Yup... even my abnormalities are abnormal! Seriously, this syndrome is so rare that most allergists have never even seen a case of it. Not sure how I got so lucky.
Basically, it's pretty much like it sounds. If I eat something that I'm even slightly allergic to, and exercise while it's still in my system, it provokes an anaphylactic reaction - which is a very severe allergic reaction - think bee sting, swelling up like a sweet potato, rush her to the emergency room before she stops breathing - type of reaction.
I've had a grand total of 4 said reactions in my lifetime, before I had the great fortune to have stumbled upon a doctor who was up on her reading and managed to diagnose it. Since then, I've had to be extremely careful about mixing food and exercise, but I have managed to avoid repeating the experience. Though I do carry an Epi-pen with me just in case.
My general strategy, aside from avoiding all foods that I'm allergic to, has been to wait at least 2.5 hours after eating to do any sort of exercise. Now this worked when "exercise" used to mean a workout of 45 minutes to an hour, but my strategy wasn't quite so successful once I bought a road bike and started cycling regularly for 3-4 hours at a time.
Suffice it to say, I was suffering from grumbling tummy syndrome BIG TIME!
So, here's where it helps to have a stepmother who is also an allergist. She was able to work with me to determine that there are a few foods which I can safely mix with exercise, so I can eat right before I ride rather than having to wait a few hours.
Basically, at this point, my "safe list" includes, potatoes (either white or sweet) eggs and salt. Sooooo... on days when I'm planning to ride, my breakfast looks something like this:
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| Boiled eggs and sweet potatoes |
But it sorta got me to thinking about breakfast in general, and wondering what most people consider to be "normal" breakfast foods.
When I was a kid I ate eggs every single morning of my life. My mother believed in a high protein breakfast, so we generally had eggs with toast and orange juice, and on special occasions she'd add in some sausage or bacon and hash browns.
My dad, on the other hand, is a high-fiber low-fat breakfast man, so for him breakfast has always been either bran flakes or oatmeal with skim or powdered milk.
When I lived in Norway, the morning meal usually consisted of open faced sandwiches of cheese or cold cuts, and maybe a soft boiled egg on special occasions.
As for me... my breakfast habits have changed numerous times over the years, but presently since I'm trying to eat as many veggies as possible, breakfast on non-riding days tends to be some sort of veggie and egg dish with the occasional piece of fruit on the side.
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| Fried Eggs with Fiesta Style Veggies |
And I've never understood the people who seem to be able to eat dessert foods for breakfast like pancakes, waffles, muffins, sweet rolls, donuts, toast with jelly or jam, sweet cereals, fruit juice, etc.
My taste buds would LOVE it, but I fear my blood sugar levels would not, and it would be sorta like a migraine in the making for me.
Anyhow, I'm curious to know... what do you usually eat for breakfast? Did you get your breakfast habits from your parents, or did you come about your morning menu in a different way?
I actually don't like eating breakfast. I'm not hungry first thing in the morning and forcing myself to eat can have bad results. Usually after about an hour (and a cup of coffee) I'm good with a cup of Greek yogurt maybe with a little honey in it. On weekends, when I can sleep in, lounge in bed with my coffee, read the news, catch up on blogs, etc, I do love to go out for a traditional brunch with eggs, bacon, potatoes, and grits.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of coffee cake, sweet rolls, doughnuts, and other sticky, sugary stuff for breakfast just makes my stomach churn most of the time. Every once in a very rare while I crave something sweet like french toast or pancakes, but I often find that after a few bites I'm done, so I'll usually order my eggs and try to talk my guy into ordering the sweet stuff so I can have a bite. :)
I can't stomach food first thing in the morning either, so I generally start the day with a cup of tea. But usually after I've been up for an hour or so the fog wears off and I become ravenously hungry. But since "morning" is generally defined as around 10-11am for me, perhaps "brunch" would be a more accurate description of my first meal of the day! :-)
DeleteGlad you found something that works for you! Eggs and potatoes sounds like a delicious breakfast to me. I'll eat just about anything for breakfast - I grew up eating cereal or leftovers (pizza, soup, casserole, whatever) for breakfast so I guess you can say I take after my family. I'm so hungry when I wake up in the morning that all I ever have is cereal because it's quick. I buy the granola kind with nuts and eat it with cow's milk, so there's some protein there. It usually keeps me going for about 3 hours before I need a snack. But even if I ate a more typical "big" breakfast (hash browns, eggs, fruit, toast), it wouldn't keep me full much longer than that anyway.
