My mom's out of town, going to a class to keep her accounting license current, so I've been taking care of her cats. Meanwhile, I've had a slight cold or weird allergies or something, on top of some* food item disagreeing with me sometime prior to Wednesday morning, so I haven't eaten much in the past three days, and it's starting to catch up with me. Still, we finally got the chest open in D&D tonight, so now I have to figure out what all Dovra saw. She was mostly focused on the chest, except when the harpie summoned everyone closer to it (rather idiotically as it turned out), and when Allonar took a crack at the chest for one turn, so she finally got to use her Healer's Mercy.
Inside the chest? Some sort of fire-elemental-in-a-rock, as far as I can tell. No clue why Blue Cheese put it in there. It's friendly, and can enhance flames (though Dovra doesn't actually know that yet), but I suspect it may turn out to be more trouble than it's worth. As we quit for the night, it had lured our dragonborn, who was supposed to be on guard duty while the rest of us slept, out to go "hunting." The DM assures us that they won't actually find anything to hunt, but... *shrugs*
There were other activities going on at the meeting place (a sort of weekly gathering that some of the group go to independently of D&D), but lack of food was massively catching up with me, and there was nothing non-poisonous there to eat. So I went shopping instead. At 10:00 pm. Eggs tend to agree with my stomach no matter what, and I was out of them at home. Now that I've had a semi-decent meal (two scrambled eggs and an apple), I feel considerably better.
*AM UPDATE: I am about 99% certain that it was the turkey stew I made from my family's leftover Thanksgiving turkey that upset my stomach. I did not eat any on Thursday, and had no major problems on Friday. I ate a small portion on Friday, and had some problems today. I'm not sure if it went bad in the fridge, as it caused no problems at the beginning of the week, or if there was just too much of something-or-other in it and my body got oversaturated with that. Either way, the stew is now going in the trash.
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(1) Pouncer had a cold for a few days this week. I can't remember ever seeing a cat with a cold before; it took me a day or so to realize that's what was going on. First I noticed he was drooling a bit, and seemed to be leaving his mouth open more than usual. He also wasn't his usual "First!" self. I noticed that he seemed to have a bit of a runny nose and he was wheezing a bit, and then made the connection to his keeping his mouth open: he was breathing through his mouth because his nose was stuffed up. It lasted 2-3 days, and I just kept an eye on him and made sure it wasn't getting worse. It may have just been good timing, but it started to go away shortly after I shared some roasted chicken with him and the other cats. Probably coincidence, though it would be nice to think I cured him.
(2) I was beginning to think I wouldn't get any turkey this Thanksgiving, but my mom found a free-range Norbest turkey, which specifically said "gluten free," and their web-site indicates that all of their whole, uncooked turkeys are also soy-free. Gluten-free we had covered, but soy free is tougher, since every turkey I looked at had unidentified "natural flavors" in it. Technically "natural flavors" can include stuff made from wheat, but I never had a gluten-reaction to anything labeled that way. I have had several soy reactions. As far as I'm concerned "natural flavors" is equivalent to a skull and crossbones symbol.
(3) Apparently three weeks away from push hands was good for me, as Don and Mark both commented on how much more relaxed I have been the past two Saturdays. It seems backwards until you've tried it/experienced it/felt it, but being relaxed makes your attacks and defenses much more effective. Hmmm... possibly I should experiment with my dice and see if relaxed tosses produce higher rolls than tense tosses. Somehow I suspect that won't be the case, but it doesn't hurt to try. ^!^
(4) We still haven't finished with the chest in D&D, and we won't finish this week since our thief will be out of town. So even though I may start writing a narrative version of it, there won't be much point in posting it until we actually finish with the chest and I can include a conclusion.
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Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks that fast food places are out to poison people.
Of course, I know they're out to poison me. I don't mean that they have a conscious intent to do so, but that they have such a ridiculous neglect of allergen information that they may as well be consciously intending to poison me.
Not just fast food, either. I had a package of Del Monte lightly sweetened peaches. I debated whether to even try it, since "natural flavors" were listed as an "ingredient." I should have trusted my instincts. In less than 20 minutes, I had the pain and upset stomach of a soy reaction. From PEACHES. Seriously, what the bloody hell is wrong with food companies?
