Just a thought that we might have some stuff in common. For instance, I am allergic to iodine - anyone else?
I seem to also have a problem with tomatoes and posibly oranges.
I'm convinced chocolate is a major trigger for me. Now that I have my psoriasis settled down completely, I find LS has no delay when I eat chocolate. It's bad the very next day.
Hi
I don't have any allergies that I know of of per se but I do find if my LS flairs up when I have had too much junk food in one day. Also have an intolerance for shell fish all my life - makes me feel sick if I eat more than a small amount and on occasion I have actually been. Don't touch shell fish at all now so never had a link with LS
Does make an interesting point though I would imagine due to the link of autoimmunity and L S that it would make sense that some suffers have allergies as allergies are linked with an over active immune system.
I'm allergic to contact with fresh yeast and quorn. I don't seem to tolerate oranges as my ls will flare after eating one. I don't seem to have a problem with chocolate unfortunately!!. Just recently discovered that I have an intollerance to Rapeseed (sneeze like mad when near a field of it and my throat goes itchy). Had mild reaction to the oil from it once too. I think ninjagoth is right it is all connected to the autoimmunity. Have been mildy allergic to penicillin since very young, I just get rashes. Don't know about iodine. Recently had allergic reation to a sticking plaster which I never had before. Tried micropore and was allergic to that too. BUT I am still here and keeping happy.
me too - i collapsed when they injected me for an IVP when i was 17!
Sadly I think red wine gives me catarrh, and any fungal spores in the air and i wheeze for England.I have an immediate reaction if a house has damp. I have to put (Clean) clothes in the tumble dryer to remove any dust if they havent been worn for a couple of weeks- again i wheeze and sneeze. Elastoplast - or any non anti allergic plasters. And as a white skinned red head the combination of sun sand and sea breezes I would be covered in water blisters within the hour if every part of me wasnt covered up - and my ex....truly.... as soon as he entered a room i sneezed and started wheezing, Cat dander, eyes itch
Phoning help lines and ending up speaking to people from abroad - b/p goes up if the accent is thick and the "helper" speaks too quickly
Re the LS only stress is my trigger that I can determine
Not so much allergies, I think, but reactions to: Caffeine, chocolate, sugar. I also need to eat gluten free.
Mold is bad for me. I tend to think mold is generally unhealthy, but I'm pretty careful about letting any accumulate in the house.
I avoid tomatoes and oranges too! I don't think I am allergic to them but they have acid in them that I just can't handle. I am allergic to many other things like molds and trees and have horrible reactions to strong chemical smells like paint, perfume, smoke, etc. I have always thought that some food was triggering my LS problems but have never been able to ID which it might be.
Hi Margaret. I don't think I have any allergies, but when I had Lichen Planus for two years these were amongst the things that triggered it - tomatoes and citrus fruits, also wines, spicy food, vinegar.
cashew nuts ....!
A very mild reaction to milk. I don't take it in tea or coffee anyway, all I'd have routinely is some low-fat on my cereal and that's fine, but if I have a lot of cream I wake up the next morning with bunged up ears and sinuses.
I rarely eat oranges any more. I used to have them every day, but I believe they may be too acid if you suffer with LS.
Did I mention milk? I can eat yoghurt and aged cheese, but not milk. No idea whether it influences the LS. Milk no longer agrees with me. But that's not really unusual for when one ages is it?
Reading over the comments I wonder what we have in common with these food sensitivities. Or one may say - LS patients usually also have various food sensitivities. As many LS patients have thyroid problems, perhaps also adrenal gland problems, which then results in again sensitivities to certain foods, like caffeine, chocolate, sugar. Other foods like broccoli need to be cooked, not eaten raw. And the list is most likely even longer, once it is known what certain foods may do to the system.
I have only more questions and no answers.
That was something else I was going to ask people. How may of us are fair skinned with freckles? The sort of people who found breast feeding difficult because of skin sensitivity for instance.
I too find that stress is the worst possible thing for my condition, which I am choosing to call Pseudo-LS, because it's still there but the consultants say it isn't from their biopsy.
I am sure there is a lot in this. Even if you consider that eating bad food makes you feel bad and therefore increases the stress your body and mind is under, if this affects the LS there is a relationship.
i find digesting fats of any kind is difficult and results in me feeling aweful.
There seems to be a common theme re oranges and tomatoes. The other thing which I stopped was Earl Grey tea which has volatile oils from bergamot which bear a close resemblance to citrus apparently. I think this made a positive difference.
The problem is that we don't know how many women without LS also have food sensitivities, so it doesn't really help statistically at all. I'm looking for common themes though.
Tomatoes, Oranges, Ealr Grey Tea, junk food, chocolate.
I don't have a problem with caffeine of which I am aware, but I suppose I could try giving it up to see if it helped.
The difficulty with food sensitivities is what Dr. Crook calls 'the allergic load'. (His book, my bible when my kids were small, recommended by the pediatric allergist who told me I'd have to learn to 'be your own doctor', is Tracking Down Hidden Food Allergies.) The load is food + environment + stress. So, when all else is equal I can get away with eating something that would make me flare if I were also sleeping in a dusty house with a big dog and having telephone fights with my ex-husband. That actual situation happened to me with my psoriasis (and, in retrospect it was a time of fast atrophy in my LS). My whole torso front broke out in the itchiest mess I'd ever had.
Anyway, after all these years I'm not a big believer in adding to my stress load by obsessing about every molecule I eat. If you're serious about determining what foods bother you, you need to follow a certain protocol to eliminate the ones that don't bother you. It's in the book.
Thank you Morell, that is helpful.
Question: Is this the title of Dr. Crook's book: "Tracking Down Hidden Food Allergies"?