Foods that you can't have

[Shalom]

Me, I'm (I think) lactose intolerant. I can drink a little milk with no problem, but enough milk for a bowl of cereal and I'm gassy all day. Lactaid milk is OK, but I don't care for it (too sweet); the generic ones are better. Tofu also seems to do this to me, or soy in general. Thank G_d nothing life-threatening, although due to my strictly Kosher diet, there are lots of foods I've never tried. Could be allergic to seafood or pork, but I'll never know it.

Caffeine is a no-no, gives me palpitations and lethal irritability. I'm not safe to be around if I've had caffeine (and modafinil seems to have the same effect).

Also chocolate (or maybe just the sugar in it) lately seems to be reversing one of my blood pressure medicines. I eat one chocolate jelly graham ring, not long afterwards my blood pressure spikes to 190/89 and my pulse rate is over 100. Damn. I could give up anything else, but chocolate is gonna be hard.

My daughter seems to be allergic to milk protein. She grew up on milk-based formula, but could only tolerate the broken-down protein version: everything else gave her terrible stomach-aches. Now if she gets anything "milchig" (i.e. has enough dairy in it to make it forbidden by Kosher law to eat with meat) she has cramps for 9-10 hours, then throws up, at which point we find out what she ate 10 hours ago to set her off, as it hasn't left her stomach in all that time. (Gastroparesis, thanks to whoever above reminded me of the correct term.) She even reacted to a skin test for whole-milk once, although not to the latest test. (She didn't react to the + control either, though, so I wonder about that test...)

Result of the above, I have to buy three kinds of milk. Regular lowfat for my wife and son, lactose-free for me, soy for my daughter. Good thing we have a spare fridge in the basement.

[Kittykat]

Coconut, makes me break out in hives.

Spicy food, indigestion
Artificial sweeteners, indigestion
lactose, slight intolerance but I deal because I am an ice cream addict lol.

[AccountingDrone]

Also chocolate (or maybe just the sugar in it) lately seems to be reversing one of my blood pressure medicines. I eat one chocolate jelly graham ring, not long afterwards my blood pressure spikes to 190/89 and my pulse rate is over 100. Damn. I could give up anything else, but chocolate is gonna be hard.

Both caffeine and theobromine are in chocolate. Nono for high blood pressure peeps like us.

[fireheart]

Doesn't sound like lactose intolerance to me. The lactose content is virtually the same across the spectrum from whole milk to skim - perhaps you've got an adverse reaction to butterfat? Do you get bloaty/runny when you eat butter? If so, does it happen with fats in general, or just butter? Do you react to hard cheeses (e.g. aged cheddar, or real Swiss)? These cheeses tend to have the full butterfat content, but the microorganisms that work during the aging process have depleted the lactose.

The main dairy products I seem to be having issues with of late are:

-Whole milk.
-Processed cheese. (not in the cream cheese form oddly enough)
-Ice cream.

Butter and cheddar cheese seem to be fine in small amounts. (that is, I can't scarf down 10 cheese cubes in one sitting)

[Difdi]

I'm allergic to so many things, it's generally easier for me to list the things I'm NOT allergic to when someone asks. Some, however, stand out more than others.

My worst allergy isn't to a food. It's to a specific type of pollen. I have no idea what it's from, but it's native to the area I live in and an endangered species. The local University has a rare native plants collection planted around campus, and I have to avoid the place during pollen season or I start coughing and can't stop. As in, leaving bloodstains on my handkerchief sort of coughing. Thankfully, a P95 filter mask catches it, and I keep one on hand all spring.

Second worst is ANYTHING related to cabbage. Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, whatever. Doesn't matter. Gives me a headache worse than any migraine I've ever had, but 'luckily' it responds to acetaminophen and ibuprofen. Either one by itself won't touch the headache but the mixture clears it right up...providing I take about 2 GRAMS of each.

Third is again not (normally) a food item. Tobacco in any form will give me a moderate asthma attack. Not severe enough for an inhaler, but enough to make me have to sit down for a bit and catch my breath.