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I found a rather comprehensive list of possibly soy-derivatives to avoid in ingredients. The page is Living With a Soy Allergy. Amusingly, I'd already been avoiding many of them due to the possibility they were made from wheat, but "Glycerol monostearate" is a new one, and I'm not too happy to see "guar gum" on the list, as it is often used in place of xanthan gum to make gluten free products stick together. "Natural Flavors" have been iffy, because they can contain gluten, but they almost always contain soy.
Reading some of the comments on the site, I'm just as glad that I don't have a contact-allergy to soy. I have noticed soy lecithin having minor effects on my asthma, but no out and out asthma attacks, and I have to eat the stuff for it to have that effect.
One final comment on the site: Most of the info I'd found up to this point contained some nonsense about "most people with soy allergies are not sensitive to soy oil or to soy lecithin." Looking at the comments on the linked site, I'd say that's complete and utter garbage. I first noticed problems with soy oil, then with soy flour and soy lecithin. Admittedly, it's a self-selected sample, and people with similar stories are more likely to comment, but I don't see anyone chiming in with "Oh, I'm okay with oil and lecithin." Not a one. It doesn't prove anything, but it's rather suggestive.
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One of the current theories about food intolerances is that people are born with a genetic susceptibility, and that circumstances, particularly stress, determine whether or not it actually develops into anything. I've had a minor sensitivity to soy for quite a while now, but it seems to have turned into a full-blown intolerance. I'm pretty sure it was the stress of getting the terminal contract notice that did it, too. It would be amusing if I had enough medical documentation to sue the university over it, but I have no proof whatsoever (unless chocolate wrappers with the ingredient 'soy lecithin' count as proof that I wasn't strongly sensitive until recently), so there's no case. However, this incident definitely lends credence to the susceptibility/trigger theory.
Soy is at least as hard to avoid as gluten, though I've already been minimizing my exposure as mush as possible. It used to be that only soy protein and soy oil caused a strong reaction. Now, it's pretty much anything with any sort of soy in it. People ask me if it's hard not to "cheat" on eating gluten, and now soy... It's not hard at all when the moment you eat it, you start feeling so sick to your stomach that you don't want to eat anything else for the rest of the day. The only major sticking point for me right now is chocolate. I'm going to have to start stocking up on the few soy-free chocolates that I know are out there, or else I'm going to go completely nuts. I'll probably links to the sites at some point. Whole Foods Market carries several good varieties, and there's also Enjoy Life.
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What happens if I don't take my medication? I turn into a zombie. Everything turns flat, it seems almost as if things lose their color, like all the colors fade. I feel like my body weighs so much that I can't even hold my shoulders up. I become lethargic - I can't get myself to do anything. I don't feel sad; I feel nothing. Empty, blank, flat. Great things can happen, but they don't make me happy. Awful things can happen, but they don't make me sad.
What happens when I take my medication? I'm myself again. The medication doesn't make me feel happy; it makes me feel. With the medication, my emotions come back; I can feel happy or sad. I enjoy it when things are going well; I get sad or angry when they go poorly.
~MarkCC @ Good Math, Bad Math
I seem to have made it through my bout with depression, amazingly without the aid of pharmaceuticals. Some would say that makes me "better" than people who need the pharmaceuticals; I would say it makes me damned lucky. I've talked to people who actually think that all you need to do if you're depressed is "snap out of it." It's obvious that such people have never, ever suffered from genuine depression. They've had the "oh, I'm a bit down today" variety.
In my case, I was able to keep functioning through sheer effort of will, but I didn't give much of a damn about anything.
The place where this manifested most obviously was in getting bills paid. I would know that the bill was sitting there, that I had the money in my checking account to pay for it, that the checkbook was under the bill...and I could not motivate myself to get up and do anything about it. I managed to push through that often enough to avoid losing anything other than cable...mainly because none of the other companies were as ridiculously uptight about late payments as the cable company. One of the signs that the depression was lifting was when I would sit down almost immediately after receiving a bill and get it paid.
Here's the thing, though. I didn't use pharmaceuticals, but I did use a meditation practice. Meditation has been shown to alter brain states. Instead of taking a drug to alter my brain chemistry, I adopted a practice that would do so. I tended to keep with practices that seemed to improve the condition, but it was largely a matter of trial and error. I can't see how that is "better" than using a pharmaceutical to achieve the same effect. Such a practice is a major time commitment, and has to be done everyday if you want to keep receiving benefits. The pharmaceuticals are a hefty monetary commitment instead, and have to be ingested everyday to receive benefits. Which have you got more of, time or money? And do you have enough patience to give a meditative practice time to work?
