Originally Posted by
Ebeshakir
I agree with Robert here. In these situations, it is simply best to keep a food journal and document any symptoms experienced. I am an allergist and I see patients with this complaint often. Briefly, it is important not to conflate some terms so a couple definitions first to clarify:
1) Food allergy denotes a very specific immune response, with a very specific group of clinical manifestations. Namely, a patient who is truly allergic to food will have one of 4 systems involved - skin, GI tract, respiratory tract, and vascular system. Often the clinical response involves a combination of these systems. The reaction is fairly quick, within minutes in most, and is typically dose-dependent but there are patient-specific augmenting factors (concomitant upper respiratory illness, seasonal allergy, activity, other meds).
2) Food sensitivity is a term used often and can be confusing. Unfortunately, a great many different symptoms fall under this heading, and many people use this term to describe everything from belching to severe enteropathies (where your GI tract is chronically inflamed and does not absorb nutrients). Therefore its a blanket term, and does nothing to help convey a specific pattern of clinical reactions or denote a particular underlying pathophysiology.
Clearly you are experiencing some non-specific adverse food reaction, and what you call it I guess does not matter as much as how you treat it. I am a "less is more" kind of doctor when it comes to interventions and medications, and I like the concept of "letting food by thy medicine". With that being said I also agree with Robert in stating you have an "acute inflammatory response", in that patients who have this after foods feel like they have the flu. The mechanism by which this occurs is ill-defined, and symptom severity varies greatly. Whatever we call this syndrome, its just not defined well in the medical literature, and when we don't have a definition we are shooting in the dark with treatment strategies. Wheat is often a culprit, and I see patients frequently who test negative for wheat allergy as well as negative for celiac, but who clearly have symptoms of the inflammatory response that you describe after wheat consumption.
The food journal helps in the sense that it allows you document a pattern over time, whereby you recognize that consumption of a particular food or food group and then the subsequent clinical reaction are causally linked. Certainly seems like you have clearly documented this. However, as a side-note, and something to look into, is that many patients with hypothyroidism will have similar complaints due to undertreated thyroid disease, or the use of dessicated animal thyroid products - which vary greatly in bioavailability from batch to batch. I tell most patients to keep at it with the food journal, aggressively hydrate, avoid wheat, and try to eat clean (organic whole foods and preservative/refined sugar/dye-free). In your case, make sure your hypothyroidism is being treated by a boarded endocrine specialist.
Assuming the thyroid issues are well-managed and monitored, and your dietary journal is accurate, you seem to be reacting to grains (wheat, and now rice), and I wont get into pedantic distinctions, but patients who have this have to avoid all grains. This means eating only whole foods as noted above- meats, vegetables, fruits, eggs, milk, but no wheat/oats/rice/corn - there are several others but just best to avoid all grains. A food journal will help, and hopefully you wont have to avoid all grains, and sounds like you are able to tolerate oats for now, hopefully for good.