ReplyDeleteHa! So it sounds like the key ingredient for you is speed! Wait... that didn't come out right. Well, you know what I mean! :-)
DeleteI do remember eating cold pizza for breakfast in college. But somehow it never occurred to me that one would eat cold cereal because one was starving and it was quick. That should have been obvious, but for some reason it wasn't!
I'm not a big breakfast person, but the older I get, the more I need something before lunch. During the week that'so usually a Greek yogurt an hour or so after I get to work. I do sometimes still eat sweet breakfasts on weekends, even though it makes me feel like crap after.
ReplyDeleteI miss those open faced Norwegian breakfast sandwiches, I loved them so much more than traditional American ones. I still make myself wheat, cheese and cucumber toast sometimes. :)
There's nothing quite like those Norwegian sandwiches - with lots of butter and the tubes of mayonnaise that you squirt on top. YUM! I especially loved the brown cheese - OMG... bread, butter, brunøst, with an ice cold glass of whole milk. It's an artery clogging feast! Plus, you just can't find bread like that here. Here I go... pining for the fjords again!
DeleteI generally have chocolate milk. It's not quite as evil as it sounds--it's made with skim milk and chocolate syrup which, in turn, is made of equal parts cocoa, sugar, and water.
ReplyDeleteThat always sounds good, even early in the morning. I do get hungry a couple of hours later, but that's true even when I have a high-protein, low-sugar breakfast such as a cheese omelet or eggs and sausage.
But I also have traditional breakfast foods for dinner or for second breakfast fairly often. In summer, that's cereal (usually half Uncle Sam's healthy high-fiber and half granola or other sugary cereal) or a "smoothie" (by which I mean a milkshake with fruit in it). In winter, oatmeal.
Growing up we mostly had cereal with milk--usually low-sugar cereal like Cheerios or corn flakes, but we'd add sugar. And sometimes oatmeal or cream of wheat. Later we would sometimes have breakfast bars (the kind that are very cookie like) with milk or Instant Breakfast, which is flavored sugar-milk with vitamins. So as an adult, I switched from Instant Breakfast to home-made chocolate milk (+ vitamin pills) because it was cheaper.
That was for weekdays. For weekends, we'd have something special. Scrambled eggs and bacon or sausage and biscuits. Pancakes or French toast and sausage. And later, "shipwreck" (scrambled eggs mixed with other things like potatoes, sausage, and cheese). And now omelets, my favorites being cheese omelets with chili on top or chili omelets with queso on top. I make those same things now (for random meals), except my pancake breakfast is just banana chocolate chip pancakes (with butter) and milk instead of plain pancakes (with butter and powdered sugar), sausage, and milk.
I learned about smoothies from grad school. A bunch of us would exercise before class and then meet in the common room, each bringing our own fruit, and someone would throw it all in the blender and we'd share.
For me, the key to eating dessert or dessert-like foods for breakfast (or any meal) is a big glass of milk. But I'm fortunate not to have blood sugar problems (that are big enough to notice) or migraines. I only get smaller headaches that respond to ibuprofen.
On cruise ships I often ended up with muffin + milk (especially a bran/carrot/spice sort of muffin) or oatmeal (with nuts and dried fruit and brown sugar) and milk for breakfast. I don't really want to eat a lot for breakfast, but I always want to eat something.
Hmmm... that's an interesting theory about the milk. I think it probably does have a blood sugar stabilizing effect because of the protein.
DeleteI've always had a love/hate relationship with milk. As a kid we were only allowed skim milk, and I thought it was disgusting! I'd do just about anything to avoid drinking it, but usually Mom wouldn't let me leave the table until I drank at least a few swallows of it - of course by that point it was warm and disgusting. OY! I remember holding my nose and gagging it down. It still makes me feel like puking.
But then I went to Norway where they drank whole milk - plus at the time at least, all of the Norwegian dairies used grass-fed cows. OMG! I couldn't believe that was the same beverage! It was sweet, and creamy and totally delicious! Of course, by that point I'd avoided milk for so many years that I'd become lactose intolerant. Oh, the irony!
I also didn't like milk much until the first summer I worked at summer camp at a place with low temperatures in the mid 70s and highs in the mid 90s or worse with high humidity. For drinks we would have the option of room-temperature water, room-temperature fruit drink, or ice cold milk.
DeleteI've always liked it with thinks like cake or cookies though.
I actually prefer skim milk. We grew up drinking powdered skim milk (not Carnation, which is yuck-o, but Sanalac, which isn't as bad). So un-reconstituted skim milk tastes good to me now. Whole milk tastes like someone mixed in too much milk powder.
