It’s Right Under Your Nose…Your Foods, Your Misery

Do this exercise and find out the underlying causes of your sinus inflammation

By Dan Gay, CMO Sinus Survival

 

It’s time to do a quick study on yourself. Think of yourself as an outside observer and do the following activities and you’ll learn some amazing things that will stop many of your sinus issues.

Underlying Sinus Inflammatory Cause #4

There are 7 main causes of repeated sinus pain and misery ranging from dry air/dry sinuses, a weakened immune system, airborne allergies, a candida overgrowth etc. and one of the primary causes is FOOD. That’s right, as Dr. Ivker states, “It’s usually the most common foods that you eat that cause you the most severe issues.”

I certainly found that to be the case with me, but it wasn’t until I did this exercise that I was able to figure out what the main culprits were. Also, if you have multiple food allergies, you may have so much constant sinus pain, sinus congestion, blocked sinuses, pressure behind your cheek bones and eyes and that nasty nasal drainage, that you wouldn’t necessarily even see the reaction after eating the offending food(s).

Your Foods Are Causing Your Misery

So, which foods are the ones that are causing you the most issues? Now it’s time for you to become a super sleuth, an Inspector Clouseau (okay the Pink Panther movies were a favorite of mine growing up). It’s time for you to open up an investigation, Case #1, go ahead and write that down on a spiral notebook. This is your next field of study: you.

  • For the next 3 days write down everything you’ve eaten for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Don’t forget to add in your snacks as well as drinks including coffee, sodas, and alcohol (yes, it might get tough here).
  • Highlight any common things that you eat often: Clif Bars, PowerBars, nuts, coffee, peanut butter sandwiches, milk and cookies, ice cream, eggs, yogurt, etc.
  • Do you see some common trends? Mark those down in a separate column as “suspects.” Yes, back to the Inspector Clouseau, you’re creating a crime scene reenactment with a real-live suspect list. Now, look at these common food triggers for many sinus sufferers:
    • Peanut butter (due to the mold in processing)
    • Coffee (because of the acidity and many coffees have mold). We aren’t saying you must give up that cup of Joe just yet. It’s just a suspect and maybe there’s another type that has no mold. For me, coffee was a huge trigger to set my face on fire. I ended up drinking tea and found that I no longer had sinus congestion.
    • Soy products. The stuff is in everything, but about 40% of the population has issues with it.
    • Milk and dairy. Even if you aren’t allergic to it, the casein protein in dairy causes allergic reactions in many people and dairy causes phlegm, which isn’t a big benefit to sinus sufferers.
    • MSG

For the next 3 weeks, you’ll begin your investigation:

  1. Keep a Food Diary

– Add two columns: one for food, one for symptoms

Every time you drink or eat something, write it down. Take a mental note of how you feel within 15 minutes. Notice if you feel any of the following symptoms:

  1. An increase in pulse
  2. A headache
  3. Dry cough or a productive cough with mucus
  4. Sinus congestion
  5. Sinuses feeling inflamed or pressure behind the cheeks, eyes, or in the sinuses
  6. Stomach irritability
  7. Scratchy throat
  8. Runny nose
  9. Watery eyes
  10. Feeling like your airways are constricted
  11. Sweating

Write down any symptoms on the right column side. You may have just a few symptoms, but with a really serious food allergy you may have many. If you’re serious about doing this and in tune with your body, you’ll be amazed at this experiment because you’ll start seeing some patterns.

As an example, I noticed that after eating eggs I got a headache, my sinuses got congested, I started coughing, my throat became constricted, and my nose started running, all within about 7 to 10 minutes after eating. I wrote that down. After a few days, I tried to eat just hard boiled eggs without salt or pepper and I noticed that I still got the headache, but I didn’t get the cough or many of the other symptoms. Hmmm, what’s that all about? About 20 minutes later I decided to take the punishment and eat another hard boiled egg, but with pepper on it. I again experienced all of symptoms. Hmmm, allergic to eggs, but really allergic to pepper. The combination was a title wave of reactions.

Going through this process I found that coffee made my sinuses congested and like they were on fire, coffee with cream or an espresso was even worse. Pepper was a huge issue on many fronts, as well as dairy, soy, and onions. After a while I also noticed that watermelon and cucumbers gave me indigestion, which made sense because they were both in the onion family. I did find that I could substitute mustard seed or Grey Poupon for pepper in meals and I didn’t have any issues with it… Interesting.

  1. Rotate Foods

Minimize the types of foods and now rotate these foods in and out of your diet every 3 days. You’ll be able to see offending foods with greater clarity this way. Begin to highlight and narrow the suspects down. After 2 to 3 weeks, you’ll have a pretty good little list of what you should minimize in your diet, or the best thing you can do now is find foods that you can swap for these culprits. That way you won’t feel like you’ve had a big take away or that you’re missing something.

My Allergy Foods and the New Substitutions

Found Allergy Foods                                Food Trade-In Substitutes

Coffee                                                            Tea

*Soy                                                               Rice Protein, Pea Protein

Milk/Dairy                                                    Rice Milk, Almond Milk, Coconut Milk

Ice Cream                                                     Coconut Ice Cream (yum!)

Pepper and Pepper Family                      Mustard Seed, arugula Salad,

Green Peppers, Salsa, Pico Sauce          Fresh Tomatoes and Avocados

Cilantro                                                         (I didn’t find a substitute, but that’s okay)

*Soy – What you’ll find is that once you find some offending foods, you’ll also need to look at where those foods reside. I was eating soy protein bars, soy yogurt, and soy milk. Every time I had a new symptom I would look back to what I ate, and go reading what I just had on a package. Many times, it was soy. Gluten-free waffles from Trader Joes – soy is first on the list! Don’t worry, after a while you’ll become your own food champion, which is worth it to feel great again!

 

Need Support?

If you need support in this process, contact Ellen@myvillagegreen.com

There is also a great online program from a friend and best-selling author Tom Malterre called the Elimination Diet, click here to learn more >>

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