Stroke, Parkinson's and tomatoes

Today's frightening story links hay fever to stroke.

A study in South Carolina suggests hay fever sufferers face a doubled risk of having stroke. Apparently earlier reports have also linked stroke to asthma. And I recall that other report linking allergies to Parkinson's disease. Now the South Carolina finding may be a freak. After all, although it involved some 9,000 people only 125 suffered strokes.

What's the common thread? It's that some allergies cause long-term, low level inflammation which could ultimately lead to all sorts of illnesses. As it happens there is Parkinson's disease in my family. I was talking to the person concerned over the last few days and discovered he has a life-long aversion to tomatoes. I didn't know that but he's a relative and I was also never keen on strongly flavoured tomato products. I don't mind fresh tomatoes - although I don't eat them now - but I hated tinned plum tomatoes, in fact I loathed them with all my being.

Then I watched as he ate a meat dish, a cottage pie, made with tomatoes and watched as he reached for his handkerchief to wipe his nose.

Now I know other family members who hate tomatoes. So perhaps tomato-aversion is the sign that could help us trace the genetic course of this malady.

If you go back to the discussion on Samter's Triad, that was when I realised that I had non-allergenic rhinitis, otherwise known as a chronic stuffy nose. It's not classic hay fever, it's "non-allergenic" but it's the same sort of condition.

Now that's probably not on my medical notes. No doctor ever attempted to list all the mild symptoms that are linked to this condition. In Britain they're interested in the major symptoms and good for them. We'd all be hypochondriacs otherwise. I did tell the consultant that I suffered from "summer colds" as a child but he dismissed that, pointing out that as I grew up on a farm it was extremely unlikely I'd develop hay fever.

In a week or two I'll have my last appointment with a dietician and then it will be back to the GP. The level of GP knowledge of this - and the quality of their notes - extends to "how is your asthma?". I don't have asthma - yet - and I hope to God I don't get it.

But as the latest reports on hay fever and stroke point out, chronic hay fever can no longer be considered a "benign" condition. The same applies here - perhaps the best thing to do would be to go onto statins as you are now allowed to self-medicate with them and apparently they are the wonder drug that will prevent heart disease, stroke etc. Let's hope they don't contain salicylate.

Onions!

I've just endured a week without Montelukast and ended up back on the anti-histamines. It wasn't obvious what it was, maybe ice cream or just an accumulation of junk food, but by Monday by gums were hurting, my tongue was swelling and my skin was starting to blossom with red spots.

Anti-histamines controlled it but they are not as effective as Montelukast. And the one-a-days may be sold as "non-drowsy" but I don't believe it. A doctor friend of mine says the effect is like a hangover. If you doze, you sink into a deep sleep and struggle out of it.

So by Monday night I got round to emailing my doctors' surgery for the repeat prescription. I was told it would take three days to be ready so this morning I popped in and collected it. Over lunch I took the prescription to a city centre chemist and they told me about an interesting scheme they have. They've kept my details and if I telephone them they will make all the arrangements to organise the repeat prescription. All I would have to do would be to call and collect it. I'm in two minds because I like to support the local pharmacist. However it always takes a few minutes to get the prescription ready. That's fine after a GP appointment when I've probably set aside at least an hour - but not monthly. Straight after picking up the pills, I took one.

So to onions. I was at a meeting at lunchtime and sandwiches were provided. I spotted a plain cheese sandwich and bit into it, only to realise it was actually cheese and onion. It's embarrassing when your nose starts running and you start choking during a meeting - as that is what happened. By mid-afternoon my right eye was hurting and my gums and lips tingling. Thankfully later on the drug kicked in and I am all right tonight. I had fish sauce and pasta for dinner to help calm things down. It's a reminder that onions can be particularly lethal.

Mushrooms

Tonight we had cuiche made with cheese, spinach and mushrooms. Mushrooms can vary enormously in salicylate level, so my dietician told me, and it all depends where they are grown.

I've tended to assume that commercial mushrooms will be grown in compost - which is likely to be rich in salicylate. Farm grown mushrooms, on the other hand, will grow in grass and animal manure and tend to be okay.

Well I continued to chance it, despite my experience over the weekend. I ate the cuiche and my throat swelled, my lips tingled and now I'm sitting here feeling as if I'm about to get a cold. It's not a cold of course, it's more like hay fever or what they call non-allergenic rhinitis.

Interesting the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain has just released a report showing that most people put up with summer colds without realising they are probably hay fever. That used to happen to me except it probably was not hay fever, it was salicylate hypersensitivity.

Just when you think...

I really thought I was getting this under control. I've massively increased the amount of fish in my diet and I'm taking montelukast quite regularly after getting a repeated prescription from the GP. That means I can simply email the practice to get my next prescription note - although I have to go for an appointment in August to ensure there are no side-effects.

I've even once or twice created fish and tomato pasta sauces at home. So that's tomato back in the diet for the first time in nearly two years. Delicious!

Then last night the family brought home some Chinese spare ribs from the supermarket. I've avoided them up to now because I have no idea what the sweet sauce they are coated with is made from. But I thought I would chance it. Delicious!

Today for pudding we had a chocolate gateau and a raspberry pavlova. The gateau went and everyone was having second helpings from the pavlova. So I got a clean knife and cut away some of the meringue bit. There was just a smidgeon of raspberry on it. Not bad!

Now I'm sitting here with a desperately uncomfortable sore throat and a tingling tongue. Maybe it's a cold coming but more likely it's back to square one, I'm afraid.

Pasta sauce

I went to an Italian restaurant the other night. I had a tuna sandwich for lunch and chose the fish starter. And earlier in the day I took a Singulair.

