The Best Food Allergy Diary

Keeping a diary of your food intake can be daunting. What can be worse is trying to go back through what you've entered to find answers.

For those of you highly experienced in Excel or computerized spreadsheets, this may be easier for you. For those of you who like to use pen and paper, this might be more challenging.

First, you'll want to have a small notebook that you can carry around with you 24/7. It's often hard to remember everything you ate, everywhere you went, and everything you did if you're just recording it at the end of the day.

For accurate results, you will need to be detailed.

I recommend that each new day start at the top of a new page. It may take you several pages to note everything for the day, depending on how big your notebook is and how small you write. You will want to be as detailed in your notes as possible as this is your original notes.

At the beginning of the notebook, inside the front cover (or if you have a way to mark the outside of the notebook) put the start date make sure to include the day, month, and year, and when you fill up the notebook mark on the front cover the end date of that notebook.

Each entry should start with the following:

• The Exact Date
• Time of waking and how many hours of sleep
• Mood upon waking
• Weight (try to take your weight measurement before eating or drinking anything for the day, even before water. If you go to the bathroom first, make sure you continue to do so with each weigh in.)

You may also want to include any extra notes about any of the above. Did the baby cry all night? Was there a big stressful meeting that morning? Was your sleep unusual in any way? And feel free to be as frank about your mood as you like, if you feel like roadkill, go ahead write it down.

Other things that you may also want to include are:

• Waking Temperature - Get a basal thermometer, and keep it right next to your bed with your notebook. When you just wake up, roll over, grab your thermometer, place it under your tongue while you lay there and wake up for a couple minutes. This will also help you (if you're a woman) know when your ovulating.
• Waking blood sugar - If you suspect any kind of blood sugar issues, head to your nearest pharmacy and buy the cheapest blood sugar testing kit - make sure the strips are also cheap as that is where most of the cost will come from. If you're doing this, you may want to also test your blood right before eating meals and 2 hours after eating. Eating allergens can affect your body's ability to utilize sugars, so I actually advise this for pretty much anyone who is suffering.)
• Daily Pollen Count - record the pollen concerns for your area.
• Exercise/Activity - What kind of exercise did you do and how much? Did you do something odd or unusual that you don't do every day, such as clean the toilet, mop floors, travel, etc.?
• Places - Did you go someplace outside of your normal? Grocery stores? Did you go clothes shopping? The air sometimes at certain places can cause reactions so keeping note of these things can help.
• Symptoms - Any symptoms that you experience, even if you don't think it's a symptom. If you notice it, write it down along with the time you noticed it. For example, if you notice that you're tapping your pencil on your desk. You may not always do it, but sometimes you do, write it down (it can be a sign of jitteriness). If you stumble into your coffee table, write it down. If you notice your mood changes, even if you think it might be due to a co-worker (unless it's real normal thing - like you're sad but you just heard your dog died. Being livid at your co-worker for pronouncing your name wrong, you should probably write that down.) At least at first, you never know what is going to be an actual symptom and what isn't. Allergic reactions do a wide range of things in the body, so something you may have attributed to something else may actually be an allergic reaction.
• Bodily Functions: While urinating is likely not to be a big deal, you should at the very least record your bowel movements. If you have any gastronomical reactions to your allergens, then this will help give you more information. You'll also want to record information about your stools such as the Bristol Stool Scale.
• Household Products: Did you change your laundry soap? Bath wash? Dish soap? Make sure to record those changes as well.

When recording your food, you'll want to note exactly what you ate and when. This includes brand names, ingredients, what recipe you used, etc. Anything that goes into your mouth should be recorded with a time stamp, including gum, candy, medications.

Once you've started recording this information, make an Excel document (or get a big sheet of paper, or write really small) with a row along the side for each symptom you want to monitor, mood, weight, blood sugar, reactions or no reactions, and so on. Along the top, you'll record each day. It is through this documentation that you'll see the patterns start to happen. It is also easier with this to see when the last day you experienced a particular symptom so you can go back to your food diary and compare or contrast the specifics of what went on, and start to trace it back to the cause.

