congestion after eating

[chrissy1111]

I am wondering if I have food allergies or is it simply I am overweight? After I eat, no matter what it is, I have to clear my chest of congestion and blow my nose for about 10 minutes. Why?

[mz4speed]

This is interesting. I do have bad allergies. I have anxiety and I also have bad sinus. I am allergic to peanut oil for sure. I ve been taking my shots since i was 15 and I am 36 today. It has been three years since my last shots. I remember the the sinus, an ear nose and throat specialist told me i have a narrow nasal passage.
    In the past three weeks I noticed almost most food I eat, 15 minutes later I get nasal congestion. Some of the smell of even a vegetable oil cooking got me dizzy and light headed, somewhat hard to breathe. This is really frustrating me and I don't know what I am having. Not sure if it an allergic reaction or the sinus issues. First two weeks I would get scared thinking my throat going to close then I take xanax and it seems to help. I am starting to think it more of a sinus issues over a food allergies.Help!

Michael Zebley

[Dr. Kokil Mathur]

Hi
Thanks for writing to the forum!

Well, it looks like that you have a bad case of either GERD or hiatal hernia. After you eat, the food regurgitates into the food pipe and tiny particles may even enter your respiratory passage.

Also it could be allergy to common substances in most foods like starch, gluten etc which is causing a mild allergic reaction.

I think you should discuss this with your doctor. Also you may need to get some tests done like food allergy panel or endoscopy or CT scan. It is difficult to comment beyond this at this stage. Please let me know if there is any thing else and do keep me posted. Take care

[FurballsMom]

Have you investigated food sensitivities?  The food elimination challenge diet would work to find out with this kind of thing, too.

Something to consider that might help you, too would be to eliminate all obvious sugars (including natural sugars like honey, maple syrup, and agave syrup) and most grains from your diet.  You can find this information on mercola.com.  Just type in sugar or grains in the search bar.

A big help would be to remove all high fructose corn syrup from your diet, because it is worse than plain old white table sugar.  This information can also be found on mercola.com.

When I eliminated all dairy and gluten from my diet, I lost a lot of weight.  We do tend to eat more of the things we're sensitive or allergic to.  Even my cat was doing the same thing.  Before I realized that spelt was just another form of wheat I would make myself some toast with the spelt bread.  The cat would come and try to take the bread from me, even without the butter on it.  I have discovered that she is also allergic to grains.  Plus, cats are true carnivores anyway.  This would explain a lot why she wanted the canned foods with gravy, which were the ones I discovered she was allergic to.  It was the flour that makes the gravy.  It was obvious that she has food allergies when she had scratched the fur off of both ears.  She is better now.  But, the point is that even she was craving the very things that she was allergic to.  I used to crave things with cheese.  You know, once I was away from it long enough, it became unappetizing to me.

And, as for gluten, well it is in the grains that make people the fattest:  wheat, spelt, kamut, triticale, rye, barley, oats and couscous.  I included couscous, because not everyone realizes that couscous is NOT a little grain.  It is actually a pasta made to be the size of small grains.

These weren't the only things I found out I was sensitive to, but eliminating these particular things was the biggest help overall and helped me lose a significant amount of weight.

There are pastas made from rice.  There are tortillas made with rice and tapioca.  There are many kinds of whole grain rices.  These are gluten-free.  Other gluten-free grains are wild rice (not actually a rice), quinoa (there are three colors), millet, amaranth and teff.

I don't know how overweight you are, but you shouldn't be getting congested in your chest when you eat.  So, I hope the tips I just told you about will help you, too.  Food sensitivities can do what you're talking about.

I developed a strong sensitivity to coffee that is more like a mild anaphylaxis.  It's not quite the chest congestion thing, because it's more of a chest tightening reaction.  The point is, though, that food can affect us in more than one way.

I'm sure that dairy and gluten are contributors in your case, too.  Wheat is such a big staple in the American diet and even in other Western cultures.  I used to cough up a lot of phlegm after eating.  Now that I don't have dairy and gluten in my diet anymore, this doesn't happen to me.  

Corn should also be avoided.  I forgot to mention corn, because it has been out of my life even longer than everything else, since it gives me migraines.  But, corn is highly allergenic and contributes to peoples' weight problems.  Especially since the kind of corn grown in this country is completely different than it was in ancient cultures whose diets were based on corn.

Potatoes are highly allergenic and contribute to weight issues, too.  My naturopath had me eliminate all the nightshades because they also contribute to and cause joint and muscle pain.  It turns out that I'm especially sensitive to potatoes.

Soy is not health food and is highly allergenic as well.  More information about soy is also found at mercola.com.  My experience with things like soy milk was that it contributed to the mucous issues.  And, it aggravated my GERD.  So, it's on the "forbidden foods" list on the elimination diet as well.  Soy is problematic because it is also high in phytoestrogens, which wreaks havoc on our health.  It is even linked to birth defects.  It doesn't make sense that it's in baby formulas.  But, allowing melomine to be added to baby formulas doesn't make sense either.  That's the chemical "protein" that ended up poisoning peoples' pets.

I'm sure that giving attention to these foods in particular will help.  Please also consider researching more fully the elimination food challenge diet.  I found a naturopath to work with on a sliding fee schedule who worked with me to go through the process of elimination.  Most people who go on this diet do it for reasons involving IBS, but there are other symptoms of food sensitivities, which is still what your symptoms sound like to me.  I've gone through something similar myself.