Cry Me a River

I am starting to have a new and very distressing reaction to environmental chemical/corn exposure these days. I cry uncontrollably in public and feel horribly depressed and overwhelmed for hours after. My last trip to Sam's Club (and I do mean my last trip because I'll never go back), I had a hard time even making it to the parking lot before I burst into tears. I know you're thinking I should wear a mask, huh? Well, I had my mask on the entire time.

I am not only distressed that my reactions are increasing in intensity and frequency, but that they result in such emotional distress. This is the new pattern: I gradually get more and more exhausted as I walk around in the store, then I start feeling very sad and overwhelmed. Then I start struggling to keep it together, but the horrible feelings of depression and crushing anxiety don't stop. Before I know what's  happening, I'm crying in public and feeling so overwhelmed that I can hardly pick up my arms to drive home. The last two times this happened, I was unable to drive until I sat in the car for a while with the air conditioner on high (recycled air only so outside fumes don't get in the car). With experimentation, I've found that compounded diphenhydramine doesn't help at all to mitigate these reactions. Generally, after I somehow get home, I crash hard and sleep for a few hours. After I wake up, I'm still groggy and feel drugged for the rest of the day. Oh yeah, my feet are too sore to walk on by late that night and on into the next day, too.

I just can't describe how horrible I feel when this reaction is underway. I just feel so hopeless and overwhelmed. I start feeling as if I will never be able to cope with the huge list of things I struggle to do every day and that it will never get better. I am normally a very optimistic and upbeat person so these feelings are too much for me. Now that I can't shop at Sam's, I'll have to buy those few safe items I was able to get at a bulk discount from Kroger at a higher price. I guess I just need to be thankful that I can still tolerate Kroger with my mask.

Cure a Tooth Abscess - Corn Free

I am finally over a recent tooth abscess and I have a few tips to share. The pain was almost unbearable and I had to have some ways to combat the pain so that I could treat the abscess. Swishing was excruciating but it helped me kill the infection. Here's my story:

When I first noticed the tooth ache, it was already getting too sore to brush, swish or oil pull. I have a Sonicare toothbrush and I highly recommend it, but this abscess came on like a freight train. I wasn't sure what the problem was since the pain was all over my upper and lower jaw on one side. It was Friday afternoon (of course) so I couldn't get in to see the dentist until Monday unless I called the emergency number and I wasn't sure I wanted to do that. My first course of action was directed at managing the pain. BC powder stopped it in it tracks early on, but it was a short-lived relief and five hours is a long time to suffer before I could take another one. Then I read about cloves. I will forevermore associate the taste of cloves with sweet relief. I can't believe how effective it was - I just crunched on a whole clove and then held it between my cheek and gum on the sore side.

I suspected this tooth pain had some element of infection even though there was no swelling or redness visible. I might have been a little feverish (with frequent environmental reactions that include an inability to control body temperature or tolerate heat, it's hard to tell). I started cutting raw garlic and biting on a piece on that side of my mouth - being sure to allow the garlic juice to pool in that part of my gums before swallowing any of it. I had a lot of raw garlic and it even helped a little with the pain. I just got my latest MRH (Mountain Rose Herbs) order and I was so glad that I remembered to order steam distilled tea tree essential oil. I warmed up some water, added plenty of safe salt and a single drop of tea tree oil and then swished. It was excruciating - I think I even moaned aloud and that is NOT like me (I tend to suffer quietly). The pain held on for a few minutes after the swish (just long enough for me to scream in my head, "Oh no, what have I done?!"), but then it felt better.....MUCH BETTER. I believe that's when I turned a corner and was on my way to recovery. I made a run to the local health food store where I purchased clove bud oil and continued to swab the area around my tooth with a cotton swab saturated with two drops of the oil - this was more convenient and comfortable than the whole cloves. This miracle in a tiny bottle deadened the area and kept me sane between BC powders. I alternated the tea tree oil with the clove oil because I believe the tea tree oil works better against infection even though the clove bud oil deadened it better.

