Bloating and weight gain

One of the interesting things I’ve read in “E for Additives” which I didn’t know about is that most of the E100 azo and coal tar dyes are known to cause oedema (bloating), and angioedema (swelling under the skin, welts). A number of them have also been found to disturb the thyroid and adrenal function of rats and other test animals. Some have been found to cause anaemia (including ones regularly used to colour vegetarian meat substitutes!). Some cause loss of protein in the urine and a reduction in lean body mass – something I can relate to. My lean body mass crashed during my most reactive period.

Last week I had another case of the “magic 2 lb weight gain from nowhere” after eating a small quantity of children’s party food at a family get together (it was either eat it or be rude and starve) that contained colourings and flavourings. Having accounted for calories and glycogen, there is no other explanation.

One thing that happens during these bloat/weight gain reactions is bloating at the top of the stomach. There are a lot of women in this country who are afflicted by the “three months pregnant” look, but they are usually binge-drinking ladettes! My instinct is that this kind of bloating is related to the adrenal glands, but I could be wrong.

Here’s a pleasant thought:

When BHA is used with BHT, twenty times the usual amount of BHA is stored in the body’s fat. Maybe this is why undertakers report that bodies take longer to decay these days. “E for Additives” p. 163

I had not considered that a number of these chemicals are fat soluble, and will be stored in the body and released during weight loss! I wonder if they cause ongoing problems?

Colour not to be sneezed at

The “Feedback” page of this week’s New Scientist (15th July 2006) contains the following observation:

AND on the subject of drugs… a reader’s son was recently diagnosed with allergic rhinitis – hay fever to most of us. The family GP prescribed a modern antihistamine, desloratadine, in the form of a bright orange, bubblegum-flavoured syrup.

Dad, a chemist, was interested to read the list of ingredients. These include the colorant E110, also known as Sunset Yellow FCF or Orange Yellow S. According to the European Union website, E110 is (by virtue of its “E”) a regulated food colouring agent. Its list of rare but known effects includes hives, rhinitis (runny nose), nasal congestion, allergies, hyperactivity, kidney tumours…

Obviously, dose is all when it comes to toxicity, but surely the manufacturers could find a colourant that doesn’t cause the same symptoms as the problem the medicine is supposed to treat. Dad insists his 10-year-old would take his medicine whether it was bright orange or not. As it is, if his symptoms persist, how will the GP know what to blame? New Scientist

It’s great that the New Scientist is pointing out these very stupidly obvious facts to the public, but they aren’t going far enough. One has to question the morality and motives of medicine manufacturers who package the cause of the illness in with the cure.

Considering around 30% of asthmatics react to azo dyes – which serve no purpose except as cheap colourants for the advantage of the manufacturer – and 17% of adults suffering chronic urticaria and/or angioneurotic oedema react specificially to the dreaded E110 Sunset Yellow, the likelihood of a reaction in a child suffering allergic rhinitis is hardly “rare but known”, in fact, based on these figures one could easily make a ball-park guess of a one in five chance of a specific reaction to the medication. “Obviously” dose is all when it comes to toxicity: tolerance being close to zero in a significant chunk of the population, particularly children.

Family ties

I suspect this is a largely inherited disorder. I have asthma, eczema, and rashy allergies on my paternal side and cross-bolshy-woman syndrome on my maternal side. I don’t think my mum will mind me saying that, she has a sense of humour about it! “I’m my mother’s daughter,” she has allegedly said to my dad.

Just days after I wrote about how I have curry hangovers, my little sister, who does not read this blog, came around for a visit and described how she’d eaten a curry the night before and she felt horrendous, and that it seemed to happen whenever she ate curries. I already knew this, because I’ve seen her before when she’s eaten curries and they make her very irritable. In fact, the last time I saw her she’d had a curry, was irritable, and I gave her some kombucha and lo and behold, she suddenly became sweetness and light five minutes after drinking it.

