Negatives and Positives and Histamines

Sorry for the older photo, but I've not had the camera out since I took some garden photos.  We have been out and about, and it has been in my bag, but no opportunities to take photos as I was driving, or - as on Thursday when we got to the scenic bits, rain of Biblical proportions proceeded to fall and we had to pull off the road as you couldn't SEE the road ahead, which had turned into a river . . .  The powers that be got the weather forecast right on THAT day!

It's a shame, as the countryside is at its best at this time of year, though the Cow Parsley is starting to go over now, to be replaced by swathes of Ox Eye daisies - the masses down the central reservation of the A40 dual carriageway beyond Carmarthen are stunningly beautiful, which means the Council will soon go into overdrive and decimate the lot - spending our council tax to employ umpteen men, lorries, signs and closing down half the road to clear what is a thing of great natural beauty and an asset to the county.  Council bods NEVER see it like that - they want urban lawns everywhere and a Costa Coffee chain on every large roundabout (this is fast coming to pass.)

This is proving to be a funny old year - lots of negatives, some of them socking great big ones, like suddenly finding we have to take our house off the market (well, getting rid of the agent and deciding it's best to have a break because of walls to be done inside). Upside of that: we have time to get things updated, finished, altered.  Finding out it was going to cost over £2,000 to put in planning application to change the access driveway.  Then a friend from the Fairs turns out to be a retired architect and has offered to do the plan for us, gratis, and I discover that because I have a degree in Archaeology, I am more than qualified to carry out the HUGE stumbling block, the Heritage Statement, which was going to cost us £1,250 if you please.  So I have started working on that now.

Now, healthwise, with my asthma, I have really been struggling.  I had a big blip in May when poor air quality ("toxic smog" they called it) was stagnant over our part of Wales, combined with a hot spell and a complete explosion of tree pollen, which I had never been allergic to before.  Mind you, the problem could mainly have been the toxic smog.  That called for steroids.

Then recently my asthma took another sudden downturn and nothing I have been doing seemed to help it at all until I ended up yesterday morning, waking at 3.45 a.m. yet AGAIN, needing my asthma inhalers even sooner. They are meant to last for 12 hours, but it had been getting an hour less, and then 2 hours, and I had gone back on another course of steroids to try and resolve it, without any improvement in peak flow levels.  I was in a bad place yesterday morning, maxed out on all my medications and still struggling, plus feeling very shakey, with heart palpitations, dizziness (all the drug combination hitting at once I guess). All I could see in the future was COPD and the end game of COPD which doesn't bear thinking about.

Anyway, from this horrid place has come a little . . . positivity.  I have long been aware which things I need to avoid to prevent a worsening of my asthma - giving up alcohol because of the sulphites in it; trying to avoid motorway travel where possible (not possible on Thursday) because of the sulphitey diesel particulates in the air from the heavies; cleansing fruit I cannot peel because of the ghastly sprays everything is covered in, eating only fresh meat and not having too many leftovers; having fresh fish only and trying not to have prawns or anchovies, which I love etc .  I usually avoid peaches and nectarines because they are sprayed, but really fancied a fresh peach last week - and peeled it, ate and enjoyed it, and then had a BIG hit in the lungs, so the spray had obviously got into the flesh of the fruit.  I don't have dried apricots or dried fruit for the same reason, although the dark (expensive!) Hunza apricots are ok.  

I then had a lightbulb moment when I was reading a recently-bought cookery magazine which was talking about hayfever - and recommending Haymax which is a balm (natural ingredients) for applying to nostrils and the eye orbit to catch pollen - it prevents up to a third of the pollen going into your body.  That seems to help.  In the same article, they mentioned Histamine levels.  Now, this was the real lightbulb moment as for a good while I tried to eat foods which were low in histamines, and avoiding the - many - which are high.  I did this for a couple of months, but found it very restrictive and at the time I wasn't aware that it was hugely helpful and a GP friend and also my Asthma Nurse still felt the only way to go was to increase medication to control symptoms.  It's difficult to argue with the professionals, though I would like to think stopping the symptoms happening in the first place is the way to go.

Anyway, I am revisiting it again and have been trying to avoid anything really high in Histamines this week.  Yesterday was a revelation as I really DID reduce the levels in my body and all of a sudden my asthma improved radically in the evening and I felt so much better, and I could BREATH again.  So, I have blown the dust off my Kindle and found the E-book I bought from the lady (Yasmina Ykelamstam) whose FB blog I have followed, and and am following again now. There is nothing to be lost, and everything to be gained.  I have hope again.  I think the "biggie" to drop is tomatoes as they are members of the Nightshade family (along with potatoes, aubergines etc).  I eat a LOT of tomatoes and cook with them all the time.  I will see what happens when I abandon them.

So, off to town in a while, with a shopping list of fresh ingredients such as Buckwheat flour, Spelt flour, Chia seeds, Hazlenuts, Ricotta and Feta cheeses.  I need more Quercetin capsules too - those have been noticably beneficial - as has Vitamin D (that makes a real difference after I've taken it, or missed it).  Supper tonight is going to be Lentil Dhal with brown rice and veg.

Thanks for your forbearance as I witter on . . .