I agree, warm milk is the worst. I don't know how people can say that this helps for some things (like falling asleep). "No! I'm sleepy! I swear! I don't need any warm milk!" (Now warm milk with sugar and cocoa in it--that's a different story.)
Well... I'm glad there are some people who like the taste of skim milk, and I have to agree that it's vastly preferable to powdered milk. But even though I enjoy whole milk, I could never just drink a glass of it... I only like it in coffee or with things like chocolate cake.
DeleteWow, you really know how to do allergies. I've heard of exercise induced asthma, but not allergies. I'm glad that you've figured out how to manage them.
ReplyDeleteI wake up starving and need to eat immediaely. That usually starts with a glass of juice to get some sugar in quickly. Then it's a bowl of cereal. An hour or two later, I'm hungry again (wheat cereal lasts the longest), and I have some kind of protein like cottage cheese or yellow cheese. That keeps me until I get to work where I have a peanut butter sandwich and an apple. I eat a little bit all of the time. Can you tell? Apparently, I started out this way according to my mother. She was feeding all of the time.
As far as breakfast sweets go, I have to have other food in my stomach, or I have the blood sugar problem also. So, I eat only a little if I'm having other protein feeds or wait until later in the day.
OK... so you must be one of those people who can follow the dieting strategy of eating small meals throughout the day. That always backfires for me because if I don't eat a "real" meal, I get REALLY hungry again in an hour or two and then I eat like a pig!
DeleteAnyhow, having other foods in one's stomach before eating sweets seems like a good plan - perhaps this is why the tradition of eating them for dessert began?
I definitely eat a good breakfast as I have a physical job. Typically it will be steel cut oats, greek yogurt and fruit with a coffee. Sometimes I will have a hard boiled egg too. In the summer, I swap out the steel cut oats for homemade granola.
ReplyDeleteMy family breakfasts would be fried eggs, meat, potatoes and toast or sometimes cereal. My habits now are developed by learning what foods give me energy and make my body feel good.
Interesting that you find oats give you more energy than eggs. I guess that makes sense since the carbs are supposed to provide energy. Anyhow, sounds like you've found what works for you!
DeleteUmmmm...soo...
ReplyDeleteI'm that group you don't understand. I can eat a half dozen donuts for breakfast. Easily. We are BIG on sweets for breakfast. Eggs give me heartburn and gallbladder pain, so I avoid those. I'm really bad about protein for breakfast. If I have anything, it's PB on a carb. As a vegetarian, there really aren't many breakfast protein options (totally not a scrambled tofu fan). I definitely get in carb comas, but they are just soooo good that I can't imagine NOT having something sweet when I want breakfast.
Ha! I knew it! Why is it always the skinny-minnies who can get away with this sort of thing? You know we're all jealous. But that's wild about the eggs giving you heartburn and gallbladder pain. I guess I should count myself lucky that eggs don't bother me - if I started having problems with eggs too, I'd be in a world of hurt!
DeleteSpeaking of vegetarian protein options - back when I was still being vegetarian I used to rely greatly on those protein powders. I gave them up because I pretty much gave up soy, but they do make them from whey too, which is supposed to be better for you (of course, not so much if you're lactose intolerant). Anyhow, I'd sometimes put it in oatmeal or a smoothie - which helped my blood sugar issues. I thought about trying to find some replacement - rice protein powder maybe? But finally I concluded it would be better to just stick with non-scientific foods!
Now I really think we were somehow sisters in a past life, because the Chief Engineer also has food-dependent anaphylaxis! Turns out that he's mildly allergic to eggs, unless he eats eggs and then does exercise, in which case we're off to the hospital right quick.
ReplyDeleteIt's been a challenge for me to find things to eat for breakfast that keep me full for very long. Oddly enough, if I start breakfast with a salad I don't get hungry till lunchtime. But salads at breakfast seem weird to me. I've settled on two eggs and a gluten-free muffin, since wheat gluten seems to encourage mania in bipolar folks like me.
I might try your sweet potato and egg bfast sometime! It sounds very tasty.
Good Lord! How did you and I manage to collect all of the allergic weird between the two of us and our loved ones? Most of my really serious reactions have happened after eating celery - though in at least one case it had to have been something else. Anyhow, my allergic list is just soooooo long, that it could have been anything.
DeleteOddly enough, your salad for breakfast thing makes total sense to me. For some reason veggies really help to make me feel full. I think that's part of why I've taken to eating my veggie & egg creations.
BTW - my stepmom wants me to be tested for gluten allergies too. I've sorta been avoiding it because I really, REALLY don't want anything else to land on the prohibited list!
