I can’t eat the fuzz on peaches. Mostly I just stick to nectarines, but if I peel a peach under running water, then slice it off the pit and eat it that way, I’m fine. If I try to eat one with the fuzz, the way you eat an apple of nectarine, I get an awful rash around my mouth and my hands get red.
I’m also allergic to tobacco. Cigarette smoke bothers me a lot, but tobacco leaves, and full ashtrays sitting around bother me more. I went to the Kentucky state fair, and we walked through the tobacco leaf exhibition, and my eyes started watering. I got covered with streaky red lines, like what a kid’s face looks like with Fifth disease, but this was everywhere, and it started to itch and burn. I have the same reaction in the homes of heavy smokers, with lots of lingering odor, and full ashtrays lying around. They say they won’t smoke when I’m there, but it makes no difference.
I can stand upwind of a smoker outside, and be OK, but it’s being in a room with concentrated particles that does it.
It’s not surprising, because I’m also allergic to grass (like on a lawn, stop that), and angiosperms. If I have to walk into a florists, I feel like I’m going to suffocate. Going walking in the woods after a rain is awful, because the rain suspends all the particles in trees that bother me, and holds them close to the ground. It’s not so bad when it’s been dry for a while.
Hostess is notoriously confusing, because they have only had one bakery that is completely nut-free, I believe. HOWEVER, this year they started adding peanut flour to some of their products, so I would advise all allergic people to avoid Hostess entirely. The theory is that they’re doing it to get around the labeling requirements and the liability surrounding them. If all facilities/lines process peanuts, they must put the warning on all products and don’t have to worry about cross-contamination. Keebler and the makers of those little packs of peanut butter crackers did the same thing in the recent past.
Why add an allergen when they could just label the box and leave it out. Seems odd that a company would purposely add an allergen and potentially harm someone, even if it wouldn’t be their fault, when there are other ways to get people with nut allergies not to eat it.
ISTM a label saying ‘may contain traces of peanuts’ or ‘made in a facility that also makes peanut containing products’ or even adding “may contain peanut flour” or changing ‘enriched flour’ to ‘enriched and/or peanut flour’ would work. None of those are going to scare off people without peanut allergies and will keep people with allergies from buying them, but at the same time, if they do eat them, they likely won’t ingest any allergens.
A few people upthread mentioned their parent’s calling them picky. That’s how it was for me as well with the allergies I mentioned. I told my mom over and over that peas/green beans made my throat itch and she kept telling me I was just being picky. Even when I agreed that I’m a picky eater and explicitly told her I hated peas/beans but they made my throat itch. I could not get those down.
She probably still doesn’t believe me and I have the allergy results to prove it.
Funny though, she even had me convinced. Everytime we had them for dinner I’d try to eat them and just couldn’t. Hell, even when I was 30, about once a year I’d get an apple and tell myself I’m just being picky, I actually do like the taste and that I just need to sit down and eat this apple. And every time I’d try I’d get that same itchy sore throat within a few seconds.
To this day, I don’t eat any fruit and hate the taste of raw vegetables. Some of that is due to being a picky eater, but a lot of it is from that allergy popping up all the time.
Laughing gas makes me nauseous. Throwing up after I got my wisdom teeth out was not fun.
If I hold on to a black escalator hand rail, my fingers will swell and the contact surface will be itchy. Other colors of hand rails are made of different material, so I don’t have problems with those.
There’s one pizza place that has me inside the toilet within 2 hours. Seems to be related to fructans (FODMAPs).
Too much of any artificial color also earns me a visit to the toilet. Fortunately the caramel coloring used in some single malts (I tend to drink the ones who don’t add coloring) is not the same one which is used in cola.
My husband is sensitve to high fructose corn syrup and ginger. He does NOT drink ginger ale for an upset stomach, because it just makes it worse.
There is something in Lactaid tablets (store brand too) that I am sensitive to. I have no idea what it is but I became violently sick when I took 1 pill on two different occasions months apart. Both times I threw up all night long.
I am mildly lactose intolerant. I say mildly because some days dairy bothers me and other days I have no ill effects. Last weekend I had pizza and a chocolate shake and I was fine. Today I could eat the same thing and get horrible cramps and have to poop my brains out (sorry TMI).
A few years ago I decided to try Lactaid. It was horrible. Within 2 hours of taking the pill, I was throwing up and didn’t stop until the early morning hours. I could barely get out of bed the next day. At the time I thought I had just gotten sick or maybe food poisoning. In the back of my mind though, it was the Lactaid. I didn’t try another one for 6 months and the exact thing happened again.
The packaging shows no side effects. I googled it and no side effects mentioned. I went deep into the internet and finally found someone else that experienced the same thing. I drink lactose-free milk without a problem. I think whatever is in the Lactaid pill (lactase) is also in the milk. So it must be something else that’s in the pill form.
So now I just wing it and enjoy my favorite dairy products and just live with the fact I may be intolerant on that day.
