Don’t you hate when your guilty pleasure doesn’t cut it?

Ada is napping and I just finished sneaking my Enjoy Life (a brand free of the top eight allergens) chocolate bar.

It was strangely un-satisfying.  Now my throat is scratchy and my ears are kind of clogged-up feeling.  I’d read a long time ago about sugar supressing the action of the immune system, but now that I’ve learned to listen to my body and pay close attention to how foods affect it, I’m noticing these little irritations a lot– almost too much.

When I eat eggs I get a migraine and my ears itch– yes, itch.

Every few days my ears ring and its annoying as anything.  I don’t know what is causing that, but I’ve met plenty of others now that say their ears ring when they eat gluten or something else they are intolerant to.  Funny, because if you google tinitus, or ear ringing, you’ll find tons of sources saying its another one of those unexplained medical symptoms.

Yes, well, at least for me, headaches, ear itching, ear ringing, knee pain, dark bruises– it all goes away now that I live a gluten, dairy and corn free life.  Except the ear ringing which I’m still figuring out.

And I’ve met so many whose fibromyalgia, psoriasis, arthritis, headaches, PMS, weight issues– too many ailments to list or remember– go away when they start realizing that its food causing their symptoms.  All the ailments that afflict us and are so common, I really believe, are caused by our lack of understanding of how foods affect us, as individuals.

I just think Americans, well probably people  in general, have a lot to learn about how to really be healthy.  We act like food isn’t what keeps us healthy, but that it’s all sleep, exercise and avoiding germs.  Obviously those are big things, but I think food is bigger.

So the chocolate bar.  Strangely unsatisfying.  This journey of eliminated foods– at first it’s like an obsession, and I spent so much time making substitutes for all the things I want to eat– but now those things are losing their importance and I just want to feel full and stop thinking about food so much.

Now that Ada is doing well, I’ve seriously been thinking about not eating any sugar or grains at all– because my ear ringing comes back after I eat baked goods.  I’ve cut back by at least making my own baked goods barely sweet compared to what most people probably do, and I usually use honey or maple syrup.

But also my mouth gets all scratchy when I eat onions, figs, and kiwis… which might be Oral Allergy Syndrome.

It’s funny–if I’d thought onions or cane sugar or grains in general were issues for Ada, I would have cut them out completely and done a proper elimination and challenge weeks ago.

When it’s my own health, I don’t.  This morning me and Azita made cinnamon rolls and they were great.  Until I trial in nuts and a few other things, I guess I’ve been reticent to give up any more foods.  I will figure out my own food issues, I feel pretty confidant.   I’m just not sure how fast I’ll convince myself to do it!

But I am figuring things out slowly.  I take a note of when my head hurts and my ear itches, and it is possible to figure out food intolerances that way, and without eliminating foods.  It just takes longer, and it will probably only work if it’s just one food causing it.  If it’s more than one, I’ll eventually have to eliminate and reintroduce.

So if you don’t have a major symptom, just annoyances like ear ringing, why cut out the food?  I personally feel like these smaller annoyance symptoms might be clues to more internal damage that we can’t see, and that is why I want to figure out what to eat for myself as well.

I read one article about celiac disease that said they tested a group of people for immune system/antibody activity after they ate gluten.  It’s our immune system functioning that causes all these things to go out of whack with food allergies and intolerances.  Over half of the people did release antibodies to gluten, but were asymptomatic when it came to irritable bowels, tummy problems, dermatitis, and things classically considered the big markers of celiac disease. 

The one researcher’s theory is basically that gluten is bad for most of us—some of just show it really badly (probably how Ada would have been) while others appear healthy most of our lives and then type II diabetes, Chrohn’s disease, hypertension, fibromyalgia, arthritis and cancer.  Basically—that we are unaware of the slow damage and then it hits us when our bodies are tired of taking the regular beatings we give them through our diet.

So anyway, I’m not that worried about, since I eat pretty wholesomely these days anyway. But I do want to figure out what causes this ear stuff.  It’s annoying.  I’ve had clogged up ears since Azita was born, and she’s three and a half.