| Author | Message | ||
| Lila K |
Hi, I am a 25 year old female. I am new to this board but have been suffering from what I believe are MSG related symptoms for years. It began about 10 years ago when I started to have attacks where I had difficulty breathing. Thinking I had developed asthma I went to the doctor and had chest x-rays etc and they found nothing wrong. I discovered that these attacks seem to always come after I ate pringles (which I have now stopped eating!). Other symptoms I often experience are blurry vision (i have had my vision checked often and no clue as to why this happens), sensitivity to light, nervousness and anxiety for no reason, nervous twitches, and constant coughing. Am I on the right track in thinking this is MSG related as I do eat a lot of junk food etc. One other thing I have noticed is when I smoke cigarettes recently (i have smoked on and off for about 9 years) they leave me feeling a bit nauseated and dizzy and just generally not well. I read somewhere that some brands of cigarettes contain MSG. Is this true? | ||
| Roy Piwovar
|
Lila, I suspect sulfites. You may be reacting to sulfites in the dried potatoes used to make the potato chips, plus pringles are packaged differently than other chips and may be in sulfited paperboard canisters. If the pringles were a flavored version they were more likely to have MSG, which might add to the reaction, but even plain pringles may have maltodextrin, a source of MSG that is not in a lot of plain potato chips. | ||
| Roy Piwovar
|
Lila, Your vision symptoms sound like MSG reactions to me, and many sensitive to MSG also react to aspartame, which I would also avoid. As for cigarettes, yes they list monosodium glutamate among the flavoring agents used, but the total list of additives in them is staggering. http://tobaccodocuments.org/product_design/2050755566-5578.html (and scroll down) | ||
| Deb A. |
Hi Lila. I experience blurry vision and anxiety if I eat something containing MSG by mistake. In fact, your symptoms of difficulty with breathing and constant coughing were my first ones over 30 years ago. I suffered needlessly for 21 years before I made the MSG connection to my growing number of disorders. | ||
| MEMorrisNJ
|
Can anyone tell me why we react differently to MSG? For example, some folks get whopper migraines, others get rashes, and then, there are people like me who get hum-dinger digestive problems. Thanks. | ||
| Jerry Story
|
Homework assignment for anyone who chooses to smoke. Read this book: http://medicolegal.tripod.com/wight1889.htm#tableofcontents If that's not good enough, then your second homework assignment (after you do the first one) is: Write an essay about why you want to smoke. | ||
| Jerry Story
|
On the Q about different people get different effects from MSG: My guess is that MSG tends to affect all body systems in all people, but in this person this body system is weaker or more damaged, and in that person that body system is weaker or more damaged. The reasons for this or that body system being weaker or more damaged can be: heredity, nutrition, other bad habits, environment, etc., etc. On the other hand, maybe I'm full of ..... Maybe the effect is a process of elimination of MSG, and maybe the body chooses the strongest channel of elimination in order to do the least damage. | ||
| Connie M.
|
Well I get migranes and stomach problems from MSG. My mom smokes. She has been on her death bed many times and still smokes. She is 55. I am estranged from my family, long story.Involves my step dad, my brother has taken his side, it is his dad.I got tired of going to the magistrate court over them and putting my own daughter and family through He**. I had to distance myself from them. It is bad when you have to worry if you need to be armed or not.My husband is into guns and all that and is teaching me how to shot and all that for my own protection. My husband does not allow them on our property. It is so sad as my mom is sick, who knows how long she has to live, maybe a few years if she is lucky. I have been heart broken over this. My brother used to be my best friend, even stayed with me some. My mom called and asked for my forgiveness and of course I forgave her. She has made my life so hard though. But I just can't keep forgiving her. And I can't really see her b/c of my controlling step dad. Her own sister is not allowed to see her b/c of my step dad. Anyway, I did not mean to get into all that here. Just some things we can't change. My mom has pulmonary fibrosis. She is being treated by a lung specialist. I can't even tell you what she has been through in the past few years. I have seen her near death so many times. Noone smokes at my house. My 17 year old teenage daughter has never tried it after seeing what my mom has been through. Why don't they take all these young kids to the hospitals and show them what it does to you? Might make them think. | ||
| Deb A. |
MEMorris, Dr. Blaylock suggests that we have leaky blood brain barriers..some more than others. In fact, there are areas of the brain that have no barriers at all. Age, injury, and genetics all play a role, too. Infants and children's BBB aren't developed fully at all. That's probably why we are seeing so many MSG related childhood health problems...ADD, autism, asthma and so on. As to what areas of the brain excess glutamate reaches, that may also have something to do with the body system effected. | ||
| Deb A. |
Also, Dr. George Schwartz, a toxocologist states that MSG is a true drug and toxin. How we react is dosage related. I get a little and I itch and may have stomach distress...get a lot and it's a 3 day migraine and feeling blue, too. | ||
| Connie M.
