must meet at least some of the above criteria.
It will help if you are willing to link back to this website. This website is one of a minority that allow comment links to count when it comes to Google and page rank (see commenting policy and rel=nofollow for more information). So if you would like to suggest I link to your website, do please return the favour. This is not mandatory, but it is friendly, and friendly always helps, especially with point 3.

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Resources and allergy relief products

by Allergy Guy

This entire section is devoted to a range of resources to help you deal with your allergies.

Resources include links to other useful websites, books, products and allergy relief products.

Even if the table of contents (below) is short, there is a lot of information in this section, and it is growing. It will become large, so it is organized into a structure to help you find what you need. Your comments, suggestions and feedback will help to improve the site, so do please feel free to add your comment.

Pollen Information on Pollen.com

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Wheat allergy awareness in North India

by Allergy Guy

Wheat allergies are being discovered everywhere!

In this article about wheat allergies in India, the Indian Express reports on several studies of children in India. One study surveyed 1,500 students and found that one in 122 children in Chandigarh is prone to celiac disease, a serious reaction to eating wheat.

Another study in Ludhiana surveyed 4,300 children, and found 1 in 300 children to have celiac.

This may seem like bad news. I say the opposite is true. There must be millions of people across the world suffering either from a wheat allergy or celiac disease. This is an unfortunate fact.

The good news is that people are starting to discover these allergies, learn about what they can and can not eat, and therefore can become healthy.

For world travellers like me, it also means another area I can visit, and ask for a wheat-free meal, without getting strange looks, and food that is “wheat free, it is made with all-purpose flour!”.

You will still have to ask the right questions when you visit a restaurant, but at least there will eventually be an awareness in India of allergies in general, and wheat allergies in particular.

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Wheat-Free in Restaurants

by Allergy Guy

Wheat-free eating in restaurants can be a trail, or it can be very easy. It depends on the restaurant, the menu, and how well trained the staff is.

If you have a wheat allergy, a gluten allergy, or are celiac, your health and well-being depends on making sure that the restaurant food you eat is completely wheat-free (or gluten-free if you have  celiac disease or have a gluten allergy).

If you are on a gluten free diet, then avoiding wheat is only part of the story.

On the other hand, asking for a gluten-free meal can be very helpful if you are avoiding wheat, because more people have heard of a gluten-free diet, and are more likely to accommodate you.

If I tell the server that I can not eat wheat, and they mention a gluten free diet, then I know they get it, and do not explain the finer points of wheat vs. gluten.

Not everyone who works in a restaurant knows all that much about food. Even the chef can be clueless about food ingredients and origins, even if they do produce tasty dishes.

I’ve told servers in restaurants that I am allergic to wheat, and have been told “no problem, we only use all-purpose flour.”

A response like that tells you to leave the restaurant. Trying to explain the ins and outs of wheat-free food do someone like that may work, but it may not. You can’t afford to take the risk.

When you are asking questions about what you can eat in a restaurant, keep in mind that you may or may not be talking to an expert. One of your goals is to determine if the person you are talking to knows anything about food. You also need to work out if you and the server or chef really understand each-other.

Some people want to give the right answer, even if they don’t understand the question. If their goal is that you eat at their restaurant, the right answer for them is often “yes”. For example: -“is this safe for me to eat?” -“yes!”. Is it really?

Some restaurants serve a menu that is easier to accommodate your allergies, others have a more challenging menu. For example, I am allergic to wheat. If I see a menu with mostly sandwiches and pizza, I walk out. I know I will do well in an Asian restaurant though, as long as I am careful about what I order.

More and more restaurants have a special gluten-free menu. This is a big help, and a big clue that the ‘get it’.

What are your experiences with eating wheat-free at restaurants?

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Surviving the Hilton East Brunswick Restaurant

by Allergy Guy

The title of this entry suggests that I eat at the restaurant in the Hilton quite often. Actually, I don’t.
I was at the East Brunswick Hilton for four nights, but only ate at the restaurant twice. That’s how I survived it.

The Problem with the Restaurant

I was in East Brunswick attending an intensive course to help me with the direction of my life and my business. Given that there would be no time to look for food outside the hotel, and expecting challenges in finding food to suit my allergy requirements, I mostly brought my own food. I ate at the restaurant twice, and this was not a happy experience.

Because the course I was attending involved a lot of people, they had a buffet arranged for us. Before buying tickets for the buffet, I told the hotel staff what my allergies are, and asked if I could be accommodated. I was told this was possible.

Luckily, I only bought the dinners. When I showed up at the buffet, it turned out that I could really only eat the salad! The first night, Cindy, a really service super-star, was able to arrange an alternate meal for me. The second night she was not there, and the dozy staff came up with something that technically I could eat, but really was pretty unsatisfactory.

