Allergy Symptoms
take a second to sign up for my monthly SpiritZine.
What do allergy symptoms look like, you ask? Well, that is a really good question. They don't all look the same. In fact, an allergy to the same thing could look different in different people. One of the best examples of this is the MSG allergy. 
I'm allergic to mono-sodium glutamate (MSG). My lips and tongue turn bright red and I feel short of breath when I eat something with too much MSG in it. My friend Gary gets heart palpitations when he eats MSG. And Joanne gets an upset stomach. Same substance. Same allergy. Different allergy symptoms. And if there weren't so much information around about allergic reactions to MSG, we might all think we were having a reaction to something different.
A shellfish allergy is another allergy which can display different symptoms in different people. Hives is one of the most common reactions for someone with a shellfish allergy. But there are others. For some, shellfish is deadly. These people can go into anaphylactic shock and die in a very short time if they do not get the proper care. Now fortunately, that only happens to a very small number of people but that allergy symptom is very different from the previous one of hives.
Gluten allergies are so common these days that is might bear looking at their symptoms. My friend Becky has a gluten allergy. Her belly becomes bloated and she gets a headache when she eats anything with gluten in it. Some people get very tired when they eat gluten containing foods. And gluten doesn't just occur in bread. Anything with wheat in it, has gluten in it. That means pasta, some kinds of beer, cakes, pies, cookies - practically all the things our western culture considers good eats, have gluten in them.
A milk allergy also known as lactose intolerance is one of the most common allergies as well as one of the most unrecognized. I mean, milk is good for every body! Right? No. Not right. I'm a good example of that one. I grew up drinking milk. I liked it. I didn't associate my bloating, gas and other kinds of intestinal discomfort with my milk drinking. I guess I was in my early 20s before I began to make the connection between my discomfort and my milk drinking. If I drank milk, I had intestinal discomfort. If I didn't drink milk, I didn't have it. Now, fortunately for me, this same thing didn't seem to apply to eating ice cream. Maybe the fact that the milk is cooked in the process of making ice cream changes its makeup. Yogurt is ok for me to. It's just that big, tall, ice cold glass of milk that distresses my system. Chocolate milk too. Every 4 or 5 years I try again to drink milk but nothing has ever changed. I'm still allergic to it. I still get intestinal distress when I drink it as do millions of others who haven't yet made the connection. I hope they can make that connection soon.
Return to Spirituality and The Many Faces of God 
|