I do think there are further benefits to a meditation practice, particularly one that utilizes physical meditations like taiji and yoga, and I do think everyone could benefit from such practices. But I am not about to tell someone who is so depressed that he/she can't get out of bed to go do yoga asanas. Pharmaceuticals would be a much better option at that point. Maybe, maybe, after the pharmaceuticals have helped enough, such a practice might reduce dependence on them, but, then again, it might not. Whether it's worth trying is entirely up to the person who is suffering.
In my case, since the meditation practice works for me, I prefer to rely on that. It doesn't require a doctor's visit or a prescription. It does require a strong commitment to the practice. Most people who are depressed wouldn't be able even to contemplate such a commitment. When I began it, my goal was to keep it up for 36 days straight, and that was all. Just 36 days. I did not expect to make it through those 36 days, but it gave me a goal to concentrate on. Rather to my amazement, I made it through 36 days, then 108, and I've just passed the 900 day mark. That's 25 cycles of 36 days, when I didn't honestly expect to make it through a single cycle of 36 days. I've even expanded the practice since then. But, that's me. That's not going to work for everyone, any more than a single pharmaceutical remedy is going to work for everyone. It helps that I'm a touch obsessive-compulsive and have a fascination with numbers, so that counting the days actually served to motivate me when I began. Now I still keep track of the numbers, but it's more a matter of interest than of motivation.
But what if that hadn't worked for me? What if I hadn't lucked into a practice sufficient to keep me sane? I don't know. Best case scenario, I think, would be that I wound up on some sort of pharmaceutical. Worst case? I don't think I would have suicided, as the only time I felt suicidal it was ginger-induced*, but I might have gotten to the point of not giving a damn about anything, including the job that pays my bills, or the cars coming on a street I needed to cross, or... One way or another, the situation would have gotten worse and worse.
*I've determined that if I'm perfectly awake and healthy, ginger just makes me a touch sleepy. If I'm already tired, ginger makes me feel depressed. If I'm already depressed, it can make me feel suicidal. I no longer cook with ginger.
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I discovered the other day that Glutino now has more than one cracker flavor available. I really like their original crackers: they're about as close as you can come to a gluten-free Ritz cracker. I don't buy them very often because they are ridiculously expensive. For 4 servings of 8 crackers, it costs roughly $5. Yes, they're imported and gluten free, but that's still ridiculous.
Still, when I saw a new flavor available, I decided to try it. The flavor is called "multigrain", but that is extremely misleading. It does not contain any exotic, gluten-free, whole grains. Instead, they put spices into it whose seeds look vaguely like grains. Poppyseeds. Fennel seeds. I hate the taste of fennel. A label of "spiced crackers" or "poppyseed crackers" would be less misleading. As is, they aren't bad enough that I won't finish off the ones in the box, but I have no intention of ever buying them again. The original flavor is much, much better.
I was going to post links to both products, but I haven't found a link for purchasing either one. Interestingly, the multigrain crackers aren't even listed at Glutino's site, so they must be very new indeed.
EDIT: Found the original crackers, here and here. If you've got a local Fred Meyer, though, try there first. Ah, and here are the multigrain ones.
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There are plenty of good guides to these, and the lists seem to be growing. Here's a site that lets you search for gluten free restaurants by city and state. It's not complete, but it's a starting place. Here's another that is alphabetized by the chain's name, and has a brief review of each. And yet another that mainly links to "allergen lists" for each restaurant. When traveling, it's useful to know these names so that, given a choice, you can choose a restaurant that you know will have edible food.
Prior to my Colorado trip this year, I went looking for restaurants that accommodated gluten-free, and found a big surprise: Wendy's actually has a list of gluten-free products. Unlike most other fast food places, the list does not consist of "Order X without the bun." The chili, several salads, and the frosties are all gluten-free. The fries themselves are gluten free, but in some places may be cooked in the same grease as things that contain gluten, so ask. Oh, if you try to order one of the Chicken Salads, and they ask you what kind of chicken, tell them grilled. That may or may not be one of the mentioned options, even though, theoretically, that should be the default option, but anything else (American or Spicy were the choices offered my mom) will be breaded.
