with anna
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A.nna
anna // singaporean. my dream is to some day live in a countryside and have a lot of dogs. reach me on
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Saturday, February 22, 2014
Going Gluten-Free I've been having hives for the longest time, probably around a month or so. Initially I was told it might be because of the cold as it was December-January then. I've seen more than 4 doctors about the hives, and all they gave me was antibiotics, antihistamine and steriod.
Until one fine day, I passed by Healing Resonance around Everton Park. It had this huge signboard, "Test For Food Intolerance Here Today", so I did. And that was probably the saddest day of my life.
Firstly, allow me to tell you more about Healing Resonance. They do not test food intolerance or allergies via skin patch test which most doctor does. They infuse each food sample into your blood, (painless by the way), and read how your blood reacts to the food sample.
So, the test result was out immediately, to be exact, for every food sample, the digestion rate reading will be out and the on-call doctor will tell me more about the reading while moving on to testing the next food sample. The first one she tested was wheat - the reading shows that my blood reacts abnormally, which the reading then show my body can't digest up to 67% of the wheat intake I take. (To be honest, I have NO IDEA how it worked.) but I'll support her result by saying I tried taking wheat-based product twice after the test, my hives not only flared up, it affected my throat and it felt like something was swollen in there which I can touch or feel - it's just there, on my throat.
For starters, I thought, okay fine, then I wouldn't have wheat again. No big deal.
The next thing I know, or you might be interested to know, ALMOST EVERY FOOD CONTAINS WHEAT. I'll give you a few pictures of the food I've been craving that contains wheat.
My favourite, ban mian :(((((((((((((
Any biscuits :(((
Cha Soba :(
Breadddddd :((((
Yes, almost every food is made out of wheat. The sadness meter will tell you which food I miss the most, tom yum ban mian! Basically wheat is used to made flour, which is in bread, biscuits, noodles, KFC fried chicken wing's skin, dumpling, and bread and biscuits and sigh.
One frequent question I receive from people around is, why are you not allergic or intolerant towards wheat in the past but now? It isn't clear why but some adults develop an allergy to a food they could once eat with no problem. However, the good thing is, food intolerance is different from food allergies. A quick difference:
Food Allergy:
Food Intolerance:
I guess it's a blessing in disguise mine is food intolerance and not food allergy. It's suffocating to know you need to go gluten-free, you need to ask the server if your food is going to be gluten-free. I experienced servers being annoyed when I ask if this and that dish contains wheat.
In my opinion, I feel that restaurants should come up with a side menu for clients with allergies. You see, not all your servers know which food contains gluten, lactose, soy or nut, if they answer your clients wrongly, just one time, he/she says no it doesn't contain xxx when it does, it can be life threatening. Maybe not a whole new side menu per se, but you can have small little stars next to the dish's name to say it's xxx-free, well, just like how you put a 'thumbs-up' next to your dish's name to say it's chef recommended.
Oh well, I think I'm just day-dreaming for the day to happen when we, people, with food intolerance, are not treated as a minority. But you really have to know this - we didn't ask for it, we wish it didn't happen on us either :(
Labels: allergies, food, food allergies, food allergy, food intolerance, food intolerant, gluten free, how i feel, intolerance |
xx
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