food for thought.

i feel like i have done something terribly wrong. e has been suffering from terrible hives for the last six weeks. at first notice i thought it was spider bites. she had been working in the garden at school. seemed logical. but they didn't go away. they got worse. the pediatrician thought it was a virus. then she began to run a temperature and got a head-cold and that made sense. but the cold went away while the hives didn't. so we visited the doctor again and got a referral to an allergist. which we had to wait for before we could make an appointment. (in the meantime she was having daily doses of antihistamine and colloidal oatmeal baths.) she has to be antihistamine-free for ten days prior to her allergy consult. she was so uncomfortable i started grasping at straws. citrus. gone. no change. wheat. gone. ah-ha moment.

so we have lived the last week gluten-free. and noticed a great improvement - though not complete clearing.

and i have done a lot of reading. on food allergies. and what causes them. and the frightening rate of increase in them. links to too much consumption of the food in question. too much wheat, it seems, in our case. i never would have thought. yes we have pasta weekly. (whole wheat. and often left-overs in the lunchbox.) yes we bake bread. (and eat too much of it on occasion.) i am careful about the processed foods we bring into the house. i try to make as much as i can on my own. i have read all the books and thought i was doing a pretty good job.

this has all sent me into a twirl about what we eat. about what processed food is. (flour is processed...) about the endless gluten-free choices in the shops that seem to me perhaps just another set of processed foods to cause more problems down the road. about the idea of a rotation diet. (this makes so much sense.)

ack!

it could be something else. in any case i will be thinking a bit differently about what we eat - and working harder to do more ourselves.

we visit the allergist tomorrow. will let you know.