She's going to look into the corn thing.
Any other symptoms? She said this
"any other symptoms?" ---constant nausea, aversion to food, light and sound sensitivity, halos around light most noticeable at night when driving, sharp stabbing pain behind the eyes and at the temples, aching pain at occipital and neck. ranging in severity from annoying to debilitating.
Yup, sounds about right haha. Basically makes you sound like a hypochondriac. Here's basically what happens for like a non-lethal anaphylactic reaction for me:
1. An allergen is ingested (i.e. you eat something with a hidden corn ingredient in it)
2. The body reacts to it as it passes through the system (2-3 days typically): from the mouth to stomach, GI tract (upper & lower), rectum, and finally the toilet.
3. While it's in the "holding cell" of the stomach processing track, it spiderwebs out to various reactions. A lot of the stomach stuff ties into head pain, particularly migraines (temple pain, stabbing feeling behind eyes, sensitivity to light & sound), and can range from a headache (annoying) to a migraine (showstopping) to an ocular migraine (no pain but goofed-up vision & stuff). The stomach stuff, of course, includes the nausea, sometimes sharp stabbing pains, the usual cramps & whatnot. There's also some interesting arthritis effects like you mentioned - base of the heck & other areas.
For me, that was corn. The bummer is that while there is a corn allergy test, most people don't show a positive reaction because our measuring technology for it isn't very good yet. Also, a corn allergy is not a corn
protein allergy - you can remove the corn protein & still have a really severe reaction, so most stuff that is labeled "corn-free" is BS. It's a VERY tricky allergy to both self-diagnose & manage. I do fine when I eat nothing but my safe ingredients (ones I've tested myself & added to my pantry), but if I screw up, the first thing I get is nausea & head pain. Sinus pain too sometimes - nose area & middle of the forehead & between the eyes.
The hard part is that it comes & goes, and it's based off how much you consume, what you consume (there are literally dozens of derivatives), what other stuff you ate with it (affects how fast it moves through your body), and so on. So if you drink a soda with lunch, you may get a less severe reaction, but it will last longer & be more annoying. So if her symptoms come & go, and are sometimes bad & sometimes mild, that's a pretty good sign right there. I'm very allergy to dairy & corn and intolerant of the rest of the grains, but corn is definitely the most annoying because it doesn't have to be labelled, and hides under a huge variety of names. Here's just a
sampling:
http://www.cornallergens.com/list/corn-allergen-list.php
For example, you can't buy regular salt, because it has dextrose for anti-clumping. Dextrose is corn. Vitamin C pills are corn. Citric acid (not Citris) is corn. Ascorbic acid is corn. Everything is corn. Corn is life. Corn is love
😀 Doctors aren't much help because it's not a well-known allergy yet, and they think that anything that doesn't have year's worth of double-blind medical tests is complete BS & that it's all in your head. Well, it's not, it's just that our technology to detect & diagnose it stinks right now. The best resource is the corn allergy Facebook group, I forget the name of it, but it's pretty much the only active one & everyone has those same random symptoms.
And that doesn't mean it's corn, it could be something else (gluten etc.). But for me, I had a million random annoyances and it took forever to figure out what it was, and partly, you're just used to feeling crummy all the time, so it's hard to realize what feeling good actually feels like & not go back to eating what you were before, partially because your body makes you addicted to it. It's not an easy allergy & it's not cheap, but man, it sure is nice to feel good 24/7 when I choose to!
And the things that bite you are random. For example, the white absorbent pads they put under fruit in the little clear baskets at the grocery store are corny & give me massive problems. Some people are allergic to even plastic cups & spoons (a lot of plastics are corn-based or have some processing agent with corn). But you usually know you're horribly sensitive because everything makes you super sick all the time, more people are just really intolerant of it. I spent the better part of a year trialing foods to add to my pantry so that I'd have stuff that wouldn't bite me with pain when I ate it. It stinks, but it is what it is. Fingers crossed for her! Feel free to shoot me a PM anytime if you have any questions.