Then she recounted to me how she’d stopped drinking diet (aspartame) soft drinks a few weeks ago, and suddenly her skin had cleared up and she’d lost six pounds without actually dieting.

So I sent her away with a printout of the elimination diet. A couple of days later I went to see her and she was in the worst state I’ve ever seen a human being. She described to me how she’d had a couple of lagers the night before, but now couldn’t stop throwing up, and that just lately she seemed to be “completely alcohol intolerant.” I explained about sulphites, alcohol and histamine, and how I react in exactly the same way as this, and that next time she should stick to vodka and gin!

Then she told me about a friend, an otherwise fit, healthy young man, to whom the exact same thing had happened. All of a sudden he couldn’t tolerate any alcohol anymore. Every time he tried to drink he had the same violent reaction. Interestingly, he also suffers from restless legs syndrome, a condition repeatedly connected to food chemicals:

Restless Legs Syndrome was absolutely driving me crazy. If I forced my legs to be still, they would then jerk with even greater intensity. While I was watching TV, my legs were constantly swinging, because of this urge to move them. They were not itchy – it was just like there was something under the skin driving me crazy. Apparently most sufferers go on to become alcoholics (ref: The Bulletin 2000) which I can understand. American websites about RLS basically fall back onto all sorts of medication, which I do not want to take. Within two weeks of trying the elimination diet, I was able to sit still at night, AND get into bed without fear of tossing and turning all night because of this urge to move my legs. I now know the foods I should not touch – salicylates and additives … when I eat any of these forbidden foods there is a definite reaction. Failsafe Stories

The amount of people I know who definitely are or may be affected by food chemicals is ridiculously high. Yet hardly any of them will ever find out or at least have the chance to test the actual cause of their problems.

Serendipity and the Shangri-La Diet: how I laughed

Some people hit on the right method without even understanding why or having the right theory. Seth Roberts’ Shangri-La Diet is one such case.

Set point: Roberts believes in a “set point” theory of weight control: at any given time, your body wants to be a certain weight, and it will increase or decrease feelings of hunger and its metabolic rate in order to achieve that weight. Any attempt to modify your weight away from your current set point will meet with failure, or at least will be very difficult to achieve and maintain. Roberts compares the set point to the temperature setting for a thermostat.

Taste-calorie association: The set point idea is not new, but Roberts extends it by claiming that the set point can be modified by diet. This is the second part of his theory: the “taste-calorie association.” Roberts believes that the “tastiness” of the food you consume controls your set point. Specifically, tastier food raises your set point (i.e., makes your body want to get fatter), while bland food lowers your set point (i.e., makes your body want to adapt to being leaner). Shangri-La Diet

Seth: right method, wrong theory. This is a classic example of a food intolerance diet that doesn’t even know it. Phenols, amines, additives and MSG ARE the taste and flavour in food. Everyone has a different level of tolerance for these substances. There is a point where if you feed a population enough of these substances, everyone begins to exhibit symptoms. That’s why this diet will work for a significant proportion of the population.

Food intolerance deregulates appetite control and can lead to whacky weight gains and losses for no apparent reason. Roberts thinks this is all about “tricking the legacy brain left over from our hunter-gatherer days” into believing it is undergoing a period of fasting. Heh heh heh. No it’s NOT! It’s about removing the excess appetite-and-metabolism-deregulating neurotransmitters and plant poisons that have built up in your body.

Strategic consumption of bland calories: The first technique is the one that showed the greatest, longest lasting success. At first Roberts tried eating non-processed foods, on the theory that processing of foods results in more taste, or more intense tastes, through the addition of salt, spices, concentrated fats, and sugars. By eating unprocessed, blander foods, Roberts was able to lose weight. A second experiment involved drinking large amounts of the ultimate tasteless substance, water (from 3 to 5 liters per day), which also resulted in some weight loss.

