Living with Food Allergy

A year and a half ago, I started having a constant headache - almost migraine strength. For several weeks, I went to several doctors, the neurologist, had x-rays and MRI and lots of expensive prescripitons. I finally went to see an allergist, and after testing found out I was allergic to eggs, chicken, beef and cellery. I’ve always had hay-fever (which was confirmed), but this was a shocker to me. The doctor put me on a food elimination diet and as I re-introduced one food at a time, turns out I will get a migraine within 30 minutes of eating anything containing eggs or beef. This is out of the ordinary as apparently most food allergies product reactions 6 to 8 hours after consumption and it is extremely rare for the reaction to be a migraine. Some folks have migraines after eating cheese, wine or artifical sweetners, but these don’t affect me at all.

Ultimately, I went on Allegra, Peryactin and a Beta-blocker to calm my immune system down. Now, I rely primarily on prevention - I can’t eat certain things or I’ll suffer the results. I have found a medication called Zomig and I use the nose-spray version of it. Normally, it will get rid of the headache pretty quickly.

It’s been most difficult trying to avoid egg as it’s in everything from salad dressing, all baked goods, pancakes, etc. Sometimes I REALLY want a hamburger or some good beef enchiladas. I’ve found that ground turkey can be substituted for most of these things and have also been eating a lot of elk, lamb, antelope, buffalo and other exotic meats. Some of these animals have cuts of meat that make me not miss a good ol’ fasioned steak quite so much….well usually!