Other chain restaurants that I have been to and tried their gluten free menus:
Beau Jo's: pizza place; in Fort Collins, at least, the GF menu is simply a page in the regular menu.
Chili's: Decent selections; ask for the "allergen menu".
Pier 49: Most locations. So far, there doesn't seem to be an official GF menu, but the one in Pocatello posted "gluten free crusts available" on its sign. Hopefully they'll go one better and get a list of guaranteed GF toppings soon.
As for the two "big" fast food chains, last I checked, Burger King did not acknowledge the existence of celiacs in any way shape or form. Please boycott them. McDonald's has the typical "Order X without the bun" guidelines, with an oddity. McDonald's French fries apparently contain either wheat or an ingredient made from wheat, but independent testing has found no traces of gluten in them (sorry for no citation, but I can't remember where I found that). I still will not eat them, at least in part because I don't go to restaurants where the assumption is that everything will be served on a poisonous bun, but I thought I'd pass the info along.
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Since starting on the acid-refluc-reduction regimen, my breathing has improved. It's not back to "normal" yet, but compared to needing 2 or 3 full doses of my inhaler each day, it's pretty close. Amusing but welcome side effect: I think I'm losing some fat as well. I've followed the recommendations here for the most part, as they're based on a fairly recent study.
So I've got the head of my bed elevated and I've been taking naps in the recliner instead of on the couch. I've switched my major meal to noon and made sure to get my smaller dinner eaten by 7:00 pm (preferably by 6:30 pm), with no food between then and bedtime. I'm pretty sure I've decreased the total amount I've been eating as a result. My evening meal is roughly half the size that it was, while my noon meal isn't a whole lot bigger than it was. I'm not really doing the "frequent small meals" thing, mainly because my hunger cycles don't work that way.
Oh, I've also started adding more yoga and qigong to my daily practice sessions. So it's the ol' "decrease calories, increase activity" "miracle cure." ^/^ Now the only question is whether I can maintain some semblance of this schedule once school starts again and I'm teaching evening classes. That's what got my meal schedule out of whack in the first place. *sighs*
Random sidetrack: You'll find lots and lots of "foods to avoid" for acid reflux, but the recent study found no consistent correlation between any of those foods and acid reflux symptoms. So any triggers are particular to the individual, not ones that you can really find on a list. I have determined that ice cream does not agree with my body. My mind is fond of it. My mouth rather likes the taste. My body ... gets sluggish, and wants more food after consuming anything with ice cream in it. So that one's a no-go for me. Amusingly, it's one that's on most of the AR lists, and also something that Deng Ming Dao recommends avoiding as part of a healthy, "Taoist" diet.
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A quick generic tip to the gluten-challenged: look for cookbooks that utilize alternative grains. The cookbook that this recipe came from is not strictly gluten-free, but it does contain recipes for some of the gluten free grains, and it's often helpful to see ways to use grains that most people have never heard of before going gluten-free.
I found this recipe in Yoga Journal, modified to be vegan, and just discovered the original. The only change YJ made was to take out the hard-boiled eggs. I'll reproduce the recipe below the fold (minus the eggs) and note any changes I made (note to the gluten intolerant, soy sauce contains wheat but fish sauce does not):
ingredients
1 3/4 cups to 2 cups water
1 cup red rice
2 tablespoons canola olive oil
4 large shallots, chopped
I wasn't quite sure how to interpret this, but wound up interpreting it more like "4 large shallot cloves", as shallots seem to be onions that grow in cloves like garlic
31 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large red chile, seeded and chopped
All I could find were small red chile peppers, so I used 3
1-inch piece ginger root, chopped
With some trepidation I did use the ginger. So far no ill effects.
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 large carrot, thinly sliced
8 ounces green beans, trimmed and chopped
I found a six ounce package of green beans that were in much better shape than the a la carte ones, so I decreased these a bit
1/2 cup coconut milk
1/4 cup soy sauce1 T Fish Sauce
1/2 teaspoon molasses honey
1 large lime, quartered
Forgot about this, so the lime is still sitting in the kitchen. Maybe I can make lime-ade with it?