Continues the article:

The Shangri-La Diet has so changed (screwed up? made go haywire?) his metabolic rate that his maintenance diet consists of 1,200 calories per day, which he gets as follows:

• One normal meal (about 900 calories)
• Two pieces of fruit (about 75 calories apiece)
• Sugar water (150 calories)

Here’s a tip Seth: give up the fruit and the sugar! Then see how many calories you can handle! This guy rates alongside Mr “I just crave those raw veggies” for the “IF ONLY YOU REALLY KNEW WHY” award.

Chocolate

It’s very strange: I am able to tolerate very small amounts of cheese and kefir, but I ate about an ounce of chocolate a couple of days ago, and was extremely angry the next day. Justifiably so – during bank holiday week a plethora of bad drivers erupt like a plague of snails onto the local roads (tourists think it is okay to drive at 35 miles per hour down straight country lanes where the regulars do 45-45 mph, then continue at this speed through villages marked 30 miles per hour, and should they so much as see a sheep on the grass in Chatsworth, their speed goes down to 10 miles per hour). But I mean really, really hassled and angry enough to curse.

At least I didn’t react to chocolate as badly as this poor woman:

Before going on the diet, I used to get panic attacks at night, where I would be absolutely convinced that there was a gunman just outside my window. When I finally did go on the diet, it was for the sake of my children, not myself, so I thought it was okay at week three to eat an enormous amount of chocolate – I believe it was one Hershey bar, and a massive Cadbury dairy milk block. The next day, I was so paranoid that I convinced myself that my husband was having an affair, and went to the extent of driving to his work to watch him through the window, then following him home on his bike. When he arrived home, I dashed outside and hid in the darkened garden, crying. After about four hours the paranoia episode just finished like that, and I had to explain myself to a perplexed husband – reader, NSW. Failsafe Newsletter 48

Sometimes I think I’m quite lucky.

Fibromyalgia and homocysteine

Here’s the connection between fibromyalgia and homocysteine.

Studies regarding the correlation between coronary artery disease incidence and abnormally high blood levels of the amino acid homocysteine have been appearing with increasing regularity. Relatively overlooked among the research articles is a recently published Swedish study, the results of which demonstrate consistently high homocysteine levels and low concentrations of vitamin B12 in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) of patients meeting established clinical criteria for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Fibromyalgia. [...]

SAM is an important cofactor in the metabolism of central nervous system monoamine neurotransmitters, including dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin. It has also been used successfully to treat both Fibromyalgia and depression. Unfortunately, SAM was not measured in the Swedish study.

Another explanation for high cerebrospinal fluid homocysteine levels was considered by the Swedish authors. Nitric oxide, which is an inhibitor of the enzyme that converts homocysteine to methionine, is produced as a result of inflammatory reactions. Most of the patients in the study, in addition to their neurological condition, had accompanying symptoms of viral or bacterial infections. Theoretically, the inflammation caused by these infections increased nitric oxide levels, which in turn increased homocysteine levels. Immune Support

Interesting. This may explain why I have had some positive results with my 1000mcg methyl-B12 tablets. I wonder if we should reduce nitric oxide levels? And if so, how?

Histamine intolerance and diamine oxidase deficiency

I’ve had another look through the Allergy Dietician site and found a couple of interesting references:

Diamine oxidase deficiency. DAO is responsible for the removal of histamine from the body. It requires sufficient vitamin B6, C intakes and can be inhibited by some food additives. Food Intolerance Reactions

Histamine and alcohol both share the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase at a stage of their metabolism. [...] Intestinal bacteria produce histamine and levels rise when excessive amounts of starchy foods and carbohydrates are consumed by people with low levels of diamine oxidase. Histamine Intolerance

I just crave those raw veggies

One of the newsletters I get is one from a bodybuilding website (I am just curious), and is written by a guy called Tom Venuto. He isn’t a low-carber, but apart from that he usually has some sensible ‘clean’ advice to offer people who want to put on some muscle. This is a quote from the newsletter I got today, written in response to a reader (probably a supertaster) who hates eating vegetables:

You also mentioned salads. Well, there you go again – salads are a great way to get your veggies. Personally I eat a salad almost every day -usually with a bed of spinach and dark greens, and a couple times a week i make a gigantic mixed salad with all kinds of raw veggies in there.

