I accidentally salicylate bombed myself, but it led to dx
On my 55th birthday I made a smoothie with chia seeds, sesame seeds, matcha powder, pomegranate, raspberries, blueberries, avocado, spinach flax seed, soy milk, yogurt, ceylon cinnamon powder, and turmeric. we are talking a teaspoon or tablespoon of every one of the powder ingredients. Yeah, I can feel you wincing from here.
See, I'd been feeling really really brain fogged and awful for a while.. a couple of years really just getting progressively older and more adhd. I've been to the doctor 3x with unexplained mouth sores and a rotating band of suspected fruit allergies that come and go. Trying to make oral allergy syndrome fit, but it didn't quite. My sleep schedule was wretched, the ringing in my ears was becoming unbearable, and I was blaming menopause. I was turning over a new leaf... superfood smoothies in the mornings.
Researched all the best phytoestrogens, made sure to include some from each class, really put some time into gathering good ingredients. A gift to myself.
Day one of smoothie ... spent my birthday semi-comatose and barely lucid.
Day two smoothie ... eliminated one ingredient from the smoothie to attempt to determine which ingredient was the issue... spent nearly two days in a brain fog so extreme I didn't really feel like even getting out of bed. The ringing in my ears was so loud I just wanted to cry. Dragged myself to my own birthday dinner (heretofore known as the last supper) at kpot and fell straight to sleep when I got home. I tried to be engaged, but I was so broken by this point.
Day three... skipped the smoothie, obv, and during the one or two hours I was even awake, started googling all the ingredients in my smoothie and this one word kept coming up... salicylate.
Fast forward a bunch of research later...now on day 3 of elimination, and only one of my ears is ringing and my skin feels. Yes, that's the end of the sentence. I can feel the breeze in a way that lets me know neuropathy had become my norm.
Holy crap.
Just holy crap.
I have a Master of Science in Biology and Autism and the research rabbit hole has been deep... and I'm thinking clearly for the first time in a while so it's been efficient too. This is crazy. I think my dad had it, but maybe not quite as bad. We'll never know. He used to say eating fruit gave him vitamin c sores... his 'raised in the 1950s' version of urticaria in his mouth.