I May Be Allergic to Beer
We interrupt our regular programming for a personal note from the blogger: in a rather alarming plot twist, I seem to have developed an allergy to select foods. Beer may be on that list. Here's the story.
Four years ago, I developed a rash. It seemed to be an allergic reaction, but to what? Over the course of several days and an emergency-room visit, it emerged that peanuts were the cause. This was unexpected, as I’d been eating peanuts my whole life—and nuts constituted around 20% of my diet at the time. A test confirmed my brand-spanking new allergy: peanuts and tree nuts. Joy!
About six months later, this repeated, this time with a new allergy to sesame. It’s very odd to find that foods you’ve been eating for decades now poison you. It’s odder still to be poisoned and have no idea which foods might be the culprit. They are all suspects, and you suddenly have to confront the prospect that the very thing keep you alive is also something that makes you wish you were dead. Which new tasty treat must I now eliminate, and why am I eyeing that egg with such suspicion?
The best way to figure out what might be causing the problems is an elimination diet. You start with things few people are allergic to and slowly add in new categories. It’s a slow, dull process. In the course of the elimination diet that surfaced sesame as a malefactor, I also learned gluten was a minor irritant. Bready things (which I love) like scones and pizza were a problem, but there was a dosage threshold. With nuts and sesame, it requires just one. With gluten, I can get away with consuming more. Very good news! In particular, the amount of gluten in beer did not seem to be an issue. Whew. (It does confuse waitstaff when I order a beer and a gluten-free bun on my burger.)
Rashes have been a low-grade problem for the four years since. They flare up from time to time, usually for identifiable reasons. I’ve seen three dermatologists, several doctors and a skin-focused naturopath. The real breakthrough was finding a Chinese herbalist who prepared a concoction of very bitter powder for me to drink. It’s been the only thing that manages this at all—and allopathic medicine is at a total loss. In fact, when I visited the third dermatologist following a battery of every test they have to run, I mentioned my herbalist. :Oh, great!,” he said. “Just do that, then.” He confessed that even the diagnosis of eczema/atopic dermatitis was at best impressionistic because rashes remain stubbornly mysterious to western medicine. Aside from topicals and Prednisone, he had zero tools left to treat me. (A number of studies have verified the efficacy of Chinese herbal treatments in treating rashes.)
We now zip to my recent ramble through Europe, when the rash sprang up again. My stores of herbs were not getting the job done, so the day I traveled from Lewes to Manchester, I started a course of Prednisone I had for this circumstance. This is usually the silver bullet that resets the system and puts me back on track for normal maintenance. Not this time. After the course ran out, the rash sprang back into action in serious force. I was in Kraków at the time, something like ten days out, and I knew I was going to be screwed if I didn’t get more Prednisone. So in one of my more intrepid moments of travel, I managed to navigate the Polish health care system (thanks Google translate!) and got a second prescription, allowing me to finish the travel without incident.
My future nemeses?
I assumed I would be great when I got back to my herbalist, and indeed, she made me a potent batch designed to get me on track. That was two and a half weeks ago, and no change. I have a pretty bad rash that goes from my my neck down to my feet, and with all my various treatments, I’ve just barely managed to keep it at a level so that I can sort of function. I’m hoping to see yet another new naturopath who works with diet and gut health, and I’ll see my herbalist on Friday. It’s touch and go.
In the meantime, I’ve begun a new elimination diet that excludes most everything but the basics to survive. Beer is definitely off the menu—all booze, in fact. The alarming thing is that even this doesn’t seem to be helping all that much—though it is stopping matters from escalating. I have taken fasting days on the assumption that if I’m not eating, I can’t be giving my body something against which to revolt—but even that has done very little to improve matters.
I am still hopeful that I’ll return to my previous state of maintenance, but I’m also starting to have a gnawing fear that I’m about to enter a forced stage of ascetic living. Beer has always been right on the edge of problematic, so this doesn’t seem especially promising. At the very least, for the next month I’m going to be doing this diet, which means no beer. Given my day job, I’ve already had many people invite me to go to events or taste their products, and I’ve had to cancel events and offer apologies. I thought you could all do with a full update and accounting.
I’ll keep blogging. You might notice that there’s less content about drinking beer, at least for a month. All I can say is: bear with me. I hope it’s just a month.