|
I was thinking I just get migraines and stomach problems from the MSG. Then I started thinking, I have not been itching much lately. I did have like an overall itchy feeling but it is gone for the most part. Thought it was some sort of allergy. Now I am thinking it was the MSG. But something is still going on with my stomach. My doctor thinks I am gluten intolerant. I think I am still eating some of that somehow. I am still reading up on that. | ||
| Deb A. |
Have you considered that you are sulfite reactive? My main reaction to sulfites is stomach problems. | ||
| Connie M.
|
Thanks Deb. I have been trying to avoid sulfites. I think I have avoided most of them for the most part but I am still having some stomach problems. I have tried to read up on sulfites as well. I have cut out a lot of stuff from my diet, maybe too much. I can't afford to lose much more weight. Just trying to keep my weight at a steady amount. Having a hard time with that. | ||
| Carol H |
Connie - exactly explain your stomach symptoms. Nausea?, vomiting? general dull pains that are piercing? I had pains in my stomach for years and my doctor diagnosed an H.Pylori infection. I took meds for two weeks and haven't had symptoms since. | ||
| Connie M.
|
Thanks Carol, I had h pylori many years ago and have been checked several times again for it, don't have it. It seemed the more rice and stuff I was eating, the more my stomach bothered me. I tried going gluten free too. I am trying the SCD diet now as well as no MSG and I think it is actually helping. I think it will work for my stomach. I had different problems. And I did cut out all MSG. Running to the bathroom a lot, etc... It was like I was not digesting my food. I will keep you posted. | ||
| Joe Public |
I think you're on the right track now Connie. Think of the central premise of the SCDiet, what we put down there, if it cannot be properly digested by our digestive system, does harm because it feeds something else and that something else is the wrong bacteria and yeasts. Then these bacteria & yeasts and their byproducts strip the mucous lining of the GI tract causing inflammation. Sometimes we see diarrhea, or blood in the feces, and other times we don't see anything. Food and food additive molecules pass through the damaged gut wall into the blood steam, and then sometimes past the blood-brain barrier. It's the root cause of a lot of allergies, intestinal problems and erratic behavior too. Study up on Candida, Leaky Gut, the science behind SCD etc. It's really all the same thing. It all fits together. I wonder if a lot of people don't think that somehow there's a direct link between MSG and the brain that somehow bypasses the GI tract. I guess the problem is that sometimes when you're sick, you can focus so hard on MSG alone that you can't see the forest for the trees. Even when the information is being posted all around us, sometimes we don't get it. Many people can't properly digest wheat, milk and sugar and that starts the cycle and there aren't always outward signs. Some people understand that molecules are crossing the blood brain barrier but they aren't asking themselves how certain of these molecules are in the blood stream to begin with. A breakdown in the GI tract lining is the cause of many, maybe all of these food and food additive sensitivities. To fix the problem you have to heal the GI tract. | ||
| Carol H |
Connie, Joe's right, and don't forget - stomach troubles like improper digestion "running to the bathroom" etc, are textbook classic symptoms of food allergy. I get those same symptoms from eating foods I am allergic to. My boyfriend gets those symptoms from MSG. If you ate a lot of rice products - like Joe's wife did, AND had leaky gut syndrome (allergy causes inflammation - even in the digestive tract), it's sort of a recipe for a food allergy. And allergies cause a leaky blood-brain barrier - not good if you are sensitive to MSG. If you can tolerate blueberries or blueberry juice, blueberries have a protective effect on the blood-brain barrier. Foods like ginger, oregano and rosemary have anti-inflammatory properties that may also help. | ||
| Joe Public |
