A Few More Thoughts on Allergies and Making My Own Food

Over a week, I wrote a post about making my own bread due to my allergy to an ingredient commonly put into breads I normally eat these days. Since then, I started to wonder if there are other foods with my allergies in them. While on a recent shopping trip, I decided to look around at the baked goods at the store I normally eat to see if they contain my soy food allergy.

After walking around the store, I felt really disappointed with the foods! So many of them contained soy! Even though I have a tolerance to soy, and if I eat soy oil is within a certain amount of time after it was created, I noticed I am still suffering from allergic reaction symptoms. After discovering so many foods I normally eat have soy in them, I felt disappointed and discouraged.

For many years, I wondered if should start making my own food. I knew this was a major possibility due to how my non food allergies affect me. At that time, I found many premade foods I could still eat because it didn’t contain ingredients I’m allergic to. All these years, it wasn’t a problem. Today, it is.

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Baking My Own Bread and Why I’m Frustrated With Ingredients in Store Bought Bread

I have realized for the past few years that finding bread made without my allergens is becoming harder to do. This problem has become worse over the past year. I have noticed my favorite place to buy bread at (a bakery in a specific grocery store) has changed their recipe to include an ingredient that I am allergic to. Fortunately, it is an allergy I have a tolerance for. Yet, after weeks of eating the bread, it became difficult for me to consume it anymore without getting sick.

This has lead me to acknowledge that the area where I live is somewhere where is too difficult to find food I’m not allergic to anymore without cooking it at home. I tried to spread my shopping range to other stores, but, sadly, these stores are usually too far away from where I live (About an hour or more drive)  without it becoming a major hassle.

Since I’m not moving to a different area right now (I won’t go into reasons why), I decided to start making my own bread from home. It may be time consuming, but, after taking into consideration my allergies,  travel time, and expenses, I am sure it will cost me less money, and possibly less time, to do this.

The problem is I haven’t made my own bread in years!

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5 Tips for Buying Skin Care Products for Allergy Suffers

Since I was a child, I struggled with allergies. One of my most memorable problems as a child was with the soaps I used. The soaps my parent bought me was not hypoallergenic and cause me to have an allergic reaction every time I used it. Now that I’m an adult, I can now recognize soaps with ingredients that will cause me problems.

After searching online for blog posts about tips to find skin care products, I couldn’t find posts and tips that helped me. Inspired by this, I wanted to write a post about five tips I’d give to someone looking for skin care products that don’t affect their allergies. Since allergies affect people different, and not everyone has allergies to the same things, I will not be talking about which product would be best suited for each tip. This post is meant to be used as five guidelines that you can customize to fit your needs. Also, I’m sorry if there is something missing from this post that will help you more than what I talk about! I hope to write more posts on the top of beauty products and allergies in the future, so I might include it in a future post!

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How I Am Doing This Allergy Season- Spring 2021

If you followed my blog for a while, you probably read me mention my allergies a few times in my posts. The reason why I talk about my allergies so frequently is due to the affect make up, skin care, and fragrances in general have on them. I have year around allergies cause by the natural plant vegetation, agriculture, and other naturally occurring things in the area. Even though I can manage them by taking an allergy pill, sometimes they get much worse due to the plants blossoming or something happening due to the agriculture in the area.

According to many new reports, this season is especially bad for allergies. I think this is confusing because I live in Arizona and Arizona is most defiantly lacking in the normal amount of yearly rain totals. Since there hasn’t been a lot of rain, I don’t know why there are so many blooms or where the plants got their water from. Still, I can see what the reports are talking about. Many plants are blooming here, which means allergy sufferers will be suffering.

I’m not sure how many of my readers will wonder how I’m doing and how my allergies are this spring, but I still wanted to write a post about my allergies, how bad they are, and how I’m dealing with them.

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Why I Can’t Use Bath and Body Works Candles Anymore (But Can Use Other Brands)

A few months ago, I made multiple Bath and Body Works haul posts in which I talked about buying Wallflowers as replacements for candles. I also mentioned that I cannot use nor burn Bath and Body Works candles anymore. Before I wrote and published those posts, I already planned to talk about which candles aggravates my allergies while others do not. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to sit down and write a post about it until now.

The basic reason why Bath and Body Works candles is because of my allergies. I suffered from allergies most of my life, but the cause of my allergies was a mystery until I made an effort in my late teens to finally figure out why I would feel sickly on some days and not on others. It turned out my health problems was more complicated than I, or my doctors, ever imagined, but there was always some sort of underlining health condition that prevented my body from recovering from other illness I had at that time. My doctors figured out the reason for this: My allergies are so bad they messed with my immune system’s ability to fight against virus and infections I had throughout my childhood and teens.

Even though I was happy to discover why I had immune system problems, I also learned my allergies are caused by vegetation, agriculture crops, pollutants in the air caused by local agriculture, and the natural bacteria in the soil where I grew up and where I currently live. To remedy the allergies completely, all I need to do is literally move to a different area in my home state of Arizona or move out of state. Moving really isn’t something I can afford or do at this time, so I’m kind of stuck where I’m at.

Allergy medication does help me immensely, but my allergies caused complications, such as a sensitivity to foods and other things that I am not actually not allergic to. This makes me happy because I believed I had food allergies and many more allergies, but it turns out I just have a sensitivity. One of the foods I found out I am sensitive to is soy.

Since I’m have a sensitivity to soy, I cannot eat many soy products or expose myself to soy based products. If I do not, I may have an allergy-like reaction that can sometimes be very serious. This includes soy based beauty products, such as Fresh’s Soy Cleanser and shampoos and conditioners with soy in them. I cannot take supplements with soy in them either. Also, I cannot use soy candles.

And that’s why I cannot use Bath and Body Works’ candles. The candles soy based and, even though I can smell them in the store or at a friend’s house without a problem, I cannot keep them or burn them in my house. Because of this, I began to use other brand’s candles that do not contain soy, such as Yankee Candle.

It makes me sad to know I cannot burn my Bath and Body Works candles, but I am hopeful I can use them after I move out of the area where I currently live! I do not know when that day will be, but I am trying to remain hopeful that it will happen sooner than I think it will be.

Well, that’s all for now! Thank you for reading!

7 Tips for Picking Perfumes for Allergy Suffers

Since I started this blog, I tried to expand my knowledge about beauty as well as get out of my beauty comfort zone. One of the areas I tried to focus on was perfumes. Although I love the smell of perfumes, I hesitated wearing them because I not only suffer from seasonal allergies, but form allergies that are aggravated by the plants and agriculture near where I live.

If you suffer from allergies, you probably already know that you need to avoid products with fragrances. Since my allergies fluctuate depending on the season, I became creative in testing perfumes to see if I would like to wear them when my allergies are not acting up. If you suffer from seasonal allergies or are worried about how to test perfumes without spraying yourself with the perfume, I created a list of seven tips for picking perfumes. This list is not how to make yourself immune to the scents or how to stop your allergies from acting up so you can wear perfumes. This is just seven ways to test fragrances to see if you would like them as well as a tip or two about wearing perfumes so allergy suffers will not suffer more during allergy season. Continue reading “7 Tips for Picking Perfumes for Allergy Suffers”