An interesting thing about eating clean, natural foods for a while is that you start to crave them.

On the other hand, I believe there are addictive qualities to sugar, white flour, and many types of processed and refined foods, and the negative eating pattern perpetuates itself.

Did you see that movie with Russell Crowe, the Insider, where the cigarette companies were accused of using cigarettes as nothing more than a “delivery system for the HIGHLY addictive drug, nicotine?” Well, hmmmmm, I wonder what chemicals could be in our food that might be addicting us to them and causing us to lose our natural cravings for the natural food we’re supposed to be eating?

Junk food for thought huh?

When you begin to wean yourself off the junk, and onto natural food, you may be surprised how your tastes begin to change.

I used to hate veggies too, but I swear, I CRAVE those big giant raw veggie salads every week. – Tom Venuto at www.burnthefat.com & www.bodybuildingsecrets.com

In answer to Tom’s rhetorical question about what causes addiction to junk food:

• Artificial colours
• Artificial flavourings
• MSG and hydrolysed vegetable protein
• Nasty antioxidants like BHT & BHA
• Calcium propionate in bread
• Benzoates in soft drinks
• Caffeine and related vaso-active substances
• Aspartame and sucralose in diet drinks/foods
• Amines in chocolate
• Salicylates in mint and menthol products

I challenge anyone who reads this to find a successful brand of junk food that doesn’t contain one of the above. It’s really ironic that I’ve been avoiding all junk food for the last couple of years because I had noticed what it does to me, yet there I was addicted to cheese, ‘good quality’ chocolate, Parma ham, dates, pistachios, and didn’t think a meal was complete if it didn’t contain something green.

“I swear, I CRAVE those big giant raw veggie salads every week” Ha ha ha ha. Of course you do Tom, so did I when I tried to come down off them, that’s because they contain addictive chemicals too. And you’re so clean-living I’ll bet you don’t even take aspirin, do you?

Spider senses

This will probably come across as a very self-indulgent post until I make my point at the end, so stick with me!

I’ve always had a number of personality traits regarded by my family and friends as endearing, but kooky, weird, odd.

Clothing:

• As soon as I buy a new item of clothing I cut the label out, even at risk of damaging the garment. I just can’t stand the scratchy sensation of the label against my skin, which sometimes comes out in a rash.
• I won’t wear wool, it itches too much.
• I throw out jeans if the nylon seams melt under the iron and start to scratch.
• I can’t wear G-strings. I’m very fussy about knickers, I will only wear knickers that don’t ride up my backside, otherwise I spend most of my time surreptitiously trying to hoick them out again.
• Bras drive me crazy. I feel suffocated and scratched. I constantly fuss with the back band and the arm bands, I can’t stand it if they twist. I can never find a bra that feels right, looks right, or fits right.
• I throw out perfectly good clothes because they don’t ‘feel right’ or ‘smell right’.
• If I have a stone in my shoe – even the tiniest bit of grit – I will stop walking and fuss around until I’ve got rid of it. I always have stones in my shoes.
• If I have a splinter in my clothing I will go to the extent of finding a public toilet where I can pull off my clothes and try and find it.
• I have constant problems with pairs of shoes. They aren’t soft enough, they pinch, they scratch, they gather stones, they let in water, they slip off my feet. I get through hundreds of pairs of shoes because I am never happy with any of them!
• I will only wear certain colours of clothes. I would never wear red or bright primary or secondary colours. I wouldn’t wear black until recently. I have terrible problems matching clothes for colours as they never seem to go together.
• In shops, I feel clothes to determine whether they are nice or not. Texture is most important.
• Given a choice, I prefer to wear only pure cotton.

