Allergy or Intolerance? That is the Question.

It looks like MSN took down the article that talked about allergies versus intolerances, so I’ve found another article on MSN that demonstrates what I wanted to talk about two bloggings ago. So why comment on either articles? Let’s compare this article’s descriptions of allergies and intolerances with my experiences with disagreeable food.

Food Allergy Symptoms

• Hives
• Swollen tongues or lips
• Dizziness
• Fainting
• Death
• Quick reaction
• Small amounts of food trigger reactions
• No cure

Food Intolerance Symptoms

• Cramping
• Diarrhea
• Gas
• Bloating
• Rashes
• Asthma attacks
• Not life-threatening
• Small amounts of intolerable food can be tolerated
• Curable

Katherine’s Symptoms

• Red face
• Runny nose
• Swelling nasal cavity (nasal headaches)
• Migraines
• Digestive issues
• Rash
• Quick reactions and slow depending on the food
• Some problem food can be tolerated some can’t
• Don’t have problems with lactose in goat milk or problems with beans

It’s articles like these that make me just shake my head. Where do I stand? I’ve got symptoms that fall in both categories and symptoms that don’t fall in either. Food problems, call them intolerances or allergies, are way more complicated than what this brief article suggests. They seem to be catering only two groups of people: (a) people who either have extreme reactions (ie. get me to the hospital before I stop breathing because my face now resembles something akin to Suffleupagus) or (b) people who can get a quick fix (ie. I’ll just pop a Beano and a Lactaid and horse down a plateful of refried beans and Ben and Jerry’s). I’m not in either of these categories.

So what do I do?

Move on. Doctors don’t know everything about the human body. Science is not exact and perfect. I take solace in the fact that only God knows how and why we are the way we are and maybe we can ask him a few questions once we see him. As for right now, I try to relax, eat a slice of GF Bread From Anna, drink a cup of soy milk, take a 3 mile run (after fully digesting said meal of course), and then watch some Little House on the Prairie (season 5 I believe). I do what makes me feel good, health-wise, and every once in a while, I try a new food, theory, or exercise to broaden my horizon.

By the way, I’ve confirmed that I’m good with rice.

Out Sick...

I'll be back soon...hopefully.

Rice Update Again

I didn't die yesterday. I didn't feel 100%, but there are so many factors that go into how I'm feeling on a day-to-day basis, that I'm relatively hopeful it had nothing to do with the rice. I felt like my sinuses were a little swollen (I know, Dad; TMI, right?) but that's pretty much it. And the symptoms only lasted a couple of hours. Could be spring pollen??? I'll continue to have a "regular rice" day here and there and enjoy a few tasty treats that I've been missing over the years (over 6 1/2 years to be precise) unless I start showing more symptoms. Yeah me, I get to eat regular rice! Yeah Kevin, he gets to benefit from me eating regular rice!

Rice Update and Elimination Diets

If you are a Catholic or a part of another traditional Christian sect, right now you might be giving up something for Lent. Well, imagine if you had to give it up, in the words of Squints from the 1993 movie The Sandlot,

“FOR-EV-ER, FOR-EV-ER, FOR-EV-ER.”

Epic movie, I know!

Well, I’m hoping to bring back a food that I haven’t seen in a very long time: rice.

No, not Rice, Rice, or Rice, but rice as seen in the picture to the right.

I can’t confirm that I am not allergic to rice yet. I decided to wait until Thursday (today) to try out some more rice. I’m having it for lunch, so within 4-5 hours after I eat I should see whether I have a reaction or not to this wonderful form of carb. But this rice trial and Farty Girl’s comment brings up an interesting topic: the elimination diet. I’ve been practicing the elimination diet for years, so I’ve kind of forgotten that it’s “not normal” and may need some explanation.

The link I’ve provided above should give you the basics about the elimination diet. But I’ve diagramed this wonderfully nerve-racking process below.

Basically, you eliminate foods from your diet that could potentially be allergens, then you stay away from them for at least a week or so, then you add them back into your diet one by one. If you don’t have a reaction when you add something back, then you’re golden; birds are chirping, the sun is out, you have a million dollars, you’re HD cable is coming to you free of charge, you’re beautiful (or handsome), and the world is a wonderful place. But if you add something back and you have a reaction, it’s “goodbye tasty foodie.”

It’s relatively easy to remove things from your diet temporarily, like during Lent. But adding the food back during an elimination diet…let’s just say it's not quite a cause for celebration. It's a two-fold problem: you’re afraid of losing the food in the long term and your afraid of the pain (for me it’s always a migraine) in the short term. It’s a role of the dice, is a flip of a coin to see what’s going to happen and it’s such an emotional as well as a physical experience.

Hopefully I’ll have good news and post another blog soon. As a side note, Kevin and I will be going to purchase a stationary bike this evening. We did our taxes and know that we’re in the black, so now it’s time to celebrate. Yeah bike! Yeah for me and you and me and you and me and YO-U! If I have a reaction to the rice, I’ll be able to work it off in no time with this wonderful machine.