1/2 cup julienned fresh basil
1/4 cup macadamia nuts, toasted and chopped
Instructions
In a 1-quart saucepan with a tight-fitting lid, bring the water to a boil. Rinse the rice and drain in a fine-mesh strainer. Add the drained rice to the boiling water and keep the heat high until it returns to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and cook for 45 minutes, or until the water is absorbed. Let the pot stand, covered, for at least 10 minutes, and then let cool to room temperature.
In a wok or large sauté pan, heat the oil over high heat. Add the shallots, garlic, chile, ginger, coriander, stir fry until the shallots are almost transparent, then add the carrot, and green beans. Stir-fry until the vegetables are crisp-tender.
Add the coconut milk, soy sauce, and molasses fish sauce and honey to the wok, and bring to a boil. In a large bowl, mix the contents of the pan with the rice. Add the basil and macadamias, then toss and serve.
I had this for lunch, with some baked fish, and it was quite tasty. If I make it again, I'll probably use more carrot and less green bean, but that's just my preference. Red rice tends to be just a bit dry, and adding the vegetables in coconut milk made up for that.
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I think I've finally figure out why my asthma's been so bad this summer. I had been assuming it was due to the kittens and their dander. That might be contributing, too, but it's not the primary problem. It was getting bad enough that I looked for asthma specialists in Pocatello, and found one who had a double specialty: asthma and heartburn. At the time this struck me as odd.
Then I started paying attention to other sensations that I had assumed were unconnected. In the fall, I started having frequent cold-twisting sensations in my chest (there aren't good words to describe them). Not pain, and not in the heart. At first, they seemed to be associated with the onset of a cold, but then they started showing up at other times. In the past few weeks, I've also had mild pain in the same area. This, strangely enough, is referred to as "heartburn." No burning, and not actually at the heart.
A bit of research turned up a link between acid-reflux (which causes heartburn) and asthma. The acid getting into the esophagus can also get into the breathing apparatus, with suffocating results. The mechanism at fault is a muscle that is supposed to keep the acid from getting out of the stomach. It gets week or too relaxed or something, and so acid can escape upward. This is particularly problematical when in a prone position, and worse if in an inverted position.
So I have a projection for the course of events. The Advil I was taking for my knee last summer may have compromised that muscle flap (the LES, I think), and my insane fall schedule had me often eating dinner very near to bedtime. That ups acid production just before going to a prone position. That doesn't explain why it would suddenly get worse in the summer, but I started increasing the amount of yoga in my daily practice, and many of those are inverted or prone postures. Incidentally, about 15 minutes after taking a generic-equivalent-to-Pepcid, my breathing started to calm down. The trick will be getting things to calm down without becoming dependent on the medication, as taking it for too long can result in an acid-rebound-effect.
Here is where I got information from a recent study on acid reflux. There was no consistent correlation with the various foods that most of the literature insists you should avoid. The only things that consistently helped across the board were (1) not laying down too soon after eating, and (2) Sleeping with the head of the bed elevated. Incidentally, I just put 5-inch risers under the head of my bed, and that seems ridiculously slanted. The article recommends 6-8 inches, which would have me and my mattress sliding clean off, methinks.
I did notice that the orange juice I had today made my throat sore, so I'm thinking citrus drinks are out until the esophagus can heal a bit. I'll just keep an eye out for what foods irritate my symptoms and avoid them rather than follow someone else's list. Tea, for instance, seems to improve my breathing, but is on most of the lists as "to avoid." Anyway, I'm rapidly losing coherency, so that's all for tonight.
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Zyrtec just recently came off prescription-only-status. I finally found a small sampler package to try it, not really expecting much, as generally I get the side effects from antihistamines with none of the benefits. Results? My breathing is better than it has been for about a month, but I'm experiencing mild dizziness with a touch of paranoia and minor...I don't know if hallucination is the right word, so I'll try to describe it. There's a sense that there's someone in the room with me, someone for whom there is a visual in my mind, but I do not actually see someone in the room. I have had this before on occasion, usually when I am extremely tired, so it's possible that the Zyrtec is not to blame...but a bit of research turned up lots of mental side effects on this order or worse. Also, vivid dreams and night terrors were commonly reported, which makes me a bit leery of sleeping. More in the morning. This stuff is supposed to last 24 hours...which means until about 6:00 pm tomorrow night. Assuming it doesn't get any worse, Zyrtec seems like a possible option if my allergies get ridiculously bad, but not otherwise.
