Challenge 1: Brewer's Yeast

Now that it was time for my allergy challenge tests, I needed to come up with the right approach. There were several options out there. The easiest was to add one food back in each day and record my reactions. However, my doctor (along with books and websites) had recommended I devote at least 3 or 4 days to each food item as some reactions can be delayed. Moreover, I wanted to be certain that my body had cleared the last item tested before bringing in another potential allergen. I decided to heed my doctor’s advice.

Then I needed to decide whether I would leave the newly introduced foods in my diet once they passed the challenge. That was my original plan, as I was looking forward to more variety in my diet. But then I read that one only has about 3 weeks before the body starts building up a tolerance and it can skew results. There is also the possibility that two foods together could create a reaction that each single food might not elicit. Since I had already come so far with the cleansing, I decided to maximize my results by only adding a new food in for a single day. I would have an ample quantity of the item for breakfast, lunch and dinner and then record any symptoms that occurred within 3 days of ingesting the first serving. In cases where I had a bad reaction, I would discontinue the servings and wait until I was symptom free for at least a day or two before trying another food item.

So the first thing I challenged, odd as it may seem, was yeast. To be honest I wasn’t really expecting much out of this one and thought it would be an easy first step. When doing a food challenge, one must take care to only ingest the item in question. That is a challenge in itself when it comes to yeast, since one doesn’t want to take a bunch of live active yeast into the body and create an imbalance of intestinal flora. What I did was go out and get some powdered brewer’s yeast, which can be found in the vitamin or bulk department. This yeast is inactive and can be taken as a tablet or as a powder. I mixed a heaping tablespoon of powder into a glass of water, drank it, and waited. I didn’t have to wait long. Within 5 minutes, I had a headache, some mild nausea and felt weighted down. I felt incredibly toxic, and the feeling lasted for several hours. Needless to say, I didn’t ingest any more brewer’s yeast.

I was amazed that I pegged an allergy with my very first attempt. However, what was really enlightening for me was the kind of headache I was experiencing. This was no tension headache; it was the pin-in-the-eyeball headache I would get from red wine, Belgian beers and cognac.

As you may recall from my initial post, I’ve known for many years that I’ve had some sort of allergy to certain beers and wines that would result in a migraine. This would explain the issues with beer, but what about wine?

A quick Google search told me that the strain in brewer’s yeast, saccharomyces cerevisiae, is added to both beers and wine. That explained that. But I still wanted to solve the mystery about European wines, which I have continued to safely drink after my insightful trip to Italy. I hit up Google again with this simple search: “European wine fermentation process”. The first website listed gave me my answer. Europeans use the yeast that naturally grows on the skin of the grapes whereas the rest of the world adds yeast during their winemaking process (usually saccharomyces cerevisiae). Bingo. Here’s the website for those who are interested: http://www.rackwine.com/WineMaking/

For years I did Internet research and talked to local vintners about what could be different about European wines, as they didn’t give me the migraines that New World wines did. I never got an answer that really made sense. Most suggested sulfites, but I don’t have the same reaction to sulfites in other foods. Others suggested I stick to organic, but most truly organic wines weren’t so tasty, and I figured if the pesticides were the culprit, I’d be getting migraines left and right simply by eating vegetables. (That said, I hate pesticides and buy organic whenever possible.) To be honest, I never even thought of yeast being an issue.

With that knowledge in my pocket, I then tried to determine why Belgians and microbrews give me headaches when Guinness and Budweiser don’t. Simple research quickly answered that one as well: industrial breweries filter the yeast out of their beers. As disheartening as it was to learn of my brewer’s yeast allergy, I was thrilled to have finally solved the beer and wine mystery. Plus it's looking pretty promising that I won't have to give up Guinness.