As soon as it it was possible (pain-wise), I started brushing with the Sonicare toothbrush and a single drop of tea tree oil. I also added a drop of the tea tree oil to a spoonful of Tropical Traditions gold label virgin organic coconut oil and used it to oil pull twice a day. We practice oil pulling instead of flossing at my house, so it seemed natural to add a drop of tea tree oil to the coconut oil and I think it made a huge difference. I am still adding a drop of tea tree oil to my toothbrush for one brushing each day and I am still oil pulling. I'm happy to be over the need for BC powders - they helped with pain and the relief was immediate, but I don't like caffeine. One tip: time meals around the BC powders because pain is inevitable after eating regardless of choice of food. I made sure to eat only once it was safe to take another BC and I tried to hold out as long past the recommended six hours as humanly possible.

If this ever happens again, I will immediately start swishing with tea tree oil in salt water. I don't think there is any way around the deep, excruciating pain it causes so there is no need to wait. (I also believe that deep pain is just an indication that the war has begun and the tea tree oil is winning.) I believe that's what sent the infection running, so it makes no sense to put it off. I will chew lots of raw garlic (elephant garlic has a milder taste so it doesn't burn as much), raw ginger (lava hot but effective - cut into tiny pieces). I will never be without clove bud oil or tea tree oil again, either. I suggest everyone buy some and keep it in the house for tooth emergencies - no one wants to try to track it down once a toothache hits. Mountain Rose Herbs is sold out right now, but you can sign up for an email notification when it is available again.

By the way, my friend Erica did all the research on essential oils and it was on her recommendation that I bought the steam distilled tea tree essential oil. The "steam distilled" part is very important. MRH is so helpful that they list what method of extraction is used for each of their oils. It's probably harder to find out that information from other retailers - yet another reason that I love Mountain Rose Herbs.

One word of warning: Even though I firmly believe that herbal remedies are safer than prescription drugs, essential oils are riding the line between them so they need to be taken with more caution than an herbal tea. I believe too much of either the clove oil or the tea tree oil could damage your liver.....same with the BC powder. I was very judicious with the essential oils and BCs but used the coconut oil, raw ginger and garlic liberally for this reason.

Help Cut Corn Subsidies

We all need to get involved and work to get corn out of our lives. The first step is to sign this petition to cut back on crop subsidies and support local food growers. Right now it is estimated that 74 percent of that subsidy money goes to wealthy agribusinesses, not to small-scale family farmers who grow actual food.

When you sign a petition at Credo Action, you will be automatically subscribed to future notices. This makes it easy to stay informed about new relevant petitions and allows you to sign them with one click. You can unsubscribe at any time, of course.

Corn is Overused

It can be so hard for a parent to come to terms with this allergy. It's just so shocking to realize that there are so many products out there that will make our kids sick and no one else seems to have to worry about them. Avoiding any food because of allergy can be difficult, but when the allergen that needs to be avoided is corn, the problemS can seem insurmountable.


None of us knew that meat, veggies and dairy were making us sicker every year because we didn't realize that corn was used in processing every one of them. Our government has been busy keeping corn a major economic powerhouse and industry has been busy looking for ways to replace expensive products and processes with cheap corn substitutions. That wouldn't be a problem except that we took it to extremes. Now, more and more people are starting to react to corn every day, but it's too late. Our economy is dependent on corn and most products would not make it to the store shelves without corn of some kind now.

Corn allergy is very much like any other allergy except that corn is overused in our society. Most nut allergic individuals cannot tolerate even breathing in the dust from nuts. People allergic to bees can't take six stings before they start reacting - they react instantly to the first sting. Dairy allergic kids can't eat some cheeses but avoid all milk......they can't do any dairy products of any kind. For some reason, people would rather categorize us as crazy, extremist, hypochondriac conspiracy theorists instead of thinking about our allergy the way we are all taught to think about peanut allergies. Why is it so far-fetched that we can't tolerate any corn at all?