Good Luck, and Happy Recording!

Grading the severity of your allergy: Sensitivity vs Reaction Level

When it comes to allergic reactions there are essentially two measurements to grade your reactions.

On one side there is reactivity. The severity of a reaction can be as simple as making you miserable, or as life threatening to land you in the ER.

On the other side, there is sensitivity. One whiff of your allergen from 6 miles away might set you off, or you might just simply be able to pick off the offending food from your plate.

These two measurements of allergenicity (is that a word? probably not).. These two measurements of your allergy do not have a single thing to do with one another.

You can go into anaphylactic shock with every reaction, but still only react with direct contact.  Another person can simply not feel well with each reaction, and have that reaction if someone even walks in the room with the offending item.

This is where people get confused, and this confusion can sometimes cause people to proclaim things to be totally safe when they're not, or misrepresent themselves. Often this is not done with evil intentions, but with well meaning people trying to share their experiences and help others out.

Whether you tested a 1 or a 4 for your allergen, whether or not it lands you in the ER, does not make you sensitive. An allergy's sensitivity is about just how little contact or exposure is required to make you react at all in any sense.

In sensitivity, there are also two main gauges of sensitivity. Internal and External.

Internal sensitivity is when the allergen is ingested. This includes eye contact and breathing it in, as these both allow the allergen to get "inside" the body with possible absorption by the mucus membranes.

External sensitivity is direct skin contact. Keep in mind, even those without much external sensitivity may find themselves reacting to contact if their skin is broken, or if the corny substance is wet, or if they're in the shower, as wet or broken skin allows the body to more readily absorb the allergen through the skin weakening it's protective barrier.

Someone who is internally sensitive is not always necessarily externally contact sensitive. Those who are externally sensitive may not always be internally as sensitive.

This allows for a lot of confusion when grading products for reliability of corn-free status.

Even at my most sensitive, I could still pick up a corn chip with my fingers or touch a corn cob (I didn't because of my fear of accidentally getting residue of it in my mouth.) without much of a reaction or without a reaction at all.  Others would break out into a full body rash on contact with a corn chip, but be able to eat some contaminated products that would leave me sick as a dog for days.

So just to clarify.. The severity of your reaction while horrid does not make your reactions more valid for testing the presence of an allergen, it's your sensitivity (how much it takes to set you off) that is a much better test of the presence of an allergen.

So when you're out there on boards and forums, do a lot of reading and pay attention to what products people are using. Find the person who best fits your own sensitivity level, and join forces.

The best way to get through this allergy is with someone else who also can help you weed out problem products and make safe recommendations.

Don't trust anyone just because they sound right, or are saying what you want to hear.  Sometimes the thing that sounds the most unbelievable with this allergy, is the one you should rely on. 

In truth, question everything.


(If you're part of our groups, please also see terminology descriptions: http://no-corn.blogspot.com/2018/03/defining-your-sensitivity-level-for-our.html)

Avoiding corn in the bedroom: Corn-free gets sexy

We're having a good and much needed discussion about sex, corn, and allergic reactions on our favorite forum, Delphi Avoiding Corn: "Condoms and STD Protection?" and we'd love to get as much user-tested information as possible.

Since most pills do contain corn, finding a good contraceptive can be difficult, plus trying to be safe by protecting yourself from diseases just adds to the fun of this allergy.

We firmly believe in living a full and happy corn-free life, and this is one area with a lot of pitfalls. (The last thing anyone needs during those intimate times is a life or death health episode. For some reason that  tends to ruin the mood.)

We're also discussing kissing as the exchange of any bodily fluids can put you at risk of an allergic reaction if the other person eats your allergens.

So please, come join the discussion and share your experiences. (Registration is free)

Tis the season for love and sharing. Right? :)

(We'll be using any information shared to help improve our corn-free products list in this much needed area.)