Carol, I'm so glad you mentioned rice. Rice is widely thought to be hypoallergenic in the west. On some alternative health websites here in the west it is even described as being "very" hypoallergenic. I think you can even find it described that way in some medical literature. Rice is not hypoallergenic. That is very old information recycled many times that no longer applies. For all of the Asians living in western countries and with the wide adoption of rice into some western diets, rice can no longer be considered hypoallergenic here in the west or anywhere else. Generally speaking, you are least allergenic to what you never or rarely eat. You can become sensitized to anything you eat a lot of. Likely rice was very hypoallergenic in North America for these reasons previous to the 1950s or 1960s, before the more wide spread adoption of rice into our western diets. In Asia rice is a major allergen. The two most common food allergens in Malaysia are rice and shellfish and on allergy websites from India I have found rice mentioned as a common food allergen in that country. Just so that everyone understands I'm not knocking Asians for their food choices, I will point out that even potatoes, one of my favorite foods, and one that is rarely considered as a possible source of allergy, can be a problem food for some people. If you twist my arm I will dig out the link to a website of a doctor somewhere in the UK or Ireland who states that he testified on behalf of a person who attacked a family member and successfully got this person acquitted because of his allergy to potatoes. He was "made aggressive" by his allergy to potatoes. We can ever assume any food is automatically hypoallergenic. It is usually the foods that we eat the most often that we become sensitized to. | ||
| Roy Piwovar
|
The article linked below states: "I myself made medico-legal history here in the UK when in 1986 the Crown Court in Ballymena accepted my evidence that a youth who had tried to strangle a member of his family was made aggressive by a potato allergy." http://www.alternative-doctor.com/allergydotcom/brainallergy.htm | ||
| Carol H |
I have an intense fondness for all things Asian. That is what makes this MSG thing so hard and why I try to always explain how Asian food is so much more than just MSG. I grew up eating Chinese food. My father - although of German descent - absolutely loves to cook and his favorite food to make has always been Chinese food. (He never used MSG - but he did have a recipe for soy chicken that would send most of the people here to the hospital.) He inspired me with his love of cooking. As an Italian/German American kid, growing up, I was as likely to find in our pantry bamboo shoots, water chestnuts, dried cloud ears, ginger and chile paste as my friends were to find Dinty Moore stew in theirs. It is telling that here in the US, the allergens that cause 90% of allergies are nuts, eggs, wheat, shellfish, soy, peanuts, milk, fish, chicken, and mollusks. We eat these foods all the time. I developed allergies to other foods though - red peppers, celery, carrots, and artichokes. These were foods I relied on heavily after being diagnosed with allergies to chicken, soy, milk, peanuts, and tomatoes. I am always conscious and afraid of being diagnosed with rice allergy or egg allergy. That is why I try to make breads out of other flours besides just rice. That is why allergists ask what foods you eat right before they test you - they are assuming a food you eat frequently is an offending food. | ||
| Joe Public |
Carol, are you assuming too much when you assume you have no Asian bloodlines? :0) Never assume anything! :0) Go to the public library and look for "Magic Carpet Ride: The Autobiography of John Kay and Steppenwolf". John Kay (Joachim Fritz Krauledat) was the front man for Steppenwolf, the '60s rock band that recorded 'Born to be Wild', 'Magic Carpet Ride', etc. He and his mother came to Toronto after fleeing Prussia, a German state, as the Russian army was closing in toward the end of WWII. He says that his almond shaped eyes are quite common in that area of Europe. (Prussia no longer exists, it's all or partially within the boundaries of Poland now.) Kay says many of the people there can trace Asian ancestry to the Huns and Mongols, who overran Prussia several centuries ago. I think he means the army of Ogodei Khan, son of Genghis Khan who invaded Prussia in the mid-1200's. There are exceptions, but a great many racial mixtures are not that easy to pick out even after only one generation. If your ancestors wanted to obscure their true identity to "fit in" even just a few generations back, the truth is not all that easy to uncover. And lots of people just don't know very much about their family tree. Few of us even know all eight of our great grandparents' family names. We really have no idea whose genes we carry. There are no pure races. My son is Irish/French/Prussian/Scot/English on one side, and Chinese/Malay on the other. The girls usually think he's Italian or Spanish. If he wanted to obscure his true identity he could pass for almost anything I suppose. And now for a food tip. :0) "...The Mongols had an advantage in diet, which included a lot of meat, milk* and yogurt, and they could miss a day or two of eating better than Ruzhen soldiers, who ate grains. Genghis Khan and his army overran Beijing and pushed into the heartland of northern China..." from http://www.fsmitha.com/h3/h11mon.htm [*That would obviously be a fermented milk product since we know these people didn't carry that pesky mutation on chromosome 2.] Soooo..., when Mercola says, "Consuming excess grain and sugar carbohydrates is one of the primary reasons why so many people suffer from: * Excess weight * Fatigue and frequent sleepiness * Depression * Brain fogginess * Bloating...", [ http://www.mercola.com/2005/mar/5/obesity_carbs.htm ] we know his "why so many people suffer from" list missed out: * Humiliating defeat * Losing Beijing :0) The message is clear, winners like Genghis Khan and the invading Mongols hordes ate a diet close to that of their Paleolithic ancestors, while losers like the Ruzhens pigged out on grains. Couldn't be clearer than that, could it? :0) | ||