If you don't believe that corn is in everything, just a tiny bit of research on food manufacturing is all it will take to convince you. Wild ocean-caught fish is generally iced down below deck immediately in citric acid-laced ice. That's corntanimation before the fish even reaches the shore! What about the glue that holds any safety seal to the top of a jar? What is it made from? Maybe it's corn just like all the other adhesives out there (especially any adhesives that will be used near food). How much of a pre-ground spice would have to come into contact with that residue on the top of the jar before it caused a corn reaction? How much corn do I come in contact with when I open a cardboard package from Amazon? How much corn is in my house that I still don't even know about yet? It's to the point that I truly dread researching something because I always find corn involved somewhere down the line.

For further reading, the helpful people in the corn business have several publications online that will give you a better idea of how prevalent corn is in our society.
Uses for Corn from the Texas Corn Producers
National Corn Growers Association Corn Uses Poster
Corn Refiners Association pamphlet about "Tapping the Treasure" that is corn.

More information about the myriad ways corn is hidden in our food and other products can be found at Glenda's new Hidden Corn blog.

Corn-Free Basics

When coping with a new corn allergy, many people try to depend on packaged foods from the corn-free list at first. That can get you through the first few days if you live in a large metropolitan area with Whole Foods and Trader Joe's stores. Because of the limited list of foods that are corn-free, most people will get desperate fairly quickly for easy meals. "Easy meals" is a relative term, as you'll soon find. It's really important that you learn to cook at least a few basic things for yourself now that most convenience foods are out of the question. Here is a list of things I would put at the top of the list to master (youtube is a rich source of cooking videos):

1. Dried Beans: refried beans, bean dip, hummus, bean soup, cold bean salads, red beans and rice, fried bean patties, etc.
2. Brown Rice: Spanish rice, chicken and rice, rice cooked in broth, fried rice, rice and eggs, rice pudding, etc.
3. Eggs: scrambled, fried, boiled perfectly, deviled eggs, omelets, baked eggs, egg salad, homemade mayonnaise, egg drop soup, egg noodles, quiche, frittatas, poached, etc.
4. Wheat: muffins, quick bread, pancakes (can be used for sandwich bread), waffles, fritters, fried dough (make bread dough and pan or deep fry, roll in cinnamon sugar), rolls, buns (roll out a circle and fill with meat or bean mixture, close up and bake), crackers (a million variations possible), pies (there are tons of pies that can be made if you learn to make a simple pie crust in the food processor - it's a snap), bread sticks, garlic bread, toast (baked or fried), pasta, dumplings, cake, and on and on....
5. Chicken: whole boiled chicken and broth (cook soups or rice with the broth and pull meat off bones to use in chicken salad, etc.), broiled chicken pieces, roasted whole chicken, chicken cut up and fried, etc.
6. Salad Dressings: oil and vinegar, mustard vinaigrette, green goddess (avocado), ranch, parmesan, homemade Italian, etc.
7. Vegetables: basic roasted veggies, dishes too numerous to list.....

Most of the ingredients needed for the dishes listed above are pretty easy to find. Here are the ones that I've found even with our limited shopping options (no Whole Foods or Trader Joe's here): 

1. Beans: Pretty much any brand of dried beans including lentils and garbanzos from the local Indian market and Adzuki beans from the local Asian market. I can buy Eden canned beans from my local health food co-op but they are prohibitively expensive.
2. Brown Rice: Lundberg organic from Kroger or Unenriched white rice from the Asian market.
3. Eggs: farmers market - two of the five vendors carry safe eggs for me. One of them even has duck eggs. Look for organic eggs that haven't been washed in corny detergents or local eggs from farmers you can question. My eggs come straight from the farm dirty so I know they've not been corntaminated. I actually do better with duck eggs and I believe that's because they have an entirely foraged diet without corn or soy.
4. Wheat: Private Selection organic unbleached, unenriched wheat flour. Many do well with King Arthur organic whole wheat flour as well.
5. Chicken: I get pastured whole chickens and livers from a vendor at the farmers market. Empire chicken seems to be widely available and corn-free (I've never tried it because I seem to be in an Empire-free zone!).
6. Salad Dressings: I buy Filippo Berio extra virgin olive oil in glass bottles from Kroger (refined oils contain citric acid), Gold Label virgin organic coconut oil from Tropical Traditions, Bragg organic apple cider vinegar, Eden Brown Mustard, Daisy Sour Cream (full fat - lite version contains corn), local pasteurized but not homogenized or fortified cow milk from a vendor at the farmers market (fortified milks contain corn)
7. Vegetables: amazing veggies and fruit in season at my farmers market, Birdseye Deluxe Frozen vegetables from Walmart (NOT Steamfresh or ones with sauces or seasonings. I get a friend to pick up that one thing for me because we can't go in that store without a reaction).