Cereal with milk for me, ever since I was a child. That's whole milk, always. I can't stand skim milk. Did you know that dairies used to pay to dispose of it - they poured it down disused mines - until some marketing whizkid came up with the brilliant idea of telling people it's healthy?
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a child I had cornflakes or something similar, with sugar. These days I have oats with chopped fruit and nuts. I used to have sugar with it until I offered some to a friend one day and she said, "No thanks, there's enough sugar in the fruit." It suddenly struck me that I didn't really need the extra sugar, so I stopped having it.
Ha! OK... that is just fabulous about the skim milk! My personal opinion is that pouring it down a mine shaft would be just about the best use I can think of for that horrible stuff! I think I heard that soy flour has a similar history. It was what was leftover after making some other soy product, and they found a way to convince people (and processed food companies) to start putting it in other things. So, it's not just the farm animals that get fed "waste products"!
DeleteI *MUST* eat breakfast or I can't think. I find that if you need to do any sort of problem solving or analytical work, an empty tummy is not your friend. I start each morning with a pb/ab-j-c on w/h. That means a mixture of peanut and almond butter with no sugar added jam sprinkled with chia seeds on high fiber wheat bread. I also drink green tea. Alas, I am a pancake lover but always make whole wheat/high fiber and fruit varieties.
ReplyDeleteFor TBG, who has different dietary needs, it is often oatmeal/fruit and yogurt but he must have a hard-boiled egg mid morning. When hes' in heavy cycling mode, we work really hard to balance complex carbs and protein. His dietary needs are waaay more complex than mine. But yours makes his look super simple!
Breakfast is a must!
I'm gonna have to do some research on chia seeds. You're actually the first person I've ever heard mention them, but then I accidentally caught a few minutes of the Dr. Oz show (which comes on before the local news) and l and behold, the topic of the day was chia seeds! People seem to think they're some sort of miracle food! Anyhow, I'll have to see what plant family they're in so I'll know if it's safe to try them or not.
DeleteAnd cycling certainly does create some dietary challenges - it's really amazing to me how much I need to eat when I'm in riding mode. If our rides get any longer I'm gonna have to find a way to bring a snack along. I suppose a hard boiled egg would be easy... maybe I could stick a baked potato in my pocket? Oh my... trying to imagine the looks I'd get at the cycling rest stops for that one - everybody else would be munching on their high tech energy bars and there I'd be with my egg and potato! Well... at least I'd give people something to talk about! :-)
Oh - now that explains things! I have one student at my school who has "exercise related anaphylaxis"...I must admit I looked at the documentation (which just lists the condition, doesn't explain it) and wondered how on earth an anaphylactic reaction can occur from exercise. Makes sense now!
ReplyDeleteI am a "must have breakfast" person. Eggs sound terrific and I should make the effort to cook them more often. We usually just resort to some of the "less bad" cereals like Weetbix (not sure what they are called over there, but low-fat & high protein.) And coffee, of course!
There actually are people who have just plain exercise induced anaphylaxis - without the food dependent part. That's what they thought I had at first... but it didn't make any sense because my reactions were so inconsistent. Then finally the wonderful doctor (whose name I have forgotten) put all the pieces together.
DeleteAllergic reactions are very strange things... and the more I learn about them the more I'm convinced that we don't really understand them at all. A few years ago I was suffering from hives - every day for months on end. Turned out it was my shampoo, but one of the things they thought it might be was pressure from my clothing! Seriously, there are people who get hives if their clothes are too tight! There are also people who react to cold temperatures and who knows what else! Sorta makes you wonder...
I've never been a breakfast person. I have no desire to eat in the morning. On the rare occasions I do grab some thing to eat it's usually because I won't be home for a while and I tend to grab a piece or two of fruit. In the winter months I will often have oatmeal with fruit more as a brunch though as it's too heavy for first thing in the am.
ReplyDeleteWell... I'm certainly not a roll out of bed and go straight to the kitchen kind of person. It takes me a good hour or so to come to full consciousness! So my "breakfast" generally happens around 2 hours after I drag my body out of bed in the "morning" (which, of course, is a relative term!)
DeleteYour stepmother is a lifesaver! Literally! That's amazing that she has been able to help you so much. How frustrating your allergic reactions must have been to you.