Now this is not meant to be a rant against the hotel, although really they need to learn how to cater to people with allergies a whole lot better.

Bringing My Own Wheat-Free Food

Breakfasts and lunches did work really well because I brought my own food.

I do not eat wheat, but I can eat oatmeal. I brought a one-cup immersion heater to boil water, and added that to a bowl of instant oatmeal. Adding walnuts and almonds made it a pretty good and complete breakfast.

For lunch, I brought rice cakes, and canned meat (which I found at an Italian store in my home town). The cans have pull-tabs, so they are easy to open, and don’t stink like fish, so that worked very well.

Planning for Next Time

I have another similar trip coming up in March. This time I will bring dinner as well as breakfast and lunch.

I have not planed my meals yet, but I have purchased a single-burner stove which I can fit in my suit-case. Some camping pots and implements will complete my kitchen. I will probably have rice with something out of a can – not exciting but better than restaurant food. If I can, I will try to come up with something interesting, but it will all have to work as airplane luggage, so there will be challenges. I’ll add more when I have worked out the details.

 

 

More About Immersion Heaters

Immersion Heater

 

A few people have been asking what an immersion heater is. The photo to the left is one example of one common design.

 

You put it in to a cup or mug of cold water, plug it in, and it heats up. After a time, the water will boil.

 

 

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Discover your Allergies

by Allergy Guy

Do you have allergies? To what?

The answers to either question can be very hard to determine.

This section contains subjects to help you work out if you have allergies, and to what.

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Top 20 Food Allergies with Delayed Reactions

by Allergy Guy

When most people think food allergy, they think an immediate collapse to the floor, the face turning blue. Yes, this is one type of allergy, the sort everyone fears when they hear about a peanut allergy for example.

Possibly more common is the “delayed onset” food allergy, where symptoms do not appear for hours or even days. For example, when I eat wheat, I don’t notice any symptoms for about 24 hours. Some people might take two days before they feel anything. In rare cases, symptoms may not appear for a week.

This makes the job of determining what you are allergic to very difficult.

List of Common Allergens

Here are 20 of the most common allergenic foods:

If you think you might be suffering from a food allergy, but are not sure which food is causing the problem, start by cutting out all of the above foods.

Other foods commonly associated with allergic reactions (although not necessarily delayed) include:

  • Spinach
  • Shrimp
  • Oranges
  • Chicken
  • Strawberries
  • Tomato
  • Pork
  • Beef

See the related story Self-Testing for Allergies for a suggested approach.

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Self-Testing for Food Allergies

by Allergy Guy

Why Self-Test for Food Allergies?

While there are many tests for allergies , none of them are not 100% accurate. You may get false-positives. This means you will be needlessly eliminating food from your diet that you could very well eat. Who needs the extra stress and inconvenience?

You may get false negatives. This is far worse: it means that you will eat foods that you think are OK, but are not. It is much harder to realize that an allergen is a problem if a test wrongly “proved” that the food is safe for you.

Keep in mind that few people have just one allergy. Most people have several allergies to food and air-born substances. Eliminating just one of these items could make a huge difference, but then again, maybe not. You need to find all of the major allergens that are bothering you, eliminate every last one, then see you feel.

Let’s say that you get tested, and test positive for corn and negative to wheat. Corn is in a lot of food – it is a major filler and additive. It is a major hassle to eliminate. On the other hand, so is wheat – you will be glad you can keep eating that one! Now if the testing turns out to be inaccurate (and it really can be that inaccurate), you may find that you feel no better, and are having all this hassle eliminating all this food from your life, so you will eventually go back to your original diet.

Now lets say that you don’t get tested, but eliminate some of the most common food allergens from your diet. After a while you start to feel better. It is likely that some of the foods you eliminated are causing the problem. Congratulations, you are on your way to finding out exactly what to eliminate and what to keep on eating! Here’s how:

How to Self-Test for Allergies

The following procedure must be followed without cheating, or you will have a lot of inconvenience, but without useful information. This method only works if, when you eliminate foods, you eliminate all traces of the food all the time for the full duration of the test.

The following procedure refers to the list of foods to avoid. This is the list of foods you will be eliminating from your diet. Initially, it will include all of the foods you are testing. As you re-introduce foods into your diet, you can refine the list of foods to avoid, striking off those foods which do not cause problems, and leaving on foods that do.

  1. Eliminate all traces of every food listed in the most common food allergens list. Initially, this will be your list of foods to avoid.

    You must eliminate these foods for at least one full month for a truly valid test.