AM UPDATE: It's clearly starting to wear off, about 12 hours later. Side effects are mostly gone as well. Thus the claim that it lasts 24 hours seems to be an exaggeration, but this does suggest it as a "use at night only" remedy, when it may help me sleep and I can thus sleep through the side effects as well. No night terrors or odd dreams from it.
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I allowed myself a (weak) hot chocolate today. Partially because I was cold, and partially to see if any of the symptoms I was still experiencing abated with it; i.e. if I was still in withdrawal. And the results aren't definite enough for me to be certain. My withdrawal symptoms are confounded with the lingering effects of the cold. But I haven't had any waves of dizziness or nausea today, so I think maybe the caffeine withdrawal is done with. I just need to take it easy on the stuff.
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Here's what I think happened.
The fever was a by-product of my body trying to fend off this rather nasty cold that is finally starting to abate. As soon as that fever went away, the fuse started burning for when the cold itself would hit. Then, on Sunday, the caffeine I'd been utilizing to function through the fatigue, er, backfired. Nastily.
It was my own fault. I had a yerba mate in the morning, a Thai iced tea with lunch, and a dark chocolate bar in the afternoon. The waves of dizziness and nausea started about three hours later. Sleep helped some, but I was still pretty light-headed on Monday (but managed to put a severe dent in a shadow-mage-creature-thing anyway; how else would you celebrate president's day?). I made a helpful discovery on Monday, though: the dizziness was worse in warmer areas than in colder ones. So I turned the heat down five degrees below where I usually keep it. Today, only one major bout of it, and that was after taking a nap wrapped up in a warm shawl... apparently I would have been better off shivering.
It usually takes three days for caffeine withdrawal to go away completely for me... The first day it was easy to avoid it, as just the thought of it made me nauseous. Today was a mite worse. Nothing with large amounts of caffeine in it sounded good, but something with a small amount did, like very pale milk chocolate... Quite frankly, I wouldn't trust myself to STOP if I allowed myself even a small piece, so I didn't (also helps that there's no chocolate in the house right now). Tomorrow should be easier, as I will be busy pretty much from 8:00 am to 10:00 pm.
Still, the waves of dizziness were more enjoyable than the cold, though less enjoyable than the fever. And they seem to be 90% gone now. Every so often I catch the tail end of one, but it's nothing like it was on Sunday.
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I woke up at 5:30 am this morning with a horrible case of light-headedness. This was not entirely a surprise, as I now know exactly what causes these spells, but it was also unpleasant. A further half-hour of sleep, some food, and a decongestant took care of 99% of it, or I wouldn't have gone to taiji. A bit of history on this below the fold.
The first time this happened, I was still a grad student and went to the student health clinic. They gave me a prescription strength combo of decongestant and expectorant, which helped, and decided it was probably caused by some sort of mild cold. As the decongestant combo worked on it, I figured they had it right. But, no. The next winter, I would experience milder versions of the dizziness with some mild nausea most evenings if I tried to concentrate on anything. It wasn't debilitating then, just unpleasant.
The next severe case hit...sometime near when Grandma started getting so sick. I woke up around 1:30 am or 2:00 am, and I was dizzy, nauseous, disoriented, overheated... The disorientation freaked me out and I called my mom. She took me to the emergency room. The doctor there decided I had a case of the flu coming on. I remember it being flu season, so this seemed reasonable. He gave me a medicine to alleviate the dizziness, which helped, and gave me a list of things to do, like eat clear broths, only I never developed a single other symptom of flu after that. Except for the dizziness I was fine.
Sometime the spring after that, there was an evening where I didn't get the mild nausea and dizziness. I wracked my brain trying to figure out what was different...and realized that I hadn't had any tea that morning. I cut out tea for a while, and the dizziness went away. Neither doctor had even come close to figuring it out. Btw, this is a big part of why I don't trust doctors to figure out what's wrong with me. I try to figure out what's wrong before I go in, so that I know exactly what to tell them.
