Allergies

Any bread machine will make gluten more digestable as long as you don't put it on the "fast" program, gluten needs the long periods of resting, kneeding and stretching that you only really get from making it by hand or giving it a good long time in a machine. if you have one a stand food mixer with a dough hook attached will do just as well, you just have to give it a good 10 minutes kneeding time.

Throughout my life I had a on and off allergy to medical plasters, especially the fabric ones.  My skin would burst out in red spots which were worse than the original wound.  The waterproof plasters just fell off after a few minutes.  The hyperalgerric ones were only marginally better.

Enter some rando room or park. Point at something 50% chance I'm allergic to it.

That's interesting that you have a bread machine that can make gluten digestible. I'm sure I ate bread like that somewhere before a long time ago without issue, but yeah that's definitely something of a rarity, and 99% of the time it's just gluten that's not been properly processed. 

The stress that comes from trying to avoid foods you can't eat or go near, and the planning that goes into buying, preparing, and making food, can be more draining than actually consuming the food itself. And the cross-contamination that can happen with basic ingredients, means that you buy a bag of something, and you can't use it now, and it feels like such a waste. It's such a nightmare to live with restrictions around food, considering how many times we consume food each day. Even the air around food can trigger hives, coughing and sneezing, ugh, the body is just so weird sometimes. But it's such a joy to to find food that the body is okay with.  

I identify with what you describe.  It can feel a bit "uphill" and you can get bored with yet again needing to consider and communicate this and that ... again.  I sometimes can feel I might sound like a version of the children's story of The Princess and the Pea".

...then I correct myself that:

- it is my real life story,

- for my safeguarding I have to "own it" and

- continue to explore ways to improve how clinicians etc. engage with me (and act as a safety net if I were not able to self-advocate).

Recently, I experimented with using  BAS Healthcare Passport.  I found some personnel get involved well (while some others just frankly blanked me during the same clinic).

As a result - I approached the Hospital "PALS" service. 

They helped me establish contact with the Learning Disability Liaison Nurse. 

We had a good discussion about my (mixed) experience / feedback and some refinements and strategies to extend the Passport as appendices bespoke to "me".

That Nurse also encouraged me (without alarming me) to think further about: how would I best navigate an A&E scenario (with potentially greater impacted / constrained communication options)?

Between us, a few fresh ideas came together (which I intend to work on for my "version 2").

The Nurse also offered to lodge an electronic copy of my Healthcare Passport on my record with that Hospital clinic in case I were to be seen by different personnel another visit (I had emailed a PDF).

The other benefit would be I would not need to rely on trying to keep track of which clinician I handed a printed copy to ...whee it was and who needed to see it next (I ought to be able to signpost via the statement: "please consult the Autism and allergies etc. Healthcare Passport on my NHS electronic record".  

As I revise to version 2:(and mindful of the Nurse's guidance re: catering for an emergency scenario when I might not so easily speak), I could also put a card in my wallet with that statement to show clinicians (or they might find it).  It also looks like my smartphone has a "safety & emergency" details feature with a section where I could edit and save that statement too.

Anyway, some healthcare homework for me to progress.

I was breast fed and I was always given a wide range of foods as a child, my Dad was a sort of proto foodie long before it became fashionable. Whilst I'm dairy intolerant I'm OK with sugar and wheat and gluten, I do make all my own bread though and have for years, although I have a bread machine now, it does make the gluten form properly and become digestable which most shop bought breads don't. I get where you'e coming from about being frugal with a demanding body. There are so many things I can't eat, meat and fish give me terrible colic and indigestion, I can't seem to digest them at all. Bananas and pineapples don't like me, nor do chips, anything sweet and sour will bring on instant projectile vomiting, monosdium glutimate gives me banging headaches, heart palpitations, raging thirst and finally exhaustion. I can have coconut milk but not fat as it has similar effects to meat and animal fats. Tea gives me acid indigestion and jasmine rice I can't be in the same room as along with anything else that has jasmine in including the plant, I get sick headaches. I can't stand th smell of BBQ's they make me feel sick, as does frying bacon. Menopause robbed me of drinking alcohol, and I loved a glass of red wine and once had a collection of single malt whisky's, I quite liked a G&T in summer too.

By the time you add all that up and the things I don't like, like celeriac, turnips and raddishes, I'm a bit stuffed in terms of going out. I can't remember the last time I went out for a meal or had a takeaway, luckily I'm a good cook, but I do get fed up of eating my own food. It seriously effects any socialising I might want or need to do too.

I have allergies and food sensitivities. I usually get hives, but the allergies came and went away at various points in my life. Cutting out the common food irritants, like gluten, dairy, and sugar, has helped remove negative physical and mental health symptoms I had, although I wish I could just eat cheap foods without my body reacting negatively to them. I'm such a frugal person, but my body demands such expensive things of me. 

I've also heard that babies who didn't breastfeed, are more prone to allergies, food sensitivities, and have weaker immune systems, which can compromise them in adulthood. Also, parents who did not expose their children to a variety of different foods, people, or environments, thinking that bland foods and "living in a bubble" would be better for their child's health, than challenging their immune systems, may have also compromised their child for later in life. 

AA Thank's but I don't have the tech to watch videos.

I'm not sure about stress being a trigger, although it could be, I'd love to see an allergy specialist, but they seem to be an endangered species on the NHS. I did try an alternative one once, the muscle testing thing, the woman was convinced I was allergic to things I wasn't and had things I didn't, so that was a bit of a bust, although I think it was the practitioner rather than practice.

I think unless I completely isolated myself from other people and lived in the middle of nowhere I'd find it very difficult to live in a less stressful environment, and if I did, then I'd get super stressed if I had spiders in the bath or something. I can't sleep in a room with spiders in it, the bigger the spider the worse it gets. I tried seeing a psychologist abut the spider phobia and she said that the usual ways of dealing with phobias wouldn't work with me. When my mum was pregnant with me a massive spider fell from the loft hatch and into her hair and my dad didn't believe her until it dropped on her shoulder. That sort of trauma can imprint on a foetus which is what she thought had happened with me.

TheCatWoman said:

Is anyone else so allergy prone and what do you do about it?

My wife had a similar wide range of allergies for about 2 decades but had a handful of spells when they mostly stopped being an issue.

It turned out that anxiety was puting her immune system into high alert mode and once that was active, she was allergic to loads of stuff - not to the level you have but it still made loads of things quite painful for everyday life for her. It would just take one allergic response to trigger a whole raft of others that were not an issue before (eg taking antibiotiocs)

In the end we were able to drop out of the rat race and take time to really chill for a few years and this brought the anxiety down and had plenty of time to get fit, have a quality of life and move somewhere warm (Brazil). Now we know what the main allergic triggers are (these are masked when she is in high alert mode as she was allergic to almost everything) and we know to avoid these so the subsequent cascade reaction is never activated.

Things like carpets, food additives in the UK, central heating and soft furnishings are big sources of ongoing bad stimulants for allergies so getting away from all these has made life so much better.

It is quite common for us autistics to have ‘all the things’ (including health problems and allergies).

Below I have linked to two videos that explain why rather in depth:

https://www.youtube.com/live/VVJxpaJAt94?si=IfmVsp-zt286DFez

https://www.youtube.com/live/udX_dDYqGYE?si=K_kLfsIynULYUgsS

I hope these videos are useful for you.