Discovering Your Allergies: Author Sherilyn Powers

Have you ever had someone, like a doctor or nutritionist, ask you what you had for breakfast and not be able to remember?

With our hectically frantic lives, many of us can't remember what we were doing a short time ago, never mind some time before taking the kids to school and daycare, running back home to pick up a lunch someone forgot, the four meetings with your boss, clients, co-workers and the plumber who was called in to your house by the neighbours when your pipes bursting flooded their basement.

This is why when trying to discover what types of allergic symptoms may be affecting you and their causes can be practically impossible without keeping track physically. If we can't think of what we had for breakfast this morning, how are we going to remember everything we encountered three days earlier?

Yes, three days. Delayed reactions can take up to 72 hours to show up and in the case of some substances (medical contrast dye) even up to seven days!

In my book, I'm Not Crazy... I'm Allergic!, I discuss journaling in more detail and why it is important to help you start finding your triggers. Even if you are able to go in for all the different allergy testing, journaling is still your best bet for confirming exactly what affects you and how.

Tracking daily routines, foods, environments and symptoms can seem rather daunting when you first start, but it is one of the things that helps me identify immediately when something is wrong and what it is. After you have established a safe daily routine that creates no reactions, make sure that if you want to stray that you only stray with one variable at a time. Ie. Eating at McDonalds. If that is unusual and you get sick, it's pretty easy to pick apart what you ate and narrow down the possible culprits. If you are eating questionable items all the time, you will never pinpoint what is giving you issues.

I just read an article on www.dailymail.co.uk, on a man who cured his allergies after 5 years of tracking everything! Yes, he was desperate. For him allergies were far worse to deal with than the keeping track of everything he came in contact with and how many times he sneezed! (See "Man cures his pollen allergy by tracking every sneeze for FIVE years and analysing what made his allergies worse" on dailymail.co.uk)

Luckily the man, Thomas Christiansen, was a software programmer and developed his own way to keep track. His app, Mymee app , helped him track a variety of things to help build his case on what he was reacting to and when.

We can't all develop our own tracking software, and some of us can't afford fancy gadgets, but pens and paper are available in most areas. Whatever method you use for tracking your symptoms and possible triggers, make sure to include dates, times, foods, environments (home, work, restaurant, farmer's field), as well as things like mood, pain, sneezing, mucus production and general feeling of well-being - or not.

Tracking these things for a month or two may not give you any startling revelations, but as you do start to notice things you possibly react to and remove or limit them, the knowledge from journaling can snowball.

ABOUT THE GUEst AUTHOR

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Sherilyn Powers is a multi-talented and extremely creative persona. She has been a writer all her life. She has written and published poetry, completed several fiction novels and published blogs and articles, her latest being I'm Not Crazy I'm Allergic!

Sherilyn has been interested in health and body work for many years, starting with family members' with ADHD and mental illness, up to and including her own health challenges with Celiac disease and allergies.

A facilitator, presentor, Tai Chi Instructor, tutor and a prolific public speaker, Sherilyn has now decided to make her love of helping others learn to be a full-time commitment. and has continued her speaking internationally in Scotland, Denver and Seattle. 

To know more about her, click here for her website and other details.

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