For the main course I tried to stick to fish and ordered a pasta with salmon and mushroom. It came and there was not an awful lot of salmon and the sauce was made with tomatoes. I suppose I should have sent it back but I don't like making a fuss and I had done well up to them. It was nice enough for the first tomato-based meal I've had for at least 18 months. And no ill effects.

I'm beginning to think that substituting fish for meat is as effective as trying to eliminate salicylate from the diet.

Interestingly a report out today suggests the evidence of health benefits of eating fish such as salmon for the heart is overwhelming. Dr James O'Keefe, from Kansas, USA, advocates eating two meals of oily fish a day. More detail on this later perhaps.

Doughnuts

I went last weekend to a well-known theme park and spent much of the day eating junk food. This included a bag of beautifully light but unexpectedly large doughnuts that we picked at the end of the day for a few pounds.

By Sunday I was stiff and acheing all over my back and shoulders and stayed that way for most of the week. You may think it was the rides - and I expect they played a part along with the long drive to the venue. But the truth is I stayed off the real back-breakers. The worst ride we went on was a pirate ship type swing and, despite his bravado, my young companion started getting a tumbling tummy before I did. Being a little taller than him I realised I could prevent sickness by bracing my legs on the down-swing - worked very well.

Actually I've had a bad week and it's largely because the Singulair ran out early last week. So it's not been just the backache, the rash on my abdomen started to return and my left eye got sore again as it was in 2006.

So I managed to organise myself to see a GP. That involves taking a morning out to call and make an appointment and then having a free morning 48 hours later. The total time involved is much less than this but you certainly need two free mornings. I saw a registrar and, having asked after my asthma, he agreed to re-prescribe the drug. I explained that asthma is the one thing I don't have. He then took my blood pressure, which turned out to be remarkably healthy - and that's good news because it suggests the inflammation caused by this problem isn't getting to the arteries.

The thing about doughnuts is I don't normally get to eat them. When the family get them, they invariably have jam inside so I abstain. So presented with two bags with ten largish doughnuts between them, I wolfed down four. The problem, as with much fast food, is you don't know what they are cooked in. Doughnuts use quite a lot of oil I believe and it may well have been sunflower oil, which is no good to me.

I should record I took the boys to a McDonalds later and, as is quite common, they failed to produce the grilled chicken salad I asked for and I had to combine a side salad with chicken nuggets. As I said, junk food all day.

Invisible on the NHS

Oh dear! The sub-title of this blog refers to the British National Health Service. Let's be fair - after a long delay in getting my first appointment with a consultant I was treated pretty well. Being prescribed a drug - Montelukast - by letter is a little unusual but it works.

Yet it seems salicylate hypersensitivity is invisible on the NHS.

The NHS Choice has just launched an on-line food allergy testing tool. The idea is to distinguish between allergy and intolerance.

I've checked it out and it tells me I possibly have a food allergy. The problem is it's not quite true. Salicylate hypersensitivity is something a little different. I'm telling people now I have a metabolic disorder - there's something wrong with the metabolism - and that seems a better description. I double-checked by typing salicylate into the NHS Choice search engine and absolutely nothing relevant came up.

It's not as though it's uncommon. My dietician has other cases. My research has shown there's some scientific understanding of the condition if you look in the right places. There's even a drug.

Now after mentioning possible food allergy, the NHS Choice site suggests that nuts, fish, milk, eggs and wheat are the most likely foods to cause a problem. Tell that to the experts, who do not like the idea of wheat allergy.

Now I thought I had wheat allergy and my GP didn't contradict me when I told him my suspicions. I reacted to pasta and pizza and I ate a lot of pasta - still do. I was tested for it and the results were negative. That did not surprise the consultant as wheat allergy is actually pretty rare. And let me tell you - wheat allergy is miserable. Avoiding wheat and gluten for six months was far tougher than the way I live now. The gluten free food is expensive and insubstantial, cooking with it is impossible. It's true that catering departments know about it - but their menus tend to be unpalatable. I lost half a stone in six months and lived in permanent hunger.

And in fact, it seems, I was reacting to everything else - herbs, concentrated tomatoes, spices, peppers etc. So which is more common salicylate hypersensitivity or wheat allergy? I have a feeling nobody knows and I also think that suggesting wheat is a common allergen is misleading, as it's also a common food.

Chocolate wiki

I can't leave the chocolate question alone so I've been over to Wikipedia.

At last that's reassuring... "it would be necessary to eat more than a dozen chocolate bars to get the same amount of caffeine as one cup of coffee," according to the Wiki-article.

I don't suppose these are plain chocolate bars and no doubt it means a strong cup of coffee. Now all I have to do is to find out how much caffeine there is in decaf coffee.

Caffeine in chocolate - now it's sort of official

You know how it is...an idea gets in your head and you can't get rid of it. Everybody seems to be talking about it. That's how it's been with chocolate and caffeine over the last few days.

So this morning there was a scare about coffee causing miscarriage. I get up and there's some kind of expert being interviewed on the television. She talks about not drinking coffee (if you're pregnant) and how there's caffeine in tea. Then the presenter says: "But isn't there caffeine in chocolate?" The expert pauses, as I hold my breath and reach for my ears, before she says "yes". Apparently dark chocolate is the worst, because, of course, it is the most concentrated. She seemed to think that white chocolate and probably milk chocolate would not do too much harm.

Well that seems to be the end of snacking on dark chocolate because it's "healthy". I can't snack on milk chocolate - it would be plain foolish - but I suppose the occasional chocolate snack will do no harm. I wonder about chocolate drinks?

Defac chocolate?

...And if there were caffeine in chocolate, surely someone would have developed a decaf chocolate by now?