Good bye corn....;(

Another food bites the dust! Ugh!!

This last month, I have had some major reactions to something. 
1.  new IBS symptoms
2. extreme moodiness. I am usually pretty patient with my kids (you need to be to homeschool!) but I have not been very patient or nice on  a couple of occasions lately!
3.  major sinus headaches. Remember, I have been having sinus headaches since May, but now they have been 10 x worse!!
4. breakout of acne
5.  fingers swelled
6. cyst on right knee hurt and painful
7. Drop in blood sugar after I eat
8. Fuzzy thinking/ can not think straight
9. Eye vision affected
10. heartburn

Some of these have been coming on within 15 minutes of eating, so I knew it had to be something I was consuming, but what??  I thought I had this all figured out!

These are a lot of my symptoms that I had experienced before I got diagnosed with food allergies, so I knew I was back to square one with something.

These symptoms have been building the last couple of months and finally I said enough is enough and I went to go see my doctor.

Her first question, "What do you eat a lot of?" My answer: corn! I eat a lot of corn chips, corn cereal, cornstarch, corn noodles etc.  I probably eat corn at least twice a day.  My doctor's next thought was that I had built up an intolerance to corn! She said that many people who go gluten-free usually come down with a corn intolerance because many people replace their gluten with corn. She said she has seen this before and this is probably what is going on with me. The solution: take out corn! NOOOOO!!!  She told me to keep a food journal for two weeks to see if I could correlate corn to any of my symptoms.  She also said corn is an inflammatory food and it will inflame parts of your body and could very well be causing all my sinus issues!

I wanted to see if this theory was true right away, so as I pulled away from the doctor last Thursday, I had a sandwich bag of Honeycomb in my purse. I was hungry, so I pulled it out.  If you don't know, Honeycomb is half corn/ half oats.  I ate about half the sack and by the time I got home, I could already feel the headache coming on.  For the next three hours, I could not see clearly, could not think straight, and I was on edge with my family.  It finally wore off early in the evening and I could see straight again.

The next day, we had a homeschool Christmas party at my house and we decorated cookies.  The person who brought sugar cookies and frosting happen to leave the leftovers at my house. Guess what I got into right before I went to bed?? the frosting!!! YUMMY!!! I checked the label and it had nothing in it that I could not eat, but it did contain cornstarch.  I ate quite a bit of it because it was so good!!! Well, 15-20 minutes later, I got a huge sinus headache again! I went to bed and thought that I would just sleep it off. I was wrong! Christian came into my room at 6:30 am and I seriously got mad at him because he woke me up! I also got mad at Matt because he wanted to take Courtney out for breakfast and I told him that it wasn't fair!! I was really mad! (This is where I realize I cannot control this and I stay away from my family!! This is very unlike me.)  By about 10 am, the moodiness had subsided and I felt like my regular self again! I think I actually took a couple of Advil that morning!

I believe that corn is my true culprit and every time I don't eat corn, I don't feel bad and I treat everybody nicely!!

I am so sad to have to give up corn, but if it makes me feel better, it is worth it!

Tonight I finally had a chance to sit down and look up the symptoms of corn allergies and sure enough, every single one of my symptoms are on the list!! Except for the heartburn, my doctor thought that was from eating too many tomatoes. :)

My doctor also told me that I should try to get back on a few other foods, especially the ones that weren't so high on my allergy test. She said I should try chicken, blueberries, peanuts, and almonds and any other ones that had a lower number. She told me not to try to get back on gluten because that is also an inflammatory (like corn) and would probably make my troubles worse at the moment.

Here I go again!