Fourth is cow's milk. I am not lactose intolerant, I can drink any other kind of milk without a reaction, but not milk from a cow. It makes me itch, and if I've drunk enough milk to itch then get exposed to tobacco, I get a severe asthma attack (occasionally worthy of a trip to the ER if I've really been guzzling the milk). The same applies to cheese made from cow's milk.

Fifth is roasted garlic. I can eat all the raw garlic I want, I just can't have oven roasted garlic unless I want to spend the next few days all by myself due to the gas it gives me.

[PandaHat]

...
Second worst is ANYTHING related to cabbage. Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, whatever. Doesn't matter. Gives me a headache worse than any migraine I've ever had, but 'luckily' it responds to acetaminophen and ibuprofen. Either one by itself won't touch the headache but the mixture clears it right up...providing I take about 2 GRAMS of each. ...

Just as a general warning (because reading your post you seem pretty aware that this is a bad idea).

Please please PLEASE don't take more acetaminophen/paracetamol in one go than is safe. Small repeated overdoses are very bad for your liver long term. In the UK we'd treat someone who had taken more than 150mg/kg in 24 hours, but rarely people can become acetaminophen toxic with a dose of 75-150mg/kg. also remember that liver damage is greatest 3-4 days after the toxic dose so if for whatever reason you have taken more than the prescribed dose of acetaminophen please seek medical advice quickly! It is really not a quick or pleasant way to die.

[cindybubbles]

Just as a general warning (because reading your post you seem pretty aware that this is a bad idea).

Please please PLEASE don't take more acetaminophen/paracetamol in one go than is safe. Small repeated overdoses are very bad for your liver long term. In the UK we'd treat someone who had taken more than 150mg/kg in 24 hours, but rarely people can become acetaminophen toxic with a dose of 75-150mg/kg. also remember that liver damage is greatest 3-4 days after the toxic dose so if for whatever reason you have taken more than the prescribed dose of acetaminophen please seek medical advice quickly! It is really not a quick or pleasant way to die.

It would be better if Difdi just avoided broccoli or anything related to cabbage. Then Difdi wouldn't have to worry about painkillers in the first place.

[wolfie]

Second worst is ANYTHING related to cabbage. Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, whatever. Doesn't matter. Gives me a headache worse than any migraine I've ever had,

Do you also react to mustard, or to canola oil? The plants for both are from the brassica family, just like the veggies you mentioned.

[Difdi]

Just as a general warning (because reading your post you seem pretty aware that this is a bad idea).

Please please PLEASE don't take more acetaminophen/paracetamol in one go than is safe. Small repeated overdoses are very bad for your liver long term. In the UK we'd treat someone who had taken more than 150mg/kg in 24 hours, but rarely people can become acetaminophen toxic with a dose of 75-150mg/kg. also remember that liver damage is greatest 3-4 days after the toxic dose so if for whatever reason you have taken more than the prescribed dose of acetaminophen please seek medical advice quickly! It is really not a quick or pleasant way to die.

I'm aware of the risk. I'm also aware that suicide is bad for me, but it starts looking really good about 30 minutes after the first pain spike from that allergy hits. Once that headache starts, I'm in enough pain to be hospitalized. The dose I end up having to take to get the pain to manageable levels (not gone, but tolerable) isn't something I take without needing it, and certainly not regularly. It's also well below that 150mg/kg limit. Usually one dose of that size outlasts the reaction, and I've never had to take more than two doses. I often go for months without taking any -- I personally prefer ibuprofen for moderate pain relief (or willow bark tea) but for some things, like that allergy, it really does take something as potent as that drug interaction between acetaminophen and ibuprofen since I don't have access to things like morphine.

I once had emergency services called by a neighbor because he found my screams to be disturbing.

As you can imagine, I avoid that allergy like the plague, but sometimes it's unavoidable. On more than one occasion, someone who didn't believe allergies were real has tampered with my food to "prove" it was all in my head.

Do you also react to mustard, or to canola oil? The plants for both are from the brassica family, just like the veggies you mentioned.

