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Shelly Stallard's avatar

Food stuff is such a sticky wicket for me! I’m anorexic, and if it’s too much trouble to prepare food or stick to a diet of sorts, I just won’t eat. I don’t think I have a lot of food no, although there are a few. The no list gets bigger and smaller depending on bucket fill. Though there are some things like bell peppers always on the no list. That’s more like the fuck no list, I react horribly to them. Feeding me is already difficult, MCAS is NOT helping.

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CG's avatar

Such excellent advice, thanks for this!

I think knowing how individual tolerance can vary widely is really helpful too. One of my strongest food triggers is turmeric. I cannot tell you how often people lecture me about curing my MCAS with turmeric. Other MCAS patients will insist that I must try it. I swear that it’s become the new “yoga”.

As for losing food via elimination, my immunologist encourages me to continue to ingest tiny amounts of foods that I react to (but don’t have anaphylaxis to) in an attempt to not complete “lose” the food. I mean tiny amounts. And I usually eat it only every couple of weeks, but for things that I’m getting inadvertently exposed to sometimes (hidden wheat, soy and turmeric - since turmeric is rapidly becoming a standard food colouring in USA).

I also find that being sure that I don’t eat the exact same food for more than 3 days in a row helps protect the foods I can still eat. I try to switch them out. This is only possible because I still have the privilege of enough safe foods to allow this, but as I flex up and down in what I’ve had as safe foods, this has usually helped me maximize my number of foods

Thank you for sharing all your knowledge and advice. Practical advice like this definitely should make the experience of MCAS less stressful. Your willingness to expend precious 🥄🥄 is quite a gift.

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