| Deb A. |
Ha, I had to laugh at what you wrote. I have almond shaped eyes as do two of my kids. Always was told they were big or exotic. My grandmother was from Austria/Hungary.....Gunz...sometimes it was Austria and now it is in Hungary. My family would joke that I must have some of Attilla the Hun or Khan in me. Now you have me wondering! Oh, and I'm blonde and blue eyed.  | ||
| Joe Public |
Deb, I think you're on the right track. Makes my point perfectly! :0) I was just teasing Carol because of her "fondness for all things Asian", but your "family joke" would be a pretty strong clue that you likely have some fairly strong Asian bloodlines through your grandmother. :0) And therein, along with milk and our North American obsession with it, might lie at least a part of the beginnings of your food and food additive sensitivity problems. I think somewhere you mentioned that you had fewer problems with dark chocolate compared to light chocolate if I remember correctly. One big difference between dark and light chocolate is that dark doesn't have the milk that light has. Maybe you should join the National Geographic Genographic Project: "...the Genographic Project is collecting thousands of DNA samples over the next few years. ... The entire online process is completely anonymous... ... ...serve(s) as compelling documentation of your deep ancestry. ... an exciting exploration of your personal genetic background..." https://www5.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/journey.html "...Did you ever wonder about your most ancient ancestors? The Genographic Project will introduce you to them, and explain the genetic journeys that bond your personal lineage over tens of thousands of years..." https://www5.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/journey.html "...Participants in the Genographic Project gain insight into their deep ancestral migratory route, discovering who they are and how we are all related. Below you can see the type of results you will receive, all from a simple cheek swab. Your personal DNA analysis will show you how the mutations on your genes identify you as a member of a specific haplogroup..." https://www5.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/sample_results.html When people look at babies you hear them say things like, "She has her father's eyes," and someone else will say, "and she has her mother's mouth." But there will be lots of other facial features that don't look familiar at all. Likely those are a throwback to an earlier generation on one side of her ancestry or the other but nobody ever wonders who the child inherited her GI tract from! That's what I want to know. ;0) Have fun! :0) | ||
| Carol H |
Joe - that was really funny - I never realized. Yes - my fathers family did come from Prussia and me and my sisters have almond shaped eyes. I just saw a show on TV last nite about the myth of the Amazons and how researchers now beleive that these "warrior women" probably were the real ancestors of people of Mongolia. I used to always joke that my tallest sister looked like an Amazon. (At 5'7" I am the shortest of five kids.) I might not have been so far off the mark. LOL. Gee, I guess that means the Glutes better just not get on my bad side | ||
| Joe Public |
"...About 8% of men in Central and East Asia are descended from this 12th century Mongol leader (Genghis Khan) according to DNA tests..." National Geopraphic, June 2005 ------------------ "...Genghis Khan... ... has an estimated 16 million living descendants..." http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2005_04_01_dienekes_archive.html ------------------ | ||
| Joe Public |
"...I guess that means the Glutes better just not get on my bad side..." Yes both you and Deb might be two they wouldn't want to tangle with. I'm thinking of Deb's reference to Attila the Hun, and wondering now if maybe it wasn't JUST her eyes her family was referring to. <knees_shaking> :0) | ||
| Deb A. |
Hahahahahahah! A nickname my dad gave me was "powerful Katrinka". I have a grandchild who is my spitting image..will be 2 in December...they call her the same thing...picks up chairs and moves them everywhere. Don't mess with the Katrinkas! |