No reaction from mustard seeds, but mustard leaves and canola do trigger it. I can also eat small quantities of the more highly processed varieties of sauerkraut without triggering the reaction.

It would be better if Difdi just avoided broccoli or anything related to cabbage. Then Difdi wouldn't have to worry about painkillers in the first place.

Yes, that would be wonderful. But between restaurant staff not knowing (or not caring) what is in the salad, people who don't believe in allergies who set out to "prove" I'm delusional, my mother who keeps insisting I must have outgrown it by now and randomly unspecified ingredients in food (chicken ramen often contains cabbage powder listed as "vegetable powder" for example) I can't avoid it nearly as well as I would prefer.

[MaggieTheCat]

my mother who keeps insisting I must have outgrown it by now

Boy, can I empathize with a mother who doesn't believe in food allergies.

When I was a kid and she would feed me bananas, I would always emphatically insist to her that they would make me "sick." Being a kid, I didn't know how to properly describe what I was feeling, and she somehow got it in her head that I was just being picky and that I just didn't like bananas. It was when I was a teenager that I made the connection on my own that I was allergic to them (later confirmed when I was an adult by an allergy test.)

However, there was one time that my mom made smoothies for breakfast when I was still living at home (I was maybe 18 or 19 at the time.) I wasn't in the room when she made them but she asked if I wanted some. I asked what was in them and she said blueberry, and that seemed accurate since they were, indeed, blueish purple. So she poured me a glass and I started drinking, and after swallowing she asked how I liked it and I said it was okay, and she smirked and said, "And you can't even tell there's banana in there, can you?"

She still maintains, to this day, that if I "just lost some weight" (since I'm on the heavy side) that I'd be able to eat whatever I want and all my food allergies would magically go away.

[Cia]

Being charged with assault or attempted manslaughter/murder might stop idiotic family members from trying to 'prove' you're not allergic.

[cindybubbles]

Being charged with assault or attempted manslaughter/murder might stop idiotic family members from trying to 'prove' you're not allergic.

Yeah, but who wants to do that to their family members? Better to just cut ties with them if they continue to do so.

[Cia]

Yeah, but who wants to do that to their family members? Better to just cut ties with them if they continue to do so.

Me, if I end up in the ER and almost die from their stupidity you bet they're going to pay.

[WanderingSaint]

Minor:
Replacement Sweetners - I develop flue like symptoms including inflamed flemmy throat within minutes and indigestion.

Major:
Seafood - ANY KIND = INSTANT EVACUATION OF ALL BODY ORIFACES THAT CAN DO THAT. Not fun. My extended family didn't believe me a few years ago and snuck some in to a meat roll. I had no idea why I was suddenly throwing up all over my great aunt. They never tried again. And my father ripped them a new one.
Codine - same reaction as above. So bad the first time I took it for when I had my wisdom teeth removed I ended up in hospital on an IV drip a day later and was delirious for DAYS after.

Not a food allergy, but one that FUBARED a potential job avenue.

MDF.
Yeah the stuff all cheap furniture is made out of and cabinetry workers make whatever they can out of to save on costs. Turns out my skin breaks out in hives on dust contact. Found that out at my first woodworking job three months in when we suddenly had a huge baseboard order. Boss nearly had a heart attack looking at me. Was banned to the office while they finished up the job. Still ended up with red rash hands from the dust that creeped in to the office.
SO MUCH FOR THAT JOB!

[MaggieTheCat]

Sometime since my first post (I don't remember when but it's been several months now, I know it was before Valentine's Day) I cut dairy out of my diet. I don't think I am allergic but I suspect I am highly lactose intolerant and, combined with my gastroparesis, it seemed to have been making me very ill. I have been feeling much, much better since I cut all dairy products out of my diet. I have read that some people who are lactose intolerant can still handle non-cow milk products like goat/sheep milk-based cheeses, so starting next week I am going to experiment with a few different things and see if I can handle any of them. I picked up some pecorino romano (sheep milk cheese, similar to parmesan) that I am going to try making pasta carbonara with.