At any rate, limiting my consumption of tea has, for the most part eliminated the dizzy spells. Every so often I push it a bit too far. Yesterday, I had Yerba maté tea in the morning, a cup of dragonwell tea at College Market around noon, and a Thai iced tea with dinner. I knew I was going to pay for it, and, hey, I got confirmation that it was overconsumption of tea that had caused all those dizzy spells, just like I figured. Incidentally, it's not solely the caffeine. Yerba maté has just as much, if not more, caffeine as tea from the Camellia sinensis plant, but has much less effect on me, dizziness wise. It's something else specific to the classical "tea plant" that seems to do it. I have learned that zinc supplements help, but I still have to be careful how much classical tea I drink. The two doses yesterday, plus the caffeine from the Yerba maté were too much.
Incidentally, you will encounter the claim that Yerba maté does not contain caffeine, that it contains a stereoisomer of caffeine called mateine. This is incorrect. There is no stereoisomer of caffeine. It does seem to me that the other compounds in Yerba maté mitigate the effects of the caffeine somewhat, but that's about it.
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I made an odd discovery after my brush with ibuprofen backlash. For a while, I'd been noticing that when I got sick there would be an acrid, metallic scent to my sweat. I thought it was rather annoying, but as it only occurred when I got sick, I didn't think much of it. Then this summer the acrid metallic scent was constant. Whenever I sweated very much, I would smell like I'd been working in a metal-shop. I had no idea why. At least, not until I quit the ibuprofen cold turkey. The smell went away within the next couple of days. However, there was a complication, because I'd also stopped using a decongestant at about the same time, and for the same reason. Decongestants also cause backlash sometimes.
So I had no clue which of the two had been causing the scent, but I was reasonably certain that it was not a good thing. Some time after the withdrawal symptoms went away, I took ibuprofen again, with no metallic side effect. Then the next day I needed some decongestant, and the smell came back. I stopped both for a while again, but eventually took some decongestant. No metallic scent. So, as far as I can tell, it's some sort of freak interaction between the two. I haven't been able to find any remotely useful information about it. The closest I've come is that some schizophrenics give off a metallic scent. Pleasant thought, that. Just what I need: another risk factor.
Incidentally, the fact that it took a combo of the two explains why, prior to this summer, it would only happen when I was sick. That was the time I was most likely to take both ibuprofen (for fever) and decongestant (for sinus problems). This summer, due to my knee injury, I was taking ibuprofen every day for a while, and taking decongestants for allergy problems. And it all added up. For now, I'm trying a switchover to aspirin, and hoping that aspirin won't interact with decongestant in the same way for me. I don't know as of yet, as I only bought the aspirin today.
Incidentally, weird reactions run in my family. One time my mom got a rare side effect of a rare side effect of one of her medications. It took her doctor forever to figure out what was going on.
PS: Chapter 4 is up.
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I have something else to add to the list of things that make me physically ill: too much incense-burning. I figured this one out last week. I was feeling lousy up until I went outside. Suddenly I felt just fine. This went on for a day or so, and got better as I started keeping more of the windows open. I finally connected the nausea to the incense. It wasn't bothering me when I was burning it once a week or less, but I'd burned it several days in a row at that point. What I don't know is if it's all incense, or just that particular variety (a lemongrass blend put out by Purple Moon). Don burned some incense in taiji class on Saturday, and that didn't seem to bother me, but the air wasn't saturated with it, either.
Anyway, incense joins the list of:
benadryl (ok for external application; taken internally, it messes up my breathing)
chamomile (in tea; not so much ill as...out of it)
ginger (at least when I get enough in my system)
gluten ('nuff said)
incense (burned often enough to saturate the air)
soy (esp. soybean oil)
tea (green, black or white, more than a single serving)
zinc ricinoleate (very itchy rash)
I accidentally ordered a dish with ginger in it last week, with no major ill effects thankfully. I wasn't certain there was ginger in it...until I found a little shred of it. I'd already eaten some at this point, so I figured I might as well finish it. I did have some minor fatigue the next day, but I can't be certain there was a connection. I suspect it has to build up in my system to produce the majorly bad effects I got last fall, or else it has worse effects when I'm already depressed.
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Since I discovered it as an undergraduate, this has been one of my favorite meals. It required no real modification when I found out I was gluten-intolerant, as I've never cared for soy sauce. If you happen to like soy sauce, there's a gluten-free variety that Fred Meyer sometimes carries. Since it's primary purpose is to add saltiness, you can also substitute Thai fish sauce.
