I’m a personal development junkie. I’m usually involved in some type of coaching program – business coaching, transformational coaching, manifestation, spiritual/woo type program.

My power animal (or one of them) is the black bear. A couple of my totem animals are a big white eagle and a beautiful duck with brilliant/metallic blue head and neck.

I have an organic garden. I grow what I can each year – stuff I like and can eat. I try to experiment with growing at least one new thing each year, just to see if I can. I also grow flowers for the bees, usually edible as well.

I broke my neck one time in a solo car accident. In two places. Fun times.

I got really sick back in 2011, for about 8 months. A long, long list of crazy symptoms that I would cycle through, throughout the day about every 20 minutes. It was like my body went into crisis mode. Everything from consistent headaches and horrible heartburn, to periodic lightheadedness, eye strain, hot flashes, cold chills, numbness and tingling in my hands and feet, heart palpitations, my tongue or scalp going numb, and much more. And then there was the joint pain in my elbows, knees, and ankles, which would painfully seize up after sleeping in one position after 4-5 hours. My back would also seize up and spasm after sleeping for 4-5 hours. Not so bad if I slept in a recliner. If I slept in bed, I’d have to be helped up in the morning because I was in so much pain I couldn’t move.

According to doctors and specialists, I was perfectly healthy and there was nothing wrong with me. All tests that I had came back negative. I had blood tests galore, stomach x-rays, saw a neurologist and got a brain MRI to check for MS.

After 8 long months, I listened to my intuition. My intuition kept telling me, “It’s the gluten.” I kept saying, “No,” and ignoring it because I didn’t want it to be. Finally, I saw a pattern after 3 days in a row of eating a sandwich for lunch (different filling). About 30 minutes after eating them, I had increase in some symptoms and my intuition kept saying, “It’s the gluten.” By the third day, I said, “Okay, maybe it is. I’ll try eliminating it for 2 weeks and see what happens.”

Wow. Some of my symptoms started to gradually lessen after a few days and more so as time went on. My headaches started to become less frequent. I wasn’t lightheaded anymore. No more heart palpitations, hot flashes, cold chills, eye strain. My joint pain became less, although took much longer to almost go away. After several weeks of not eating gluten, I noticed my hands and feet weren’t tingling anymore.

After 2 months of not eating gluten, I went back to my doctor and proudly told him that I’d figured out what was making me so sick.

He gave me hell for not asking him first because he couldn’t test me for Celiac unless I was willing to go back to eating the equivalent of 2 slices of bread a day for 8 weeks. That wasn’t happening! I actually did a trial of eating something that had gluten in it for a few days and many of my symptoms came back, so that was enough of that.

Some things that didn’t go away: sinus congestion, heartburn, back pain. Joint pain was much, much less, but still gave me grief from time-to-time or on a lesser level.

I’ve had food allergies since I was young. I also spent a lot of years (decades) defying them and eating stuff I knew I was allergic to anyway. My food allergies mostly caused sinus congestion, as far as I knew, and eventually caused nasal polyps to grow. By this time, my nasal polyps were huge and I needed surgery again to have them removed. I cut out all foods I had previously been told I was allergic to. I had no real interest in cleaning up my diet and eating much healthier until by body decided to go on strike.

I learned about an allergy specialist who was also a nose, ear, and throat specialist. I heard he was great with gluten sensitivity and other issues. I asked my doctor for a referral and he flat out refused, claiming he was a quack. Yet I knew others who had a great experience with him. He did, however, give me the referral to my usual ENT specialist for my nasal polyps.

I visited with my ENT and she scheduled my nasal polyp surgery. We ended up talking about root causes, what could be causing it to help prevent it from happening again. I told her all about what had been happening to me and gluten being the main cause, and that I was sure I had other food allergies or sensitivities I didn’t know about but I didn’t know how to find out. She offered to refer me to another ENT she knew who was an allergy specialist! (Same guy I wanted a referral to – and I didn’t even have to ask, she volunteered, LOL.)

This ENT Allergy Specialist was a huge help to me. He did the skin test for a list of foods and environmental allergens, but of course, he couldn’t do a skin test for all foods. I did test allergic to dairy, wheat, and a number of other things. From there, he put me on a strict elimination diet, which I ended up being on for close to 4 months before he would let me start to add back one food per week.

This was great and my sinus inflammation and headaches went away, but even after he eventually “discharged me” from his services, I found that over time I was developing new sensitivities. These would cause either joint inflammation/pain, back pain, and or costochondritis.

One piece I was missing was healing my gut. I started researching fermented/cultured foods and drinks, adding several to my diet each day, as well as taking a good strong probiotic. Over time, I stopped developing new sensitivites and was able to add back a few foods I had to stop eating.

Basically the list of foods on my “no” list is 2-pages long. I very rarely eat out, try to avoid processed foods (I do selectively eat some on occasion), and I’ve had to get creative with how to flavour my food because I can’t eat any of the yummy spices (ex. all types of peppers, cumin, ginger, etc.) or anything in the onion family.

That’s sort of me, in a short book. I could go on.

I’ve gotten used to modifying recipes I find or just concocting my own meals by throwing together whatever I happen to have, so I decided to start posting them here to keep track of them.

Learn more about this blog and my lazy approach here:
https://lazyallergycooking.com/about-lazy-allergy-cooking