Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink...
I am both lactose intolerant and soy intolerant. Lactose intolerance has been a thing I've lived with since I was 13. It's not that bad. Lots of people are lactose intolerant. You have to be mindful of certain things, but in cases were I've either slipped, or wanted to indulge, I could always pop a lactaid tablet and be mostly okay.
Soy intolerance is a whole 'nother level of shitfuckery.
From the time I was 18 to about 31, I used soy milk as a substitute for milk. I thought I was getting more and more sensitive to dairy around 2007 because it seemed like things I used to be able to tolerate, like milk chocolate, spicy ethnic food (mexican, indian, asian), and fried chicken from restaurants, were triggering reactions. In my butt. Or out my butt.
During this time I was working on the phones in a call center, so I attributed all my stomach problems to increased dairy sensitivity and stress at work. By 2009 I decided that certain breads with extra grains/millet in them were causing me problems and was afraid that I might have an ulcer or something. So instead of going to a doctor, like a rational person, I said, "white bread only!" to my health conscious wife. (I had several bad experiences with different doctors until I quit going altogether when I was 18.)
In 2011, I was given a temporary administrative assignment off of the phones. I began to notice that I needed to poop every 2 hours. I'd eat breakfast (at this time cereal with soy milk), then go to work... spend my morning break in the bathroom, then back to work... spend 10 - 15 mins of my hour-long lunch in the bathroom, then back to work... spend my afternoon break in the bathroom, then back to work... go home, go straight to the bathroom, eat dinner/watch TV and then poop one more time before bed.
It wasn't quite diarrhea, it wasn't watery. But it also wasn't quite "right" neither. I also farted - CONSTANTLY. I could never fart enough. I fart a lot, A LOT less now.
I must've been doing this while I was on the phones, but didn't notice. Call center work can be so depressing that you just kind of lose track of life. It becomes a blur and you feel like you're falling down a time hole. I guess I just chalked it up to stress and a possible ulcer that I didn't feel like professionally treating. But after two months of stress-free work off of the phones, I began to realize that I had a problem and I couldn't blame work-related stress any more.
My sister had become gluten intolerant a few years before all this, so the first thing I tried was cutting anything gluten-y out of my diet, but nothing changed. I eliminated spicy foods, I stopped eating meat, I tried all kinds of stuff before cutting out soy. I think I literally tried soy last, and I only thought of it because my mother had recently had breast cancer and was told to avoid soy because it's been linked to that. (Which is it's own level of what-the-fuckedness.)
Once I zero'd in on soy, I began to get better, but there was a long period of adjustment where I realized just how much stuff has soy in it. I remember thinking I had a problem with eggs when the problem turned out to be the vegetable oil I was frying my hashbrowns in. The label on the front of the bottle said in big letters, "Vegetable Oil," but one day I randomly saw the back of it and it said, "ingredients: soybean oil." Why not just fuckin' call it soybean oil, you fucking dicks?
From here I slowly realized that all restaurants use soybean oil. Soybean oil is the cheapest oil; therefore, any enterprise that is in the business of MAKING MONEY is going to use soybean oil instead of some other, more expensive oil - UNLESS it's a specialty restaurant that SPECIFICALLY eschews soybean oil for reasons of either health or authenticity.
Buffalo Wild Wings's allergen menu doesn't check off "soy" next to a lot of its sauces, but then if you look at the bottom there's a disclaimer that they all contain "highly refined" soybean oil that the FDA and/or USDA decided doesn't count.
Bullshit, it counts for me.
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(To be fair, there is a difference between "soy allergic," which is a respiratory reaction, and "soy intolerant" which seems to be an intestinal reaction. The "soy allergic" can do highly refined soybean oil, but the "soy intolerant" cannot, I guess.)
Chipotle was always kind enough to openly state on their allergen menu that yes, indeed, their rice and tortillas contained soy, but Qdoba for the longest time did not (even though it sure as shit did).
After 2 years, I finally got the hang of what does and doesn't include soy, but every