My wife has been diagnosed with MCS and MA. As her specialist said a \"Severe Environmental Illness\". Her food allergies with the highest and most likely to cause and have caused an anaphylactic reaction include egg, milk, all dairy products, rice, soybean, yeast, tomato, chocolate and food dyes, Those she is at highest risk of developing into an anaphylactic reaction include corn, oats, rye, wheat. Since these are the foods that are mostly used in bread and similar manifacture.
Are there any other grains or similar that can be used to produce bread or similar?
If so does anyone have receipes for the manufacture of these items?
At present my wife is having a hard time coming to terms with the loss of so many foods in the highest anaphylactic catagory, especially her favourite strawberries and the chocolate. She has eighteen food and vegetable items so far in the highest two allergy bracket.
This is a hard learning kerb for two people as her MCS and Medical S. have a very large number of items on them also (At least 30).
How do we cope with the sudden change of life style especially the foods as there is no doubt more will come.
How to I help my wife through this trying time, as she is feeling very depressed?

Believe it or not there are actually quite a number of grains and starch sources that can be used as alternatives to those your wife has become sensitive to. These include:

Potatoes
Rice
Tapioca
Buckwheat
Amaranth
Arrowroot
Millet
Montina
Lupine
Quinoa
Sorghum
Gram Flour (From chick peas/garbanzos)
Various Nut Flours

Some of these are often available in supermarkets nowadays but others you may have to go to a health food store for.

There are many great books out there with recipes for people with food sensitivities. You may want to read the reviews of these on Amazon.

For MCS I always recommend Multiple Chemical Sensitivity: A Survival Guide by Professor Pamela Reed Gibson as it deals a lot with how MCS affects people's lives and how to deal with the many problems encountered.

Hope this is of some help.<br /><br />Post edited by: Maff, at: 2008/08/31 21:42

Thanks for the information. We are still going through a period of identifying foods that my wife can eat.

I did not list all the food allergies that she has been identified to having a serious allergic reaction to, some of those are included in your list such as Rice and Potato, but the others are new and exciting.
We have tried the millet and she has survived the new taste and more important no alleric reaction at this time. So we will experiement with more of the grains that you have mentioned.
Thanks again and keep up the good work in helping people with the modern curse which my wife's allergist calls \&quot;Severe environmental illness\&quot;.

Glad to hear your experiement with millet seems to have been a success!

Just wanted to add something quickly. You may have heard this elsewhere but it is a good idea when you have multiple food sensitivities to rotate foods you can tolerate so as not to develop smore sensitivities. The accepted wisdom is not to eat the same food more frequently then every 3 days. Obviously this is not easy by any means but may be prudent to keep to this as much as possible.

Being fairly new to computing (no I am not young just very old) Matthew has been kind enough instructing me how to reply to your request for help. Firstly I am not seeking a claim to fame when I ask you to look up my article which Matthew added recently. The title is \&quot;An Allergic's Struggle.\&quot; (Don't confuse it with my poem of the same title, also on this website.)

I suggest you reading the article so that you will perhaps see that having the same illness and having been so terribly lucky in getting the diagnosis and treatment, I am of course not only sympathetic, but also understand the massive difficulties your wife lives with. Though I do not have anaphalaxis, one of my reactions being asthma (without any medication to help me) I do have considerable problems still.