You need chicken, vegetables, sesame oil, any other oil, red pepper, and any sweetish spices. I originally made this using ginger, but I've since switched over to cardamom and coriander. Cut the chicken into bite-size pieces. Salt if desired. Heat 1-2 Tablespoons of oil in a wok, with a few dollops of sesame oil and the spices. Then stir fry the chicken until done. Purists will say to place the chicken aside while cooking the vegetables, but I generally just throw the vegetables in with the chicken. They should also be cut into bite size pieces. I usually add in a dollop of extra sesame oil and maybe some more red pepper when I add the vegetables. Stir-fry to taste. I like them to have some crunch left; my mom complains that they're too raw then. Serve over (or under) steamed rice.
The vegetables I use vary by season and ambition, but sugarsnap or snow peas work well, as do carrots, mushrooms, zuchinni, celery, bell peppers, yellow onions, etc. When I'm lazy, I'll use a frozen mix of vegetables. That's also the only time I put green beans into it, since otherwise they take too long to cook. With fresh vegetables, you definitely have to watch out for vegetables that take longer to cook; those should be added first. That's a definite advantage of the frozen mixes, but the taste is always better with fresh.
An alternative is to cook the chicken separately and serve the stir-fried vegetables as a side dish. I've done both depending on mood and ambition. Oh, the original recipe put the soy sauce in with the oils. As I said, I've never cared much for soy sauce, so I don't regret not being able to use it.
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While I do like to bake my own pizza crusts for use, sometimes I run out. And sometimes I don't want to take the time to thaw one out (or bake new ones). But there is a quick and easy version, even for the gluten-intolerant. Ricecake pizzas.
I use Lundberg's brown and wild ricecakes, but any ricecake would work.
The only "trick" is to use more tomato sauce than you would on a regular pizza crust. What happens is that the sauce soaks into the ricecake while the pizza bakes, making it less crumbly—up to a point. Too much tomato sauce makes it too gooey. I think I use roughly two tablespoons of sauce for each ricecake. Then I layer on a cheese blend, and add meat if I have any. For no extra work, you can add Canadian bacon (or pepperoni, if you suffer from THAT ailment, ;^) If I'm feeling more ambitious, I brown some sausage for it. After layering on the cheese and meat, bake at about 375° for twenty minutes. Voila. Nearly instant pizza. It's better than any frozen pizza I ever tried, with little extra work.
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As usual, holiday cooking duties have fallen to me. My mom wanted ham, but I've had ham several times lately, so I convinced her to switch it to pork chops (after assuring her that I would not imbue them with red pepper, my favorite garnish). I'll also cook some rice, corn on the cob, and stir fry some vegetables. For dessert, however, gluten-free banana bread.
I use Bette Hagman's "Best Banana Bread" recipe (The Gluten Free Gourmet), but with some modifications. Her recipe calls for either 1 cup soy flour, 1/2 cup potato starch and 1/4 cup rice flour OR for 1 3/4 cup of her "4-bean flour mix." I really liked the flavor that the soy flour gave the recipe, but soy flour no longer agrees with me, and I can not stand anything made from "garfava" flour (a mixture of fava and garbanzo beans). So I've modified the flour. I used white bean flour in place of the garfava. Essentially, any bean flour will work; it's a matter of finding one whose flavor you like. The best flavor, imo, is from soy flour. *sighs* But white bean flour isn't too bad.
I also up the amount of banana in the bread. The recipe calls for 1/2 cup of mashed banana for one loaf. I would guess that's about one banana. I put in three bananas per loaf. This improves the flavor and texture, but it does cause problems if you actually bake the bread as a loaf. Basically, you wind up with nearly twice as much dough as you can put in a single loaf pan and expect to get the bread done in the middle. So I stopped making loaves of banana bread, and started making banana muffins instead. :^)
Why bean flours, non-celiacs may wonder? Bean flours do two things: they add protein and they add moisture. Most GF flour mixes are rice-based, and rice flour products tend to be very, very dry, and lacking in protein. But bean flours also tend to have strong flavors, and so they're mixed with other, starchier flours, to 'water' down the taste, as it were. Bette Hagman's 4-flour-bean-mix has a texture very similar to wheat flour (from what I can remember). Depending on the bean flour you use, it will have as much or more protein than wheat flour.
Alternately, you can add rice protein to rice flour mixes (which I do), but they still won't be as moist as products made with bean-based flours.
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