Because I’d planned long ago to talk about elimination diets this week, I’ll decline to “respond” to an article at http://health.msn.com/health-topics/digestive-health/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100244085>1=32023 (you might have to copy and paste), but I want to link it here just in case the article goes away. That’s something for next week’s blog for sure!

In the meantime enjoy this spectacular soy muffin recipe. It’s heavy on the beans so go easy on them until you’ve hardened your gut to the steal-like shape of those in Glenn, Katrina, and the Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. This isn't my recipe, but it's been so long since we found it, I'm really not sure where it came from. Sorry!

The Easiest Soy Muffins You’ll Ever Make

•  3 large eggs (or substitute)
• 1/2 cup oil
• 3/4 cup honey
• 1 cup water
• 2 cups soy flour
• 2 tsp baking soda
• 1-1 ½ tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon 
• Blueberries to taste (optional)

Mix liquid and dry ingredients in separate bowls. Pour the liquid into dry. Put in blueberries. Place into greased muffin pans or use the paper cup thingy's that Kevin and I never seem to bring home from Wal-mart. Bake at 370 degrees for 20 minutes. FYI: the more blueberries you put in, the longer it will take to bake.

Food Breakthrough!!!!

I tried regular brown rice yesterday for dinner, and I haven't had any reactions as of late. I'm not counting my chickens until I try it again on Wednesday. I'd hate to have the same experience that I did with peanuts (I had peanuts and didn't have a reaction, then I had them a week later and didn't feel so hot). But this could potentially open up a wealth of gluten free recipes that usually contain some form of rice flour.

[This is Katherine trying very hard not to get too excited] WHOPPIEEE!!!! Um...ahem...I mean...I'm not holding my breath or crossing my fingers.....

Challenge Update #1 and a New Look

Kaiya having fun in the bathroom while recovering from surgery.

Kent having fun in the kitchen because he was just too darn small to push out side.

Well, my blog’s been sporting a new look for a little over a day now. I wanted to make my blog a little more personal so I added some “allergic to sitting” bling. I’ll keep tweaking as I view my blog in other browsers and on other monitors. It may take a while before I get the look that’s just right.

I won’t bore you with too many Challenge updates; only those that bring insight into our lifestyle and health. But a couple of bloggings ago, I mentioned that Kevin and I entered into the “Spring into ASUFit” Challenge and we’re counting our minutes of exercise each week. In doing so, we’re finding that we weren’t actually spending a lot of “time” exercising before the challenge, just “effort.” For example, we’d go run three miles on Mondays (30 minutes for me, 20-something for him), rest Tuesdays, cross train on Wednesdays (30-60 minutes), rest Thursday and Friday, bust out on a long run on Saturdays (1-2 hours), then rest Sundays. It seems like a lot of exercise, but if you count all of that up, that’s only 2-3 hours of workouts each week. We were efficient, but not continuous fitness nuts.

Now, we’re continuously exercising. We’ve started attending a free fitness class on Mondays called “Boot Camp” and it’s kicking some serious booty (pardon the pun). My quads are still a little stiff from the billions of lunge-type moves we were bustin’ (at least I’m not wincing any more when I stand up or sit down). And the big thing that’s giving us minutes is the dog walking. Now that the puppies are outside and wittle Kent is getting bigger, we like to go on 30 minute walks around the neighborhood. Where before now our kitchen and bathroom looked like the pigsty above due to Kaiya’s surgery and Kent’s smallness. Those are shredded “wee” pads mind you…

In addition, we’re keeping track of other times that we’re walking about, like when we’re shopping for long periods of time. Take yesterday, I went to Hobby Lobby and walked the isles for an hour and 40 minutes after doing a 2 mile run. Now, I’m not reaching my target heart rate while shopping, but I can guarantee that I was burning more calories than sitting on in my recliner sippin’ diet Sprite. I’m all for a shopping diet.

I wuv Hobby Bobby [said in baby voice]!

So far my team has racked up an average of 348 minutes a week (we’re competing against weekly averages). My personal total for last week was 362 minutes (Kevin had 390, the cheater…hee hee). Although we’re not in first place by any means, we’re having a lot of fun and it’s inspiring us to get out of the house.

Speaking of out of the house, I’ve “sampled” some excellent home-baked, gluten free, milk free, soy free but full of taste cookies this past week. By sample, I mean “quality tasted at least 5 cookies in one sitting.” I found one recipe online and baked it last weekend by substituting almond butter for the peanut butter it calls for (see it at http://www.recipetips.com/recipe-cards/t--2736/gluten-free-peanut-butter-cookies.asp). This recipe is so simple it hurts! It’s got five ingredients if you leave out the chocolate chips. And it’s high in protein. Good for those laying off the carbs. The cookies turn out to be crunchy and salty sweet! The Food Allergy Blog recommended squishing down the cookies before baking, which I did, but I don’t think that was even necessary. Perhaps it’s a difference of nut butters…

The other recipe I kind of sorta forgot to get from my ma-n-law, but she took a recipe that also normally calls for peanut butter and she substituted almond butter as well (except she made her’s from scratch by using a little coconut oil and a food processor). Her recipe turned out to be oatmeal, chewy deliciousness! I’ll share the recipe as soon as I can get it next. Or Sandy, you could post it in the comment section if you’d like?

