I’ve had this annoying thing for a few years – some evil fairy responding to my previous thinking that allergies were a bit overblown. Oh well.
Anyway, it means that I get itchy mouth & throat, swollen lips etc when I eat raw (ready for this?) apples, pears, peaches, nectarines, plums, almonds and potatoes.
No, I didn’t eat raw potato to figure that out; I peeled potatoes then stuck my finger in my eye with dramatic effect. I’ve done that so often that I’ve been forced to question my intelligence.
The allergy isn’t life-threatening – it just limits fruit consumption. To oranges, kiwis, berries and bananas.
But yesterday I made a discovery! I had read somewhere that eating fruit in season and recently picked will also reduce the effect of the allergy. So I bought some locally grown 2009 vintage apples and tried one all peeled and chopped. Nothing. No itch. Bliss.
Today I’m going to actually bite into one through the skin and see if I can get away with it. It’s hard to explain the simple joy of a fresh apple when you haven’t had one for a couple of years.
Millie, I have a mild case of this with Kiwi. Thankfully, it isn’t something I eat very often.
I don’t know why I don’t react to kiwi because it seems to be related to apples. But – good news – I ate a whole apple today without a reaction so there must be something to avoiding fruit that’s been in cold storage for ages.
Sheesh, I hit enter before I was ready. What I was going to say is that at the rather advanced age of 51 I developed a rather strange allergy – pressure urticaria. It seems that if I’m over tired or stressed, it flares up worse than usual. I’m trying to use it as a guage to tell me when I’m stressed but not acknowledging it. That’s something I’m really good at – not acknowledging that I’m stressed. I’ve always claimed that I don’t stress eat, but lately I’ve had to face up to the fact that I do. They seem to be intertwined, feeling stress but not wanting to acknowledge it, eating because I’m stressed but not facing the reason why I’m eating. I have to face the fact that I’m not super woman and it’s not a weakness to get stressed.