Allergies and stuff

A repository for intrinsically valuable information

Allergies and stuff

Postby OrangeEyebrows » Wed Mar 19, 2014 2:59 am

So I don't know if we have any dieticians on here, but I feel like the chances are good we have someone who knows their stuff.

My mum is allergic to cheese. Or intolerant - I'm not clear on whether allergies only encompass anaphylaxis, but it makes her vomit so violently that on more than one occasion she's had to be hospitalised for dehydration and put on a drip. Travelling in France with someone whom cheese could literally kill is...well, interesting. Please forgive my clan, La Chaise - the rest of us eat enough cheese to make up for it.

Anyway, she's fine with any other dairy products - milk, yoghurt, ice cream, etc. So we've theorised that perhaps it's the rennet she's allergic to. Does that make any sense? She's not allergic to any other animal proteins as far as we can tell. Or is it the casein?

Her other allergies are wasp stings (bees are fine, apparently) and erythromycin (an antibiotic - I share that one). Her brother is allergic to, of all things, bananas - anaphylaxis there. I swear this isn't "fussy foody" stuff - it's put-you-in-the-hospital stuff. I've only been given erythromycin once (and I have no idea why they did, as they usually give it to people who're allergic to penicillin, which I'm not) and next time I'll just die of tonsillitis - it was wretched. My brother doesn't have any allergies I'm aware of - though he has a weird invulnerability against nettle stings - and nor does my maternal grandmother. For some reason my mum and her brother just have these weirdly specific allergies.

Although come to think of it, I don't eat bananas anymore, because I love them but they give me tummy ache. That might be relevant.

Dieticians and cheese-makers, go!
  • 7

A society without redemption would damn us all ~ Kate
User avatar
OrangeEyebrows
TCS Moderator
TCS Moderator
 
Posts: 5700
Joined: Thu Apr 18, 2013 8:48 pm
Location: Dormouse-like in a teapot
Show rep
Title: Magnifitail

Re: Allergies and stuff

Postby Learned Nand » Wed Mar 19, 2014 3:27 am

If you go to an allergist you can a skin allergy test, which can determine more precisely what your mother is allergic too.
  • 1

Terry Pratchett wrote:The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Click for a Limerick
OrangeEyebrows wrote:There once was a guy, Aviel,
whose arguments no one could quell.
He tested with Turing,
his circuits fried during,
and now we'll have peace for a spell.
User avatar
Learned Nand
Back-End Admin
Back-End Admin
 
Posts: 9858
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 9:18 pm
Location: Permanently in the wrong
Show rep
Title: Auditor of Reality

Re: Allergies and stuff

Postby OrangeEyebrows » Wed Mar 19, 2014 4:00 am

I did that once because I have chronic sinusitus due to, upon investigation, being too absurdly small for all my parts to work properly. It would be nice if I were kidding, but I'm not - I'm literally built too small for things like my sinuses and eustachian tubes to drain properly - they're too narrow for the...uh...consistency of earwax and snot to drain through properly. I know, ick, TMI. Anyway, I told my husband I was allergic to cats, tea and chocolate, because I wanted to see his head pop off, but in fact it came back negative on everything - pet dander, pollens, dust, etc. I'm just built wrong. They put a camera up my nose. I didn't like it.

I think my mum has pretty much adjusted to being allergic to cheese - she's in her mid-sixties, and although I've suggested her trying vegetarian cheese (no rennet) she just doesn't want to because in any case she'd associate the taste with being violently ill. I can understand that.

It's just that I've never, ever heard of anyone else with that particular allergy.
  • 1

A society without redemption would damn us all ~ Kate
User avatar
OrangeEyebrows
TCS Moderator
TCS Moderator
 
Posts: 5700
Joined: Thu Apr 18, 2013 8:48 pm
Location: Dormouse-like in a teapot
Show rep
Title: Magnifitail

Re: Allergies and stuff

Postby CarrieVS » Wed Mar 19, 2014 1:58 pm

I have heard that allergy skin tests are notoriously unreliable, with a lot of both false negatives and false positives. They can also do blood tests but I don't know how much better they are.
  • 0

