MSG - Monosodium Glutamate

[onebigpill]

I’m in my 50s now, but starting when I was about 13 years old, I would occasionally have diarrhea. When I was in my early 20s, I started having dinner at a restaurant on a regular basis and discovered it always caused diarrhea. When I researched this together with the help of the restaurant, I found that I was sensitive to MSG in ranch salad dressing. The reaction happens within 20 minutes. I start to feel unwell and then begin having terrible stomach cramps. Then the worst diarrhea, continued terrible stomach cramps. In later years I would sometimes vomit. Then I began having cold sweats, a racing heart, and occasionally had to go to the emergency room. It was suggested by Doctors that I had issues with anxiety. “MSG doesn’t cause these symptoms.” They also said it wasn’t an allergy but a food sensitivity. Now, in my 50s I get a diagnosis of MC. I’m grateful to say that my WD is not nearly as painful as when I have MSG. I worry, though, will that be my future with other food sensitivities? Do many of you experience horrible cramping and pain? Does anyone else have this sensitivity to MSG? I react to chemically added MSG, but not naturally occurring MSG.

Thanks for listening and for your support.

[tex]

This is just a wild guess, based on various posts that I can recall, but it appears that somewhere between 1/3 and half of us experience severe pain, cramps, etc. with reactions, while others have diarrhea without significant pain. When microscopic colitis was initially described in the medical literature, it was incorrectly described as a painless syndrome, so that's why gastroenterologists made that mistake for decades. When a patient would complain of pain, they would assure the patient that the pain must be caused by something other than MC. Hopefully, most of them have learned better by now.

Personally, when my MC was initially active, the pain and cramps were so severe that they would sometimes cause me to double over in agony.

Re: MSG, I have a hunch the medical profession has a lot to learn about what MSG can do.

Back when I was reacting, roughly 2 decades ago, whenever my reactions became severe, they were often accompanied by severe migraines that would begin about the time I got out of bed, and would usually last until the afternoon. Most of them were so severe that I couldn't go to work, so I went back to bed, instead, and tried to sleep it off (usually unsuccessfully). Before I developed MC, I never had a migraine in my life.

After I was in remission a few years, I started eating MSG flavored corn chips, because they didn't seem to cause any digestive system problems. But eventually I noticed that each time I ate a significant amount of them (more than I should have, because they were good, so I pigged out on them), I would develop an acephalgic migraine. By trial and error, I narrowed it down to where I was positive that the problem was the MSG. In case you've never heard of an acephalgic migraine, here's the definition:

An acephalgic migraine is a migraine without headache. Except for the absence of a headache, the visual symptoms during an acephalgic migraine are identical to the episodes that accompany a classic migraine aura.

I immediately stopped the MSG, and the acephalgic migraines also stopped (mostly). I believe I've had a few acephalgic migraines since then, but they're pretty rare now. I noticed that I was having one about a month or so ago, but it was much fainter than they used to be.

I hope this helps,

Tex