I have developed what I believe to be allergies to most chemicals. I've been experiencing this horrific condition for nearly 5 years and have had enough of just "existing" with this condition. I need to get to the bottom of this. I need your help CZ. :-)

My symptoms:

Sound/light sensitivity, popping ears, shortness of breath, hypertension, twitching/spasms, shaking, sinusitis, aching joints (wrists, ankles, knees and shoulders**), chronic brain fog and fuzzy vision (translucent out of signal black/white tv fuzz) and getting hypoglycaemic very easily. Literally half a teaspoon of Sugar is enough to set off the wired symptom.

Description:

When I ingest foods and other chemicals, immediately a stress response goes off in my body and sets off what I can only describe as my wired symptom. Its an uncomfortable often painful tingling sensation streaming through my body as if something biochemical has been triggered and released into my blood stream after ingesting the chemical/s. My pupils dilate and it activates my nervous system. It puts me in a state where I feel stressed and on edge, whilst making me feel crappy. It impairs my cognition even more than it already is. The more extreme my wired symptom/stress response is, the more stressed I feel and the more extreme my symptoms get.


**Worth noting that only my knees are painful when the stress response goes off but all the other joints inc knees I experience a lot of pain if I exert to much stress on these joints when doing things, eg massaging someone quite strongly would be too painful after about 20 seconds if the stress response had gone off, or walking up two/three flights of stairs.


What triggers the stress response?

- Exercise (This one is bizarre)
- With no exaggeration, ALL food.
- Stress

I call it the stress response tap. It feel's like it's constantly on to some degree, streaming around my body, so I am pretty intolerant to stress and have a short fuse when threatened.

Worst offenders? (In order)

- Cigarettes
- Marijuana
- Histamine rich food
- Salicylate rich food (eg avocado)
- Caffeine
- Alcohol
- Gluten/Yeast

My worst symptom:

Chronic Brain Fog - I have read many, many cases of people experiencing this symptom but nothing to the extent of how extreme and debilitating mine is.

The extent of how chronic and debilitating it is, is something which my friends/family/doctors still cant quite comprehend. It is so chronic I am completely unable to think, access any thoughts or memories. I can't process more than 4-5 words in a sentence, completely unable to process a paragraph, sit back and think about it, it's not a matter of hazy thinking, I am completely unable to think AT ALL. The best analogy I can find is is it's like solitary confinement in the mind, no activity, just dead space.

My quality of life and the boredom I experience is frightening. Completely unable to process anything properly - books, films, music, conversation, again just dead space, no escapism.

What has helped with my "condition"?

Diazepam - reduces my "reaction" to things significantly to a point where I could almost live a manageable/mildly functional life with it. Because there's much less wired symptom it helps my ability to process better and appear more functional in everyday situations, but doesn't improve the BF.

Cold air exposure - If im very symptomatic being outside for 15 minutes or more significantly improves my wired symptom, ability to process information and general symptoms like sinusitis. I have heard cold air exposure reduces glutamate exitoxicity - so something is triggering it, but I'm not exactly sure what it is...

Elemental diet - Being on this for 8 days reduced my reaction to normal foods (gluten, alcohol, ready meals & dairy based foods) considerably and normalised my stress response and improved BF by about 40%. I felt very calm and zen after and was MUCH better at handling stress because the stress tap wasn't on anymore. Eating "normal" foods for a couple of weeks made me go back to square one again though.

Tests done:

I've had thyroid, lyme, (awaiting full autoimmune profile) and most standard blood tests a doctor could do for someone who thinks they have something wrong with them. Done brain scan, tested for POTS. Nothing.

My own conclusions: I'm still pretty clueless as to what it is. Mast cell activation disorder or Mastocytosis...

Just something is triggering neuronal excitability...

Background:

I was experiencing feeling a bit odd and cognitively impaired for about 6 months or so until one night I ate a big carby pasta meal, which I believe made me hypoglycemic and then I smoked a little bit of weed (which I have allergies to i've now realised), the combined autoimmune response along with the hypoglycemia triggered inflammation in my hypothalamus, which made the baseline brain fog worse.