A Combustible Lemon wrote:Death is an archaic concept for simpleminded commonfolk, not Victorian scientist whales.
User avatar
CarrieVS
TCS Redshirt
TCS Redshirt
 
Posts: 7103
Joined: Sat Apr 20, 2013 7:43 pm
Location: By my wild self in the wet wild woods waving my wild tail
Show rep
Title: Drama Llama

Re: Allergies and stuff

Postby Marcuse » Tue May 20, 2014 4:46 pm

Orange wrote:I think my mum has pretty much adjusted to being allergic to cheese - she's in her mid-sixties, and although I've suggested her trying vegetarian cheese (no rennet) she just doesn't want to because in any case she'd associate the taste with being violently ill. I can understand that.


I can tell you right now that the vegetarian cheese I tried when we were off dairy did not taste like cheese, at all. This is from someone who likes several meat alternatives.

I've heard it said that allergy is something which causes anaphylaxis, but it does seem like there's several degrees of reaction and allergy is just one of them. Just because you can't necessarily call something an allergy doesn't seems to speak to the severity or seriousness of the reaction. I think on balance it's better to not worry about what to call it and just avoid cheese.

An interesting nibbet of information I found was that 10% of children that are allergic to milk also have a reaction to beef.
  • 2

User avatar
Marcuse
TCS Sithlord
TCS Sithlord
 
Posts: 6592
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 8:00 pm
Show rep

Re: Allergies and stuff

Postby CarrieVS » Tue May 20, 2014 5:02 pm

Wikipedia says most commercially made cheese these days is suitable for vegetarians. I don't know why vegetarian cheese would be dairy free. It would just use rennet or an equivalent from a different source - the usual kind is identical to animal rennet but produced by genetically engineered bacteria (so wouldn't be any good for anyone allergic to rennet) and I don't know how easy it is to get hold of cheese made with a different coagulating chemical- or apparently there are some cheeses that don't use rennet at all.

I've never heard of vegan/dairy free cheese before (made from soy milk maybe? Soy milk doesn't taste much like milk) but that definitely would be something different than real cheese.
  • 3

A Combustible Lemon wrote:Death is an archaic concept for simpleminded commonfolk, not Victorian scientist whales.
User avatar
CarrieVS
TCS Redshirt
TCS Redshirt
 
Posts: 7103
Joined: Sat Apr 20, 2013 7:43 pm
Location: By my wild self in the wet wild woods waving my wild tail
Show rep
Title: Drama Llama

Re: Allergies and stuff

Postby sunglasses » Tue May 20, 2014 6:19 pm

CarrieVS wrote:Wikipedia says most commercially made cheese these days is suitable for vegetarians. I don't know why vegetarian cheese would be dairy free. It would just use rennet or an equivalent from a different source - the usual kind is identical to animal rennet but produced by genetically engineered bacteria (so wouldn't be any good for anyone allergic to rennet) and I don't know how easy it is to get hold of cheese made with a different coagulating chemical- or apparently there are some cheeses that don't use rennet at all.

I've never heard of vegan/dairy free cheese before (made from soy milk maybe? Soy milk doesn't taste much like milk) but that definitely would be something different than real cheese.


I am unsure what vegan cheese is made out of. Even when I was following a vegan diet I steered clear of it. I think it's made from the tears of Avi upon imaging a life without good steak. I cannot be certain.

I can tell you that I'm going to boycot my immune system. I woke up with a horribly swollen face due to seasonal allergies. My eyes are swollen, I look like hell, my face is killing me, my nose is runny, I'm sneezing like crazy, and yes I did take something. Obviously, not something that works. Zyrtec works but it's so ruddy expensive. This immune boycot/protest is NOT working out well. Immune management has brought out the firehoses. Oh god.

As for the IGg blood tests, yes I think those are quite valid but I think they are problematic in regards to cost.
  • 6

TCS Etiquette Guide

Rules and FAQs

Zevran wrote:Magic can kill. Knives can kill. Even small children launched at great speeds can kill.
User avatar
sunglasses
TCS Moderator
TCS Moderator
 
Posts: 11541
Joined: Tue Apr 16, 2013 2:52 pm
Show rep
Title: The Speaker of Horrors.


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 4 guests

cron