Wow, I had known for years that MSG was a trigger for my migraines, and generally avoided it like the plague. I hadn’t even thought of the constant fatigue, throat irritations, chest tightness, and shortness of breath I often had to fight.

The last 3 years I have struggled with psoriasis on the bottom of my feet. They had been somewhat troublesome for many years after becoming extremely swollen from overuse, heat, and an adverse reaction to Sulfa antibiotics. Always somewhat dry and callused, they now became hot, swollen, and cracked to the point I felt like I was walking on razor blades. Many months of rest, bathing, creaming and gradually healing, I could still only go out after taping up my feet to avoid cracking. Later, I began to notice sudden relapses, most notably one within half an hour of eating from a Chinese buffet with a group from our church. It was unmistakable. I phoned the restaurant, questioned them about MSF content, and was basically told that ALL the sauce-containing food had MSG in it, and that the Soya sauce also has small quantites in it. Theoretically, I could have had MSG=free food only if I had asked for it and not added soy sauce. Well, I rested up with lots of fresh food, water, and Benadryl antihistamines for the next few days, and got over it. But now I became aware of relapses after eating even a few chip or crackers, and have become an avid reader of labels. IT IS TOTALLY DISGUSTING – THE ONLY FOOD THAT IS HALF WAY SAFE IS THE STUFF I COOK MYSELF WITH INGREDIENTS FROM THE GARDEN MARKET. Now that I am getting older, have bad feet and would love the odd meal prepared for me, in the end I have to do it all myself.

In addition, I strongly suspect pork as another trigger.

I also have had to eliminate all rubber and latex from my environment, especially my feet, and that is no easy “feat” so to speak. Apparently some of us are allergic to the rubber, latex, products which are used to form it, and the glues used to stick our wonderful running shoes together. It is almost impossible to buy purely leather shoes anymore.

It seems one can have “rubber/fruit” allergies, which includes papaya and soya as well as many tropical fruit. It speaks well to me for the concept of the 50-mile diet. I always thought that the ordinary tree fruits like apples, pears, plums, cherries, etc. agreed with me far better than the faraway-imported products like bananas, papayas, oranges, pineapples, kiwis, etc. IT’S BACK TO BASICS FOR THIS GIRL, AND here’s hoping to keep walking for many years to come.

After a week of antihistamines and cream from the doctor, my eye swelling has gone down and it’s just the itchy, sore rash I still have. I just wish it would go away. I need to get back to work and it’s making me paranoid about what I eat.

when i was 13 i felt exactly like you do now and wrote just the same things in my diary.

people change. at your age it sounds like a betrayal to go against the way you see things now. but when you get older you get more wisdom, and you understand things more deeply.

moms are pains in the ass. they’re supposed to be. daughters are pains in the ass. that’s their job, too. it’s all for a reason, and when you grow up, it’ll all be better between you and your mom, and in another 20 years from now you’ll be saying the same things about your teenager.

that’s how it works. it doesn’t make sense now, but it will. i hope you’re writing it all down, because you’re pretty articulate, and it would be good to come back to what you thought and felt as a teenager when you’re in your 20s or old – in your 30s, or ancient, like me, in my 50s.

and i do know, that’s my point. it’s universal. it happens in every family. you just think you’re alone.