While I’m working off the cookie calories in the Challenge, I hope you have a great rest of the week!

Spices, spices, more spices, and more spices, and more spices, and more spices, and more spices, and MORE SPICES!

People have mentioned to me that I have quite a few spices. Well, my name is Katherine and I come from a long line of spice-aholics (I also come from a long line of German bowlers and Potter Heads----Harry Potter that is, but that’s for another blog entry).

[ALL intone at the Spice-aholics Anonymous (SAA) meeting] “Hello Katherine.”

Yes, hi. Hi there.

My mom’s spice cabinet is always overflowing into other cabinets in the kitchen. But when I moved away to college, it didn’t really catch on. I had your traditional salt, pepper, onion/garlic powder, and chili powder. However, I started collecting more when I had to remove all gluten, corn, milk, yeast, grapes (a lot of which I’ve added back).

Why is that?

Well, just think about a meal stereotypically eaten by non-allergy prone, but well balanced dieters, John and Jane Doe. John and Jane like to fix some regular dinner rolls, fried chicken, and a salad with some carrots and celery. Let’s just say this stuff is all homemade so that they can choose not to deep-fry stuff or work with filler ingredients. What would John and Jane do once they’ve finished cooking and are ready to sit down and eat?

They break out the stick of margarine, maybe go for some gravy, add a little ketchup for John Jr. (yup, they’ve got a kid), and top off the salad with some thousand island dressing.

Holy cow! We’ve got a lot of ingredients here. Even if I replace the bread with a gluten-free recipe, try to batter the chicken with coconut flour (I’ve done it and it’s really good tasting!), and try alternate recipes for ketchup and salad dressing, the meal isn’t quite the same. It’s tasty, but it just doesn’t have that zing to it that comes with a tasty store-bought butter, dressing, etc. So basically, when John, Jane, and John Jr. cook up zucchini like my husband and I often do, they probably either fry it or steam it with butter, salt, and pepper. These simple ingredients have a lot of flavor and there’s really no need for anything else. But when I can’t have the butter, ketchup, gravy, etc . I turn to SPICES!!!

Here’s a look in my two spice racks. One picture is kind of deceiving because I’ve got the spices stacked up on two big turn-tables, so there are several rows not pictured.

I’ve also added a recipe below that’s heavy on the spice and quite tasty. This one’s a seafood salad modified from a recipe that my mom likes to use (which normally calls for mayonnaise and mustard). We like to double, triple, or quadruple the recipe depending on how much leftovers we want and the price of shrimp.

Seafood Salad
1 c shrimp
2 chopped hard boiled eggs
1/2 c of chopped celery
1/4 c chopped onion
1/2 c chopped cucumbers
1 chopped red bell pepper (or jar of pimientos)
1/4 c of your choice of oil (I like sunflower)
1 tbsp of your choice of vinegar (wine for me please, but no cheese…)
1/8 c dried parsley
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper (or to taste)
1 tsp of powdered mustard

Rinse your shrimp (very important! don’t want E. coli). Combine all of the wet ingredients with the chopped veggies and shrimp. Then add the spices and mix. Serve on a bed of lettuce.

Terrable, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Health Week

Sorry to have missed the last blog. I didn't have such a great week health-wise and it actually has nothing to do with allergies. We're (yes Kevin caught it too) still using the vinegar treatments for the foot fungus which seems to be working, but I succumbed to a variety of other problems, including a case of UTI, digestive issues because of the antibiotic I'm taking to combat the UTI, my monthly bill, and headaches brought on by the monthly bill because I haven't been able to exercise because of the UTI. N-E-ways, the good news is that Kaiya has recovered from her surgery, Kent is outside with Kaiya after an all-evening counseling session on Friday between the two, and we have new bar stools. Yeah for bar stools!!!! Yeah for no "grunt" on the kitchen floor!!!!

I just wanted to provide a quick update. Kevin and I have joined a Fitness and Wellness Challenge team here on campus. Starting yesterday, we're counting all of the minutes that we spend exercising each week and then we're sending our minutes to our team captain, who then averages our minutes, and sends it on to ASUFit, who, after 10 weeks of Challenge, will give out a free lunch and medal and trophy awards. So far, I've got 46 minutes counting today and yesterday. Yeah for bar stools, no "grunt," and 46 minutes!!!! I'll post something more exciting Thursday.