I survived vacation but I just don't feel "right"

[suzieq]

Hi all,
I recently went on vacation, a 12 hour road trip to NJ to visit family. We ate a lot of meals out. I chose what seemed to be the least offensive to my gf, df, ef, sf and low fodmap diet. I did pretty well. I mentioned the allergies when ordering. One restaurant offered a gf salmon dish, so I ordered it. I don’t know if the loose stools the next day were because of that meal or a side effect of a previous meal. I took Imodium and Pepto Bismol which stopped me up totally for the drive home.

I have to tell you when looking at menu’s, the word POISON comes to mind. That’s all I could think of was that these foods are poison to someone like me. LOL I told my husband I won’t be going out to eat for a long time. He likes to go out because I make everything plain.

I have been reading some posts which mentioned MC symptoms getting worse due to heat and humidity, well that’s what it is here in NC. I haven’t felt “right” since I’ve been home. My intestines just rumble on and on but the BM’s are norman’s. I take an antihistamine daily and just increased it to 2 daily. I read here that someone was having better luck with Allegra, I’m going to try it. Hopefully that will do the trick. I have been taking Costco’s Kirkland brand.

I have been checking everything I eat. Is Canola oil a bad choice for us? I buy these gf veggie chips in Aldi’s but Canola oil or safflower oil or sunflower oil could be used. I also read in one post that Vitamin E is in my Rice Chex. I didn’t realize that Vitamin E is soy. Is it in all the cereals out there?

Thanks,
Susanne

[brandy]

Hi Susanne,

I feel your pain. I don't do well with the chips that could be a choice of oils. I do better with chips that are only sunflower or only avocado oil etc but they are tougher to find.

[suzieq]

Hi Brandy,

My daughter sent me a care package that had sweet potato chips that used coconut oil and you could taste the coconut in the chip. I'm not fond of coconut, I didn't like them that much. I'll have to keep on looking.

[hollyweb]

Dear Susanne,

I am sorry for this after-effect of your vacation! Yet proud and inspired that you had the courage to go on such a trip! In my recent discussion with a long-time celiac (I am non-celiac but gluten ++++++++ sensitivity, as many of us here are), she mentioned that she and her husband (who also has casein, beef and other food intolerances) had just returned from a trip to Canada. She told me that there was such a DIFFERENCE in that country; they were treated with the utmost respect in every restaurant, which all had extensive gluten-free, dairy-free, soy-free and egg-free choices, plus the chefs were very willing and used to cooking custom dishes for their clients!

Wow! That sounded encouraging!

~ Holly

[suzieq]

Hi Holly,

Thanks, that's good to know. I would like to visit Canada someday but I think it would be a trip that we would fly. I hate long road trips!! We visited Asheville, NC and found a few restaurants that accommodated those of us who have these sensitivities. It was a nice dining experience.

My son is a sous chef in NYC and when I visited there in February he told me not to come to his restaurant, I wouldn't be able to eat anything there. Most of the restaurants that he has worked in were the same. He did bring me to a restaurant that a friend of his works in that made my dish to suit my sensitivities. BTW - My son told me that there is no such thing as non-celiac gluten sensitivity, he got that from some article he read somewhere and talking to him is like preaching to the choir, I couldn't change his mind, I wanted to hit him over the head!!! Luckily my new GI Dr. down here in NC was a good find, in fact, he handed me a list of additional foods to avoid. So far, so good. So different than the Dr. who treated me in NJ.

I started taking 2 antihistamines a day this week and there is a lot less rumbling going on in my tummy, I hope it continues. I'm still going to try the brand Allegra.

Thanks,
Susanne

[tex]

Hi Susanne,

Show your son this article:

http://gut.bmj.com/content/early/2016/0 ... 11964.long

If he can't or won't read articles in medical journals, show him one of these. They're identical articles except that the first one is from the U. S. National Library of Medicine and the second is from Healthday:

https://medlineplus.gov/news/fullstory_160153.html

https://consumer.healthday.com/vitamins ... 13362.html

Tex

[suzieq]

Hi Tex,

Thanks so much for the links. My son will be visiting in a few weeks and I will give it to him to read. My son has a hard head just like some of those Drs. He's getting nothing but plain food here, unless my husband and him go out to eat. LOL

BTW - we stayed at a Comfort Inn in VA on our trip back from NJ. Breakfast is included. I was pleasantly surprised when we went to breakfast that there was a bin, marked gluten free, that had Chex in it!!!

Thanks again.

Susanne