Would you like to share your food intolerance story and how it affects your mood and behaviour, or perhaps the effect on your children? Please do so below.
Would you like to share your food intolerance story and how it affects your mood and behaviour, or perhaps the effect on your children? Please do so below.
Hello
For a long time, I have had unexplained agitation, anger and tiredness, and “cotton-fluff” head. I moved to a gluten free diet, and while changing my diet certainly provided a great benefit, I was still not where I wanted to be. Just recently I found that for me, the final missing piece of the puzzle was testosterone.
Since my testosterone implant, my head is significantly clearer – I’ve had no more cotton fluff head! I have experienced quite a positive improvement in my libido, and also in my energy levels. This has made a very positive impact on my relationship.
My mood is also ‘up’ and I am feeling positive and not impacted by what I used to find very stressful at work. I don’t feel agitated, tired or angry. Some flow on benefits have been less tension headaches and no more aching shoulders and back.
I am sleeping soooo much better and not waking up all through the night. I have TMJ and find I am waking up less often with achy jaws.
I am so grateful for this treatment. It is not quite two weeks, but I am already feeling such a positive difference. I wanted to let you know so people could also consider hormones.
JM
(This was posted on FaceBook, reprinted with permission):
Our son is almost 4 years old and we have been trying to survive his horrible behaviour for years. We wondered why anyone would have more kids if this is how all kids are. (Surprisingly we had our 2nd child, a little girl and she’s 9 months old.) We didn’t know how we were going to make it through life if things carried on in this way.
We kept waiting for him to grow out of it but we always knew that this wasn’t normal. People told us that his excessive head banging was for attention and we should ignore it, that he would stop before it hurt him… but he didn’t stop, his forehead was covered in bruises and cuts and I could not stand there and let him bang his head…. the tantrums that went on for hours… everything was a fight from the moment he got up until he went to bed, the defiant and oppositional behaviour… I actually want to cry when I remember how bad it was. We wondered what had happened to our sweet baby boy.
To think that it was all to do with the food he was eating (“healthy” food.) We can never have those early years back. Our relationship was shattered. We were at our wits end. When we finally went to the Doctor she asked if perhaps parenting was just harder than I thought it would be???? Well, yes it is harder than I thought but that’s because we couldn’t parent him…nothing we did made any difference.
Last May I discovered the fedup.com.au website through research about head-banging and found out about Annatto. We checked his food and it was in almost EVERYTHING he ate. We cut it out and the head banging stopped. The tantrums were a little better as well. But life was still crazy. Recently we did a grain free diet, so we were eating more fruits and veg, and he got worse!!!
I went back to FedUp and that’s when I read about the elimination diet and FAILSAFE. We’ve been FAILSAFE for about 6-7 weeks now and it has saved our lives. Our son is the amazing kid we always knew was inside him. He was always smart but his learning has shot through the roof within 2 weeks of the diet – he counts to 120, knows the alphabet in english and sign language (we taught him signing as a baby) and can now read and spell many words – I don’t think it’s a coincidence. Doing challenges has been a bit scary…so far we’ve only done salicylates and he reacted after one day and it took a week and a half for him to come back to us. I’m scared to do amines next.
I apologize for this short novel but it’s been cathartic to share it with people who truly understand. I feel like we’ve all been robbed of his childhood that should have been good memories… instead it’s just painful to think about.
I have always noticed that when I eat food with MSG, I get heart palpitations and feel pretty crummy for up to a day – somewhat depressed and moody. I can handle a little bit of E621, so I’m not too cautious about what I eat, but I usually avoid chicken flavoured treats since they seem to have the highest concentration of it. And I just love tomato sauce – and yes, I know there’s natural MSG in that.
One example: I went on an errand with a friend, who had to do something for a couple of hours while I waited. I treated myself to a hamburger and chips over lunch, and sat in the café while waiting. Fairly soon after starting to eat them, I started to sweat and felt my heart accelerate and skip. I watched the staff as they prepared food for others – too late, I know! Sure enough, they were liberally dosing the chips with a yellowish salt. I grabbed a couple bottles of water from the fridge, and went up to buy them:
Me: “Do you use chicken salt on your chips?”
Them: “Yeah: It makes them taste better.”
Me: “Ah. Usually people ask which I’d prefer: I’m allergic.”
Them: “Oh? Are you OK?”
Me: “I should be – I’ll just take these two bottles of water.”
Over the next hour I bought four more bottles of water, with sweat streaming down my face, and they got more apologetic and concerned. However, they continued to liberally sprinkle chicken salt all over other customers’ food without asking them. When I finally met back up with my friend, she commented on how my mood had changed; I was surly and didn’t want to talk, as though I’d just gotten bad news while she was out.
But the worst example for me was when Smiths Chips released a new limited edition flavour: Tomato Sauce! I quickly checked the list of ingredients, and was pleasantly surprised to see that E621 wasn’t listed at all – in fact, no numbered additives were present! So I bought a pack to try, and ate it all in one sitting in front of the TV.
Big, big, BIG mistake. Sweats and heart palpitations started within half an hour, and my mood crashed completely: utter depression and hatred of the world. I have never had such a severe reaction, so two days later, after I started to come out of my deep, deep funk, I researched the list of ingredients. Wouldn’t you know? Companies have found out how to list ingredients without mentioning that they’re MSG or MSG-like. In fact, the four main flavouring ingredients were merely alternate names for, or had as a major component – you guessed it – MSG.