My 19-year-old son has a form of gastroenteritis that his doctor hypothesized might be caused by an as-yet-undetected allergy, so my son was put on an elimination diet. We thought it possible he might be possible to dairy and/or eggs. It’s been a couple of months, and we’ve added back most of the items to his diet with no problem. (He’s eating everything except shellfish and dairy/eggs.)
Two or three times over the past two months, he’s vomited and felt queazy for a few hours after being in the vicinity of people who were eating cheese at lunch. My son think he had an allergic reaction from being near the cheese.
My son has a couple of mental disorders and I am wondering whether a) Anxiety (about the cheese or something else) made him feel ill, or b) He truly had a reaction from airborne cheese particles.
He has been near other cheese and not had a reaction. He has eaten pizza that had a very small amount of cheese on it and not had a reaction. He says that large amount of cheese in the vicinity will cause the problem.
My question to all of you is: Does the allergy caused by proximity to cheese seem plausible, or is it all in his head? I’ve heard of people allergic to nuts who can’t be near them, but I have never heard this about cheese.
for what it is worth, i am exceedingly allergic to mushrooms, and the smell will make me queasey, and if I cant escape the stench, have vomited. As I really really really avoid handling them in any manner [surgical gloves when I had to cut them when I was working in a commercial kitchen and having a very understanding boss who knew I had issues so it got to where I didnt have to prep them at all]
It could be anxiety, or it could be exposure to the smell, BUT and I will state strongly IF HE ACTUALLY HAD EATEN CHEESE< it is most likely anxiety as he consumed more product than he would have picked up as random airborn particulate matter.
I find that smelling some of the foods I’m allergic to can make me queasy. I suspect it’s not because I’m having an allergic reaction, it’s because in the past when I’ve eaten them (before I knew I was allergic to them) I spent a lot of time afterward vomiting. Thus, a strong association was built in me between X and puking. So, it might be that your son feels nauseous around cheese because when he’s eaten cheese, or certain types of cheese, he felt ill.
That’s just a WAG - it could be something else going on.
He might also be allergic to the stuff that makes cheese into cheese. For example, it’s not unknown for someone allergic to penicillin to also be allergic to blue cheese because the mold in blue cheese is related to the one they get penicillin from, but not to other cheeses that have different mold species. So he could be allergic to some cheeses and not others.
A friend of mine with anaphylaxis to poultry had a reaction if anyone was cooking or eating chicken in her vicinity. She felt her throat begin to tighten. I don’t see why it wouldn’t be a genuine physical reaction. When you smell something what you’re doing is inhaling tiny particles of it, so if you’re that allergic to it it’s going to affect you.
Sounds fishy to me. The amount of material you would be exposed to just being near/smelling something is so tiny that a psychosomatic reaction seems much more likely. Did this person live in a bubble and never visit a restaurant?
OP stated that her son had eaten pizza, which had cheese on it.
If you dont react to directly eating it, I really have issues with just seeing/smelling it.
Yes, he had some pizza that had a very small amount of cheese on it. Yet it was cheese and he ate it and was OK.
I’ve been Googling around and some people are allergic to the curds and some are allergic to the whey, and some to both. And some kinds of cheese have mostly one or the other.
I assume the pizza had mozzarella. And in one his queazy incidents he said someone was eating cream cheese and someone else was having ranch dressing. I will have to find out what’s in them.
Depending on the brand of the ranch dressing it is buttermilk, not cheese =)
So we have a multitude of dairy culprits -
Whole milk - sort of straight from the cow
skim milk - milk with most or all of the fat removed
buttermilk -cultured from skim milk - originally what remained after the buttermaking process, sort of like a form of whey with the protein left in.
cream cheese - cultured from either whole or skim milk
cheese-mainly protein removed from the milk and procesed with a coagulant
whey-what remains after the protein has been removed
and to confuse it even further, there are some cheeses made from whey after the regular cheese is made.
I am still leaning towards anxiety. As I said, if he has a dairy issue, he is getting way more in the consumption than airborn.
If he is eating any sort of processed foods there is whey, whey protein isolates, milk solids, lactose and many hidden forms of dairy present, as well as egg protein, and other interesting and annoying substances. Dairy is occasionally found in pizza crust as milk powder is sometimes used as a dough conditioner.
Thanks aruvqan. I also have been thinking it’s likely to be anxiety, but I don’t want to belittle his symptoms. I have questioned him in depth about it and he INSISTS it is caused by proximity to the cheese. So I am trying to figure out how to handle it.
If you’re extremely allergic, though, you can have a reaction from a tiny amount. The friend I was referring to earlier once went into anaphylactic shock and nearly died (would have died if she didn’t carry her epi-pen and get taken to hospital straightaway) because her vegetarian pizza had been cooked in an oven previously used to cook a pizza with chicken topping. If that amount can kill you, then why shouldn’t the amount you ingest through smell when you’re sitting next to someone eating it be enough to at least trigger some negative reaction?
Not saying that is actually the case with the OP’s son, but I don’t find it implausible.