about ashley

If you’ve stumbled across this blog or someone sent this your way as your story sounds a bit like mine, welcome!

 

My agreement to you in this blog is to be honest about experiencing food allergies and sensitivities for the first time as an adult. I’ll be candid about all the emotions, experiences, tips, and tricks that I’ve learned along my nearly six-year journey basically learning how to eat again (fun stuff, huh).

 

As you’re reading this, I’m currently working with an amazing nutritionist who is guiding me through a strict food plan. After looking at my allergy test results and an MRT test she’s been instrumental in shaping my food plan starting with about 20 single-ingredient foods (think salt, celery, chicken) and working to build up to a broader diet while keeping my reactions and inflammation as low as possible.

 

This is the first time in my journey that I’m feeling like I finally have some answers and results. But I could definitely not go through this journey without her and my support team, you know who you are and I’m so thankful for you.

 

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Starting at the beginning.

 

My food journey likely starts at a very early age, but none of the signs were big enough then to warrant too much concern or next steps. It’s been one of those things I can look back on now and say there were some early signs. Hindsight is always 20/20.

 

More recently this food journey began with a visit out to London to see my sister who was studying abroad at the time. During that trip I ate an amazing sandwich full of ham, cheese, egg, and a perfectly toasted full-fledged gluten bun. Sort of kidding, I thought that sandwich was going to kill me across the pond. There are images of me for the rest of the trip with just the blankest look in my eyes as my body was thrown into a rage trying to rid itself of what I consumed.

 

At that time, I had just graduated and had no interest, time, or money to try to figure out what had happened and if I should do anything about it.

 

So, as it goes, my body continued to yell at me for attention.

 

A bit later I was out of the country again visiting Canada with Paige on a sister trip. I’d like to begin with a continual blanket apology to her for that trip. She’s the absolute picture of a sister you could only dream to have, one that is always there for you in good times and in hard ones. In the hard times, she’s always finding ways to raise your spirit with laughter. On that vacation, she was with me through intense pain and bathroom urgency ending up with a trip to the emergency room.

 

Another tummy tantrum, so I started to listen. Not well, but a start.

 

After the emergency room, I met with my primary care doctor to share these concerns and discuss the next steps I should start to take. We decided to start with blood work and an endoscopy. All findings came back relatively normal with slightly elevated white blood cell counts. This was the first time I started to feel a bit crazy about what I was experiencing. Why was my body reacting, but doctors didn’t think anything was wrong?

 

Even though the tests came back okay, we decided to look at diet changes to see if that could help the gut pain and reactions.

 

The first thing on the cutting block was dairy. Diary, bring on the tears. Butter, cheese, and ice cream all gone in a moment.

 

Did I start to feel better? Yes.

Did I feel that much better? Honestly, no.

Was I starting to learn about grieving … food? Yes. How odd.

 

With the positive indications about cutting out dairy, we moved to cut out gluten too and see if that helped more. I’ll share more in upcoming blogs about the grieving process of  giving up foods and all the social and community aspects that come along with  it.

 

That year I said goodbye to so many foods and was on a constant learning journey of what foods contained dairy or gluten. If you’re on this journey you know that they are included in just about everything. Reading labels became a pastime along with so many articles about how to convert to a lifestyle and diet with these two food groups removed.

 

Yet, my tummy tantrums weren’t done.

 

The scariest experience to date happened on a movie night with Paige. Have I mentioned how much of God send it is to have her in my life? We were snuggled in her apartment treating ourselves to a snack of bananas with chocolate chips. Not even 15 minutes after eating the banana I lost consciousness. From what has been described to me, my body went into an intense time urgently getting rid of this food.

 

Terrified, I knew I needed to figure this out.

 

The next steps included meeting with my allergist and taking a prick test for about 50 foods that I might be allergic to and that might be causing these reactions. My results were an arm full of red reaction spots, but banana didn’t react at all. Did I mention that I felt crazy? I was told that allergies are a mix of “art and science”, so we just must listen to our bodies and not consume things if they cause such strong reactions even if they don't show up on tests. 

 

With these inconclusive allergy findings (can you hear the eye roll), I was now wiping down all groceries as we were heavy into March 2020 experiencing all the pandemic feelings on top of my continually increasing anxiety about my health.

 

My reactions just continued to increase to the point where it was honestly hard to leave the house. I wasn’t sure what foods I might encounter, what reactions I might have, where restrooms would be and who would be around if a severe reaction happened to administer my Epi-Pen. Not a fun existence and it just honestly felt easier to isolate myself from the world. I could feel myself continue to lose parts of my personality, but between the pain and brain fog I didn’t care.

 

I knew I needed help, so I started engaging with a functional medicine clinic as all traditional medical results came back mostly normal. This clinic was a life saver at a time when I needed medical professionals to surround me and help me start to get answers to the ever-growing list of questions.

 

The team that surrounded me included a primary doctor, chiropractor, nutritionist, and life coach. This team went to work helping me learn such important lessons including:

 

• That my body was telling me something was wrong and I needed to stop and truly listen to what she was saying.

• How to get out of fight or flight mode through breathing techniques.

• The connection between mindset and gut creating a continual loop of anxiety and depression if not addressed.

• Reaction differences between food allergies, sensitivities, and intolerances.

• How to evaluate my gut bacteria and how to re-calibrate it.

• The power of working with professionals on food plans and gut healing.

• Techniques to become more mentally and physically strong to combat future reactions.

• The necessity to document your journey to become your own health advocate.

 

After about a year, I left the clinic armed with new tools and more confidence. I still didn’t have all the food reaction questions answered, but I had many more resources to speak to these reactions with medical professionals and work through them when they arose.

 

I also left the clinic knowing that my relationship with food and overall health would be a journey I’d likely be on for the rest of my life.

 

That journey had some high points, but also brought me to one of my lowest earlier this year. Reactions were continuing to escalate and every day I was in pain. Every. Single. Day. In addition to intense stomach pain, I experienced headaches, debilitating brain fog, ear ringing, cloudy vision, dizzy spells, exhaustion, inflammation, weight gain and very irregular bathroom habits.

 

All the side effects made me feel like I’d never make it out and I was becoming more and more depressed. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it because I hadn’t experienced depression before, but I was absolutely in the pit of it with no clear path out. I was constantly canceling plans, missing a friend’s wedding in Honduras and fully isolating myself from the outside world. If you’re a friend of mine reading this, I’m truly sorry that I shut down.

 

In tearful conversations I shared that I might need a "babysitter" of sorts who would teach me how to eat and hold my hand along the full food discovery journey. And that’s when I met my nutritionist.

 

Within FOUR days of implementing her MRT results-based food plan, my symptoms drastically improved. Within about two months, my symptom scores which tracked how I was feeling went from a high, negative rating of 152 down to a positive 36!

 

Obviously, all of this has me cautiously optimistic as I’ve seen positive signs before. Yet, nothing has been this positive and we’re now over 80 days into the program.

 

The more I’ve started to be vulnerable and really tell this story, the more people have reached out as they’ve experienced similar journeys of pain and difficulty finding answers. If there are a bunch of us out there trying to figure out why our guts are yelling at us, let’s be a community. I want to walk with you as much as I’d like you to walk with me on this journey. We are not alone.

 

With love,

Ashley