Smells and inhalants:

• I protest very loudly at use of spray deodorant, hairspray or perfume in my vicinity and splutter, cough and sneeze and run away from the offending airspace like a big baby.
• When subjected to strong smells or smoke I frequently pull up my jumper or bunch my cardigan sleeve so it covers my mouth and nose and breathe through the fabric so I don’t have to breathe the smell.
• I once refused to date an otherwise perfectly nice guy whose breath smelt.
• I like some smells that other people regard as disgusting, like mild body odour on others.
• I hate smells other people think are nice, like air freshener, which always smells ‘artificial’ to me. Most perfumes and deodorants also smell ‘artificial’ to me and make me feel nauseous.

Food:

• I am a supertaster and was regarded as ‘a fussy eater’ by my parents.
• I was fussy from being a baby, apparently I was very difficult to wean onto mixed foods.
• I went four hours between breast feeds, and my mother regards this as ‘fussy’ (I don’t), because I wouldn’t take as much milk as other babies.
• I had colic as a baby.
• I didn’t eat much of anything and my mother thought I was a child anorexic.
• As a child I played with my food a lot before eating it. I used to make castles and mountains out of my mashed potato.
• I ate in a quirky or ritualistic way.
• I always used my knife and fork backwards so I could hold my fork in my dominant hand in order to poke and prod stuff before deciding whether to eat it.
• I would eat egg yolks but would not eat egg whites.
• I would only drink whole, fresh, pasteurised milk (not UHT, not skimmed).
• I still cut off all stems and stalks from vegetables because they are chewy and taste bad.
• I wouldn’t eat any kind of skin from anything, like chicken skin, or the skin on warmed milk or custard, or sausage skin, or bacon rind.
• I cut off and spat out any kind of gristle.
• I wouldn’t eat anything browned or burnt, like bread crusts, burnt toast, roast potatoes, or burnt meat.
• I wouldn’t eat bread crusts, or even the stale edges of bread that the crust had been cut off from. I drove my mum up the wall because I would eat around the edges of my crustless sandwiches.
• I wouldn’t drink soft drinks because they ‘hurt’ my tongue.
• I wouldn’t eat crisps because they hurt my mouth.
• I wouldn’t eat mashed potato with lumps or skin or stringy bits in it.
• I could tell the difference between different brands of chocolate and I would only eat Cadbury’s chocolate, I found Nestlé chocolate and foreign chocolate sickly.
• I could tell the difference between different brands of breakfast cereal and would only eat Kellogg’s cereals. Supermarket brands had tiny specks in them. I would only eat bland, starchy cereals like corn flakes and rice krispies. Sugar puffs had sharp bits in them, and fibrous cereals were scratchy.
• I found strongly flavoured food like meat pies, and fish and chips disgusting enough to make me retch. I hated strong gravy and strong sausages.
• I didn’t drink tea or coffee until I was nineteen.
• The only fruit juice I would drink as a child was Ribena blackcurrant cordial. Apparently I was ‘allergic’ to orange juice. I wouldn’t drink any kind of real or fake fruit juice as a teenager, the flavour was always too strong, tangy, sweet, or artificial.
• I can tell the difference between sugar and artificial sweeteners with just a sip. Artificial sweeteners have an unpleasant aftertaste to me, and they are too sweet.
• I have an aversion to a lot of artificial flavours and colours. I can taste artificial flavours.
• I go through fads with foods of really, really liking them and then all of a sudden absolutely hating them for months. Coconut milk and different kinds of breakfast cereals are good examples.
• Like the little girl in the movie Signs, I wouldn’t drink water that tasted strange or had dust in it.
• I hated the artificial flavours of veggie substitute foods like TVP, Sosmix, or Quorn. I found vegetable stock and nut roasts disgusting.
• I hated all fruit except banana, and I would eat around the bruises, stringy bits, or the bottom end where the spike is. Cooked banana made me retch.
• I have never got out of the habit of very carefully peeling ALL fruit and removing ALL core and seeds.
• I have never managed to eat a whole orange. I just suck out the juice and spit out the left over segment skins. I used to do the same with grapes.
• I used to squeeze garden peas out of their skins before I would eat them. Every single pea! Mushy peas drove me nuts because they were impossible to separate from their skins.
• I wouldn’t and still won’t eat ‘squeaky foods’ – that is, foods that make squeaking noises in the mouth, like undercooked green beans or a number of other al dente vegetables.
• I hated all salad vegetables: tomatoes, cucumbers, green onions, lettuce, partly because they were ‘squeaky’ and partly because they were sharp and crispy and hurt my mouth.
• Anything with a shell on or legs (like prawns) still freaks me out. I have to be really careful to get all of the shell off prawns, and remove the dark line down the back that is the prawn poo.
• I hate picking up food to eat it. I have a mare over things like barbecue ribs or corn cobs or chicken drumsticks, and my partner finds it painful to watch me fiddling around with them with a knife and fork!