  2. Note how you feel over this period of time. Keep a daily journal of your symptoms and energy level to track your progress (or lack there of).
  3. If you are allergic to any of the foods on the list of foods to avoid, you should feel better by the time one month has passed.
  4. Introduce just one of the foods from the list of foods to avoid. We will call it the test food, the single food you are testing for allergy symptoms.
    Eat a very small amount of the food – about one tenth of what you would normally consider a serving.
  5. Wait up to three full days to see if there is a reaction. If you get any symptoms, you should highly suspect this test food food.
    Keep in mind that other factors may cause symptoms, such as allergens that are not on your list of foods to avoid, or even fear that this food will cause problems. If you experience symptoms, put the test food on your tentative list of foods to avoid.
  6. If you do not experience symptoms, eat more of the test food: double your intake from the previous test amount.
  7. If you find you have fully reintroduced the test food into your diet, and you still feel fine, you can consider it to be OK (at least for now). Add it to your tentative list of allowed foods.
  8. If you experienced symptoms from the food you just tested, allow your body to recover. Wait several weeks (it may take a month) for your body to feel good and relatively symptom free, before moving on to the next test food.
  9. Test the next food on the list of foods to avoid. This becomes your new test food.
  10. Repeat steps 4 through 7 for each food on the list of foods to avoid.
    You now have a tentative list of allowed foods and a tentative list of foods to avoid. If you feel fine and have been eating all the foods listed on your list of allowed foods, chances are you now know what foods are OK, and what foods are not. It is now time to retest the items listed on your list of foods to avoid.
  11. Start the test over again for any items on your list of foods to avoid about which you are unsure.

Complications

The test outlined above is pretty accurate if you are careful to eliminate all traces of the test food from your diet, and if the symptoms caused by an allergy to a food are fairly clear. Sometimes it is not that easy. You may have allergies to other foods besides the common ones. It is also likely that you also have non-food allergies, for example molds, dust, pets etc. This muddies the waters as far as deciding if you feel OK or not.

You may have to wait longer than suggested for your body to recover between testing foods. The key is to feel good, before you can tell if a particular food makes you feel bad.

Cheating the Allergy Test

This test can be accurate over time, but it is not easy. You may be tempted to eat food on your list of foods to avoid, for example when you are a dinner guest. This may be unavoidable, in which case you must allow your body to recover by eliminating the allergenic food from your diet until you feel fine again. This could set you back for up to a month, so it is much better to do everything possible to avoid eating the food on your avoid list.

Another problem is that you may think you are eliminating all traces of a particular food, but it may be an ingredient in something you are eating without your realizing it.

Check ingredients of everything you eat carefully. If in doubt, leave it out!

Other diet-health effects
There may be a link between autism and diet.


What is your experience with discovering your allergies? Have you tried using the above method, or something similar? Did it help you or not? Share your experience and point of view, leave a comment!

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Allergy Information

by Allergy Guy

This is a top-level directory, giving you access to much of the information on this site.

Click on one of the titles below to find the information you are looking for.

If you can not find what you are looking for by browsing the links, try the search box. This will search the entire site for the terms you enter. One additional advantage of using the search box is that it gives us an idea of what people are looking for, so we can grow the site according to your needs.

Note that many of the entries below are also headings, with even more articles below them. There are hundreds of articles on this site, mostly with allergy information, and a few about general health.





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Can a Person with a Wheat Allergy Eat Corn Tortillas?

by Allergy Guy

Tortillas are a staple food in Mexico. The staple crop in Mexico is corn (maize). Put two and two together, and you might assume that if you have a wheat allergy, then you can eat tortillas, right?

It isn’t quite that straight forward.

The traditional recipe for tortillas uses pure corn, and there are still a lot of pure corn tortillas to be had in Mexico. Mostly that is what you will find in local restaurants. If you buy frozen tortillas in a North American supermarket though, it is much more likely to be made of (or with) wheat.

Even in Mexico, not all tortillas are pure corn. Firstly, there is the wheat tortilla, identified by its colour. It is nearly white, where as a corn tortilla is yellowish, and usually has more texture. Large, hand-made tortillas are generally safe. Everyone I spoke to in Mexico was very sure that a hand-made tortilla is pure corn, and that’s the end of it. This may not be true in northern Mexico, I have not had the chance to look into this.

Tortillas bought in Mexican supermarkets may be wheat-free, but they are just as likely to have wheat in the ingredients. You must check every time. If you eat at a food stall, ask where they get their tortillas from. For this, you must know some Spanish, so if you don’t know any Spanish, look for a food stall that uses large tortillas that do not look machine made. If you see the owner making their own (they squeeze a ball of maize dough in a big press, then slap it on a hot grill) then you are safe (at least in central and southern Mexico, again, I have not had the chance to verify northern Mexico).

Of course “tacos” bough in the USA or Canada are pure corn. These are hard discs formed into a U-shape, which can be stuffed with meat and vegetables. They are not Mexican at all, but they are wheat-free!

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