ReplyDeleteI'm like Live & Learn--I'm hypoglycemic so I tend to eat breakfast gradually over the course of the morning. Otherwise, I would eat a huge breakfast and be hungry an hour later and then snack. Weekdays, I eat either a bowl of wheat cereal with skim milk (I actually don't like whole milk) or oatmeal with skim milk. And tea. Lately I've been trying to have more rooibos tea because it's caffeine free and caffeine/tea/coffee can all irritate reflux. Don't know if I'll ever be caffeine free, but limiting it seems to help. Mid-morning I have a snack--if I'm at home, usually either toast or yogurt or a banana (or a combination of these). At work it's more of a challenge because I'm working on the hospital floor so whatever I bring has to fit into my clipboard storage binder, so I usually bring a high protein meal bar. Saturdays are the only days I really deviate from this--pancakes or waffles or French toast (always made with whole grains--refined ones leave me hungry). I love eggs but I find that oatmeal or bran flakes and milk stay with me longer (I'm also a fan of the protein in milk).
Allergies are indeed frustrating, but there is a silver lining. If I hadn't been forced to thoroughly examine my diet, there's a good chance I'd still be eating a lot of junk. You know... when the penalty for eating the wrong thing is being rushed to the ER wondering if you're gonna live or not, as opposed to, you might get fat or suffer some vague health issue someday, you suddenly realize that changing your diet is actually very easy!
DeleteI find it interesting that oatmeal or bran flakes stay with you longer than eggs. Guess that's further proof that we're all different because my experience is just the opposite. I suppose there could be an element of psychology at work for me too. If I just eat a bowl of cereal, I feel like I haven't really had a "real meal". Well, who knows.
I've never heard of rooibos tea - do you like the flavor? I have limited options in the herbal tea department because most of them contain chamomile, which I am (you guessed it) allergic to! I'll have to go do some research to see what plant family it belongs to so I'll know if it's safe for me to try or not.
I don't like the sour taste of most herbal teas. Rooibos is a plant from the legume family that grows in South Africa. It is in with the herbal teas in my grocery store--I just Googled it and Tazo tea has at least one rooibos option, but I'm cheap and just buy the house brand. I find it tastes most like traditional black tea of any of the herbals I've ever tried. I think the Tazo version has other things added to it but what I buy is just the rooibos leaves. Hope I have been helpful!
DeleteI can identify with what you said about allergies. I have reflux and find I have to limit acidic foods, caffeine, and ... overeating. Well, if feeling like crap isn't motivation enough to avoid overeating, what is??
I do need higher protein meals later in the day--the cereal/oatmeal option just seems to work best for me first thing in the morning. I am a get-up-fairly-early kind of person so maybe some of it has to do with our internal body clocks.
I totally agree about the sour taste - I thought that was just me though because things that I'm allergic to often tend to taste "off" to me. Anyhow, I'll have to go see if I can find it in my plant allergen list, sounds like it might be safe though!
DeleteAnd that's a very interesting thought about the internal body clock thing. Because in truth, by the time I get up and am awake enough to eat "breakfast" it's just about the time that most people are eating lunch. Hmmm....
Your riding breakfast actually seems pretty good, especially if you can throw some Tapatio in there. And, man, that veggie and egg dish for your non-riding days looks just delicious. I want.
ReplyDeleteThese days I make a pretty simple breakfast of hashbrowns, bacon, and eggs, with some sauteed veggies in the potatoes and the eggs. But it's mostly just protein and carbs, which isn't great for me, I guess. But it's yummy so, you know, I eat it. :)
Sorry to hear your allergies can be so severe, but I'm glad you have a handle on it!
Oooo... adding Tapatio would be yummy, but alas, the key to minimizing allergic reactions is minimizing ingredients, so no sauces or spices allowed. Sigh.
DeleteAnd your breakfast doesn't sound too unhealthy to me - there are at least some veggies in there! My general tactic has been to just slowly replace the carbs and fatty stuff with more veggies. Of course, to make it easy I use packaged frozen veggies, which are probably not the most environmental choice, but if I had to wash and chop first thing in the morning, it just wouldn't happen!
Coffee, coffee, more coffee, and either toast, oatmeal, or Cheerios. I'm morning carb person myself, I suppose.
ReplyDeleteYou lived in Norway? Do tell! I've always wanted to do that!
Holy Moly! I've got the shakes just contemplating a breakfast like that. If you like coffee you'd LOVE Norway! They make it so dark that our coffee tastes like water by comparison.
DeleteAnyhow, I don't think I've actually written any posts specifically about my experiences in Norway, maybe I should. I was an exchange student in Trondheim back in the 1980's. At the time there were virtually no fast food restaurants there and there was a general sense that they didn't want to become "Americanized." I'd be very curious to know how it's changed over the past 30 years.