As you can see, if you pick up the things on that list and keep a good supply of a few others*, you can have a huge variety in your diet as long as you learn to combine them creatively. *safe butter (Kerrygold salted butter), salt (Redmonds Real Salt or Morton canning salt), EVOO, cheese (Kerrygold from Sam's Club or Costco or Organic Valley from Kroger or the health food co-op), and seasonings (organic herbs and spice from Mountain Rose Herbs), Arm & Hammer Baking Soda, organic sugar (Private Selection from Kroger), onions (Kroger sweet), garlic (Elephant garlic - Kroger), celery (unbagged conventional celery - Kroger), peppers (farmers market only - dehydrate or freeze extras for winter), and citrus juice (Santa Cruz organic lemon juice and lime juice from Kroger).

I found it helpful in the beginning to look for recipes for specific things I had that I knew were safe. Try doing a google search for "egg recipes" or "cabbage recipes" or whatever safe ingredients you have accessible. This opened my eyes to many dishes from other cuisines and we've incorporated them into our diet. Sprinkling Indian or Mexican or Asian dishes in with your tried and true recipes will make your diet much more exciting.  

I love looking for dessert recipes on All Recipes by excluding the ingredients you can't have....for instance: I would do an ingredient search and put in the keyword "cake" then put eggs, milk, flour, sugar in the "Ingredients to Include" column and put corny things like sweetened condensed milk, cool whip, cake mix or evaporated milk in the "Ingredients to Exclude" column. If you start reading the recipes and the top few contain another corny ingredient, you'll want to revise your search to add that to your "Ingredients to Exclude" column. It will help to broaden the scope of possibilities because it will bring up things you've never had or didn't remember existed. There are tons of simple corn-free desserts that can be made as long as you can eat wheat, sugar and dairy. In the end, I may not even use the recipe from Allrecipes.com, but it will point me in the direction I want to go with dessert. I can then look for "traditional" or "homemade" recipes for the dessert I want to make. 

It'll soon be spring and you can shop for fresh peppers, tomatoes, lettuces, cucumbers and such at the farmers market so you'll have an endless supply for fresh salads. It will require washing (remember not to use prewashed baby carrots or salad greens), but you can learn to wash large amounts and store it for combining at meal time. Plus you can just saute onions and peppers in butter before adding eggs and shredded cheese to the pan for fancy scrambled eggs.....if you have safe sausage or bacon, all the better. Imagine whipping up a batch of biscuits to eat with your Western omelet cheat or just toasting some homemade bread. It's easy enough to make biscuits or bread for the freezer so you can bake only what you need at one time or bake the whole pan and freeze in individual portions. You can make several batches on your day off and put them in the freezer for later (freezer = essential longterm solution). 

I would say that most of my meals take slightly longer than just opening a can or package and reheating and I spend far less time and money shopping. Also, I cook in bulk and freeze portions for later or we eat the leftovers for a cooking break. I really enjoy my cooking much better than anything I could buy, anyway. I would never be able to just reheat a can of store bought beans and be satisfied with it. The only time I ate the Eden canned beans I had to saute garlic in EVOO and stir the drained beans into the pan to reheat while adding salt, pepper and a dash of vinegar. Once you start to enjoy your own cooking, you'll see things like canned beans as something you keep for emergencies like a power outage for several days.