Your initial call for help mentioning some of the difficulties for your wife speaks of the food side of things. Though you also speak of the M.C.S. the emphasize is naturally the foods which create the anaphalaxis, which must be terrifying.
You will understand more if you read my article,from what I learned whilst undergoing my diagnosis and treatment in that clinic, (It unfortunately closed soon after because the National Health refused to fund the treatment there any longer.) I learned then and subsequent experience has supported the
bucket theory. Actually fact not theory.
If you liken your illness,/ problem,/ system, call it what you will to a bucket. If your bucket becomes full (filled by all the things affecting you) then you become ill. If you avoid as many things as possible and manage to empty your bucket more and more then you could start to cope better (and feel better of course). Managing to 'empty your bucket by 'avoidance' bit by bit can allow you to tolerate things which will affect you more if your bucket becomes full again. Why I mention this particular aspect is for you is that,whilst being forced to concentrate of what effect foods have on your wife please do not forget that the chemical allergies/sensitivities are not only a part of her illness but are also a part of filling her bucket. In my learning and experience, both foods and chemicals will have to be addressed in attempting to lower the levels in her bucket. Don't ignore the one which may not be so easy to see the reactions to.
Both. Though foods will be eliminated from ones system in 4/5 days it takes about 11 days for some chemical your wife breathes in to actually be eliminated from her body. It would be a mistake to imagine that she has got away with breathing something in and because the effect has gone then that's the end of that. More exposure will accumulate and take about 11 days to vanish away. That is why the bucket emptying is so important.
(Even if avoidance is not already so obvious). My article only speaks of my reactions to chemicals because that was what was asked for of me and at that time I badly wanted to bring it to the fore. However I was reacting to multiple foods as well. Perhaps you have heard of 'The Healthy House'in Stroud Gloucs. They supply all manner of things useful for us 'Allergics' Bedding etc.etc.
I get chemical filter masks from there (can't find the phone number) but they will send you a brochure.
The masks have saved me from difficulties on many an occasion and I always carry one in my pocket and a spare in the car glove compartment. Avoiding filling my bucket is as important as avoiding an allergic reaction. A half empty bucket is the difference between managing to cope with any exposure and having an full blown allergic reaction if I have allowed my bucket to become full.
I have long stopped worrying when people stare at me when I am filling the car with petrol. Though I am often waiting to hear police car sirens having been mistaken for a masked bandit about to rob the cashier.
I use it near to perfumed people if I really can't avoid them and any other fumes and numerous situations. I'm not sure about now but \&quot;The Healthy House\&quot; used to have a good selection of books on Allergies. If you do think of getting any, then I found the really technical ones not as much help as the down to earth practical ones.
I know I make it sound easy--- keeping one's bucket less full, and of course it is far from easy but after 12 years experience of this illness I do assure you that it is very good advice and it is the only way I manage to live a reasonable life now. The emphasis is AVOIDANCE. This is long, and not I sincerely hope too boring. If there is anything whatever that you think I may be able to help you in any way whatever then please do feel free to reply.
Very good luck to you both. This illness affects the whole family and it is lovely to see how you are supporting your wife. My late husband was like that and it is so very important. I used to be a telephone support contact for Allergy U.K. and the sad stories were heartbreaking. None more than when family or a partner gave no support and worse still would not even accept there was a problem. I found (and still do sometimes) that the lonliness of this particular illness is one of the most horrible things.
Defending oneself and constantly trying to justify oneself to 'normal' people is soul destroying.
Attention seeking was a description of me I overheard by nursing staff in a hospital when I was in there for a broken foot. I even got advice from the ward domestic cleaner who came back and informed me that I could not have 'reacted to the disinfectant with which she was washing the floor because she had checked up and it was non allergic. I would love to have been able to kick her, if my leg had not been up in the air in plaster.
Bye Bye Ena
P.S. Checking this through I feel it makes the recovery prospects seem too dismal. They are not. I was living with an oxygen cylider beside me at first. Now I live a perfectly acceptable life. The more you work at emptying your bucket the more your immune system will thank you for the help you are giving it.
Ena<br /><br />Post edited by: Maff, at: 2008/09/09 21:08

Thank you Ena for the very good advice. At present Mary is still asleep as it is not yet 7-00 a.m. in our part of the world. I have no doubt that she will also wish to thank you.
The advice you offer is very good and is really good old fashion \&quot;Common Sense.\&quot;
I love the bucket theory and it is very true, the problem is that with so many chemicals been pumped into our lives either through food, the products that we live with and HAVE to use, and what is being pumped into the air, we often fine new things to go into the bucket.
But we will follow your advice and keep on emptying the bucket.
I have read your poem and left a comment for you.
Keep up the good work, as the more we talk about the problems or as my wife's specialist put it \&quot;Severe Environmental Illness,\&quot; the more people will hear, the more they will learn, the more they will know they are not on their own, the more they will start to voice their opinions.
Take care.