Honey mustard pretzels give me nausea and vomiting. Especially the Snyder’s Bursting With Flavor variety. I don’t understand it. I can eat honey by itself, mustard by itself, regular pretzels with no issue. I suspect there’s some processed ingredient that sets it off in high enough concentrations, possibly garlic powder since I notice mild indigestion sometimes with it in other foods and I suspect there’s quite a lot of it in Snyder’s. I used to be able to eat a bag, then it got less and less until it was down to only a handful before I’d get sick. I love them, so it was really unfortunate, but it was happening 100% of the time. So I had to stop eating them.
My only legit diagnosed allergies with hives and all that are sulfonamides and amoxicillin.
I have never had an allergy test, so I have no detailed list.
I am sensitive somehow to onions. As a kid, I loathed them. so of course I’m just picky. They did upset my stomach, but not enough to alarm anyone. When I moved out, onions were never allowed in my kitchen and I felt better for that.
Now, I used minced onion for flavoring in cooking, but not much. Mom used to flavor hamburgers with onion soup mix. No real problem. I tried it once and was so miserable gastrointestinally that I couldn’t lay down to go to sleep that night.
If I get onion in a dish I can tell more by itchiness in my mouth than flavor. I once bit into a slice of pizza with very big pieces of onion in the sauce. I chomped on an onion and immediately began gagging.
Mom said I would love onions (and brussels sprouts, lima beans, asparagus, and many other vegetables) when I grew up. I quote Jeff Foxworthy to her often: “Boy, what a liar Mom turned out to be!”
I can be very sensitive to fresh fruits, especially on an empty stomach. I threw up often enough that the only fresh fruit I will risk is pineapple.
I have no problem with acetaminophen, and took codeine often before my asthma was diagnosed, but Vicodin won’t stay down for 5 minutes.
When I was in high school, everyone in the family went out to do yardwork every other Saturday. Dad finally realized that I was always miserable for days afterword, and set me to doing the family laundry instead. I take 3 different allergy meds now.
Those platinum-based chemo drugs all do nasty things to the whole body, besides combatting cancer.
Allergy to iodinated contrast media is almost universal after the first exposure. Over the years, I filled MANY orders for a single-hand-count number of high dose prednisone, Benadryl, and Zantac or Pepcid tablets, to be taken before and after a procedure where they would use it. The idea was to basically knock back the whole allergic-response mechanism to a point where the medium wouldn’t make the patient even sicker than it has a tendency to do anyway. Yeah, those things aren’t pleasant to take, but they work, and you really can’t inject things like barium into the bloodstream.
I’m allergic to contrast dye. The barium kind, I believe. I’ve had a scan since the first time they discovered it and they used iodine dye and it was fine.
I was having an upper GI CAT scan with the barium dye, and I sneezed and said my teeth hurt and they freaked out and shut it all down and shot me up with Benadryl.
Also wine makes my cheeks red and my nose stuffy so I assume I have a sensitivity to it.
Dentyne. Also Big Red, Red Hots candies, etc. etc. Brings on a migraine with vomiting. I’ve never known if it’s the artificial red coloring or the artificial cinnamon flavoring, so I avoid both.
My skin is weirdly sensitive, it gets angry at different things in different places. I can put Gold Bond Rough & Bumpy skin cream on my upper arms with no problem, but my forearms turn red and itchy. I sprayed Gucci Bloom on my neck a few months ago and there is still a red splotch there, but on my inner wrists is no problem. Weird.
I get contrast CTs and MRIs enough [did I mention I adore my port? =) ] that I am on a first name basis with the guys in imaging =) I actually love the flush you get from the iodine for IVPs, though I still can’t convince the place to change out the damned mixed berry glurge for perhaps the vanilla - I could at least add some flavoring extract to make it taste reasonable.
I just sort of seem to have ideosyncratic responses sometimes, after one procedure back in 95 I popped out of being knocked out and when the nurse came in to see if I thought I might manage a ginger ale and some crackers I was half way through a McDonalds chicken nugget meal. Usually by the time I wake up from anything I haven’t eaten in like 24 hours and am ravenous. I did notice chemo made me nauseated but zofran worked like a dream.
My old pastor and his wife have 7 kids, all biological, and two of them have definite hyperactive reactions to Red #40 dye. This isn’t just a “my kid ate too much sugar and is hyper” thing; they would become extremely defiant and violent, so they avoided foods and beverages with it.
AFAIK, they don’t have ADHD or any similar diagnosis, except when they eat things with Red #40.
Someone on another site said she had a child with severe ADHD, and they decided to reduce their family’s consumption of artificial dyes and preservatives to see if it would help. It was apparent almost immediately that this was not the cause of her child’s issues, but they decided to keep doing this because, as she put it, “Is blue soda pop really good for anyone?”
As a child I’d break out in hives if I ate anything containing oatmeal. That went away as an adult. In fact I’ve never known anyone else who’s had such an allergy.
Hmmm. I wonder if there’s a chance of chimerism, microchimerism, or mosaicism. One of my kids freckles from the tops of his shoulders up and tans below that line, and I’ve always wondered about that.