The beginning

So April 2010 I finally decided to figure out what has been bothering my stomach for the last 15 years.  It was prompted by my sister getting sick and landing in hospital in the spring of 2009.  Her symptoms were scarily similar to the ones that I had been dealing with for the last 15 years.  My symptoms ended up flaring in the spring of 2009. My doctor attributed my symptoms to stress.  He gave me sleeping pills and told me to find a new job.

Early in 2010 I changed jobs.  I still had the symptoms, just not as severe.  I had seen this poster in his office about food sensitivity testing and I finally decided it was time to try it.  It would at least give me a base from which to estimate which foods have been bothering me.  I had always been daunted by elimination diets because I could not tie anything to a food, some times a food would bother me, other times it wouldn't.  That and I was addicted to wheat, how could I live without my baked goods?

When I got the results back I was overwhelmed.  How could I eliminate ALL those items?  Everything that I used to eat was on that list.  It came alphabetically.  I sorted it for convenience:

• Brewer's Yeast, Baker's Yeast, Malt (things that have been fermented and not distilled, MSG)
• Egg
• Cow's Milk, Goat's Milk, Cheese 
• Rye, Wheat
• Beans: Green, Kidney, Lima, Navy, Pinto
• Yellow Squash, Tomatoe, Alfalfa
• Blueberry, Cranberry, Cherry, Dates, Papaya, Pineapple, Lime
• Ginger, Peppermint, Safflower, Sesame