Cleanliness:

• I can’t stand the feel of dirt, stickiness, or grease on my hands, or any kind of smell on my hands, this leads me to wash my hands an awful lot. This has been regarded by people I know as obsessive-compulsive behaviour. It is very difficult to get across to them that I am washing my hands because they feel and smell wrong, not just because I have to keep clean.
• Even though I love pets, I won’t touch them unless absolutely necessary because they make my hands feel greasy and dirty, as well as giving me allergies.
• I always have to wash my hands and face after eating, then moisturise my face again.
• I absolutely hate the smell of chlorine on my body from swimming baths.
• I’m very funny about what washing powders and liquids I use. I don’t like strong ones, or ones that leave clothes feeling stiff.
• I take very long showers because I don’t feel clean from washing for just five minutes.
• I always wash new clothes before wearing them because of the new smell.
• I splash the taps when I wash my hands to remove any grease or soap on them.
• I’m very fussy about having a clean windscreen, a clean monitor screen, and wearing clean sunglasses.
• I can’t start cooking in the kitchen unless all of the units are perfectly clean and clear.
• I worry and pick at spots and scabs and bits of dry skin until I’ve got rid of them. Should I get a verruca on my foot I will take immediate and drastic action to get rid of it, no matter how painful. When I was a kid I once picked at a mole on my back until I made it bleed floods all down my clothes.
• Princess and the pea: I can’t sleep in a bed that contains the smallest amount of grit, crumbs, sand, animal fur, smells funny, or has bobbles on the sheets.

In general:

• I have spider senses. I have a perfect ear, I am a tetrachromat, I am a supertaster, and I have strong senses of touch and smell.
• My sister also has a perfect ear and is a musician. I used to play the violin but gave up, in spite of being told I was very good, because I was unhappy with the quality of sound I was making.
• I don’t like noisy or shouty music.
• I’m allergic to a lot of animals, to house dust mites, and to grass and tree pollen.
• I never liked to be touched as a child, I was quite stand-offish and didn’t like expressing emotions in front of people because they were unbearably powerful things.
• I’m very pedantic and exacting. Because I pick up on details and clues, I would make a good detective.
• But for the fact that my eye for detail sometimes gets me lost as in ‘not seeing the wood for the trees’. Then all at once I will have a great big epiphany!
• I am good at spotting personality disorders, illnesses, and when people are lying.
• I’m very good at connecting illnesses to particular causes, whether environmental, genetic or nutritional.
• I have a very, very complex world view. Nothing is ever simple or black and white. I hate black and white thinking!
• Spelling mistakes are like splinters on the page.
• I frequently scramble words in speech and sometimes in writing – something my maternal grandmother also does. Words with similar meanings like ‘molecules’ and ‘atoms’, or ‘viruses’ and ‘bacteria’ might get scrambled. This makes me look stupid, even though I know what I’m really talking about!
• Even though I have very good hearing, I don’t make out words and meanings very well and have to say “sorry?” or “pardon?” a lot. I’ve often described myself as an audial dyslexic. I find myself frequently saying “sorry, I’m a bit deaf” to strangers who say something to me that I don’t catch, even though I’m not deaf, I can’t make out the words!
• I CAN’T STAND DRIPPING TAPS!
• I can be quite resentful, bitter, judgmental, and not very forgiving, even though I would like to be.
• I’m very discriminating and discerning and a food and drink snob. I like only fine wines, fine chocolates, fine perfumes (and then not much), and expensive items such like furniture, kitchen items, or clothes that are well finished. I own a designer handbag. Signs of a cheap finish put me off. I have been known to be put off an entire designer brand at any sign of cheapness in a finish. I once went to a very nice restaurant and didn’t enjoy my meal at all because I saw a big tin of vegetable oil out the back. You could call me Fraiser Crane.
• Like Captain Hook, I CAN’T STAND TICKING CLOCKS!
• I can smell odours on people’s breath and know what they’ve been eating. My partner complains he can’t get away with anything!
• Smells bring back old memories and feelings very strongly. Smells include very specific things like ‘Nottingham night air’ or ‘fall in Baltimore’, as well as things everyone can relate to like ‘hydrocarbon summer’ or ‘cut grass spring’. Every single house I’ve lived in has its own particular smell that brings back powerful happy or sad feelings. People have their own unique smells too.
• I hate plastic and like glass, but not thin or flawed glass.
• I am bugged abnormally by a lack of symmetry in an object or arrangement, or by a lopsided picture frame.
• Patterns on curtains or furnishings obsess me. I try to avoid buying things with patterns on them, unless they are floral.
• I hate artificial colours. I am particularly repulsed by bright red, and a kind of green I call ‘chemical green’, which is different from grass or natural green. I like pastel colours, pale pinks, pale blues, and shades of natural brown and natural green.
• Rather fittingly, I drive a car, a Smart Roadster, that is very sensitive to the heat and cold and what petrol is in the tank. I can tell the difference between different brands of 97 octane petrol in terms of engine noise and responsiveness.

All these traits invite comments like “don’t be so melodramatic”, and “stop fussing”, and “for God’s sake” from others, even fellow supertasters. Sometimes these traits get me into situations that are amusing or annoying to others. I am a nightmare at barbecues and picnics, on the beach, or at houses with pets.

On the other hand I rather like being special in that I have such acute senses and can pick up on things before other people.

Many of the personality traits listed above can be distilled down to underlying oversensitivities with the senses. Everything is very loud to me – colours, feelings, smells, tastes, noises, sensations. I seem to go through life wincing. I’ve always known that I experience things much louder than a lot of other people, but never really wondered why. When I see girls with twisted bra straps or uneven clothing, I think “how can you STAND that?!”

It is nice to know that everything I’ve confessed to here has a purpose – I’m not just weird! Joan Breakey’s continuing research over the last twenty years suggests that these traits are connected, probably through genetics, to food chemical sensitivities.

Seasonal aspect of food chemical sensitivity

However many reported a return of the ear infections when the weather got cooler, after Easter, through winter and spring. I gradually learnt which were the most risky months from a family sensitivity history of the family allergic symptoms. Many had family members whose asthma, chronic tonsillitis, or hay fever was worse late autumn, winter or spring. What I found was that most could relax their diet in the summer months [from Christmas to Easter [in Australia]] and then they became more strict in the cooler months. Diet & Chronic Ear Infections by Joan Breakey.

This is interesting. When I went on my high fat diet last year it was spring, and I felt very good all through the spring and summer, even though I was still eating green vegetables. I have always suspected there is a seasonal component and that natural sunlight helps. My ears hardly bother me in the summer. They didn’t bother me at all when I lived in sunny Nice. I think that somehow, the combination of warmer weather and high fat/calorie diet was the key. It all went wrong when I went to Spain in the summer though. But in Spain I was eating slices of melon, spicy foods, cured meats, and fish and shellfish every day. Fish decays so rapidly it’s a hazard in a hot country. We’ve already been caught out by it once.