Mommy hungry!

So it's Week One of the zero-allergen diet. So far so... ok. This weekend I went off the wagon a bit with a cheeseburger (protein style), some red wine on V-Day and blue cheese on a salad. (And maybe a serving or two of you-know-what.) Replacing coffee with tea has caused some more headaches. I have the sniffles, too, but that's probably related to weather changes and blooming. Excedrin has been my friend.

Now I need to start a spread sheet where I record every single processed food and possible allergen I consume and then record my mood/physical symptoms and see if there's a connection. Unfortunately, my nutritionist says reactions from reactive foods can take three days to appear.

As I've mentioned before, my main goals are to increase energy and improve digestion. Eight-10 years ago I needed only 7-7.5 hours of sleep a night to feel right. Now it's more like 8.5-9. That just doesn't seem right.

Progress

It seems like in the last few years there has been an increase in the success of Mexican food chains that are "fast" food, but a step or three above Taco Hell. Una Mas, Baja Fresh, Chipotle, and more. This is excellent news for me, since Mexican food is awesome, and it's my three big allergens (soy, gluten, egg) are easily avoided in such establishments. I wonder what it is about Mexican food vs, say, Thai or Italian, that lends itself to this kind of franchise?

In the category of progress-yet-to-be-made, I have a prediction/suggestion for a future car gadget: a sensor built into, perhaps, your dashboard or your GPS that senses when the cars in front of you are moving so that you don't have to look up every few second or be startled by the unpleasant honking of the car behind you while writing emails or Facebook updates on your Android phone. (would probably work for Blackberry users, too)

out, allergens!

Well, I'm pretty sure I've been gluten-, egg- and soy-free for at least a month. I'm still eating out, but avoiding Asian restaurants because soy is likely to be pervasive. I made muffins from a mix made by a company called "1-2-3 Gluten Free," and they were mediocre. Candy-making with the soy-free baking chips was very successful. Tastes just like the kind made with Nestle or Ghiradeli.

But I feel like I could feel better. So my next step is to cut out all possible allergens. That means no nuts, beans, dairy, coffee, alcohol...just fruit, veggies, super-organic meat and tea. I know there are lots of people that do it. Remains to be seen if I can. Even for a couple weeks...

Soy annoyed

Well, it turns out there is something to this gluten thing, after all. A couple weeks ago I decided to add gluten back in to my diet. First I ate a piece of bread with dinner. Then a donut. Then Cheerios. At first all seemed well. A week later, I noticed that my occasional breathing problems had returned. It's not really asthma, and it's not really shortness-of-breath, but it's like I can't take a really deep breath. It just happens occassionally. I saw an alergist for it a while back and inhalers didn't really seems to help. Anyway, I didn't notice it had gone till it came back.

The whole gluten-free thing isn't really that tough. Since it's a big fad right now, there are lots of gluten-free foods floating around. I am fine with the gluten-free rice bread from Trader Joe's (though the only way it's really very good is toasted with jam -- luckily, I was never a big sandwich person anyway). I can still eat potatoes, rice and corn. And there are many options for rice/corn/quinoa pasta at Whole Foods.

It's soy that's the real sticking point. As i mentioned earlier, it's in evreything, most notably chocolate. I have made some of my fantastic candies with the soy-free baking chips (which I just ordered a 5 lb bag of from Amazon, along with a case of gluten-free cheerios and allergen-free bars.

Today I got two kinds of gluten-free baking mix in the mail from "Gluten Free Mall" and there are currently blueberry muffins in the oven. And I got to enjoy my favorite part of baking: licking the batter out of the bowl...

This is a lot of drugs

On Monday I spent almost 3 hours in a doctor's office getting dozens of little pin pricks and needle marks and blowing into some kind of contraption and hitting off a inhaler to try to figure out why I'm sometimes (mostly during intense exercise) short of breath. The findings:

- I'm very allergic to mold (which I found out from a blood test a couple years ago) -- but who, exactly, isn't?
- I'm a tiny bit allergic to cats, but not at all to dogs;
- My ability to rapidly exhale (presumably indicative of my lung capacity) is so-so, and improved by 30 percent by an inhaler with a couple medications in it.

It was a lot of information at once, and kind of overwhelming. The doctor wrote out this detailed "plan" that includes the inhaler, two pills and two nasal sprays. She drew out this whole explanation complete with sketches of some lung parts, but I didn't really understand it and of course I can't read any of her handwriting. Maybe I'll get a clearer explanation at my follow up appointment a month from now.

We'll see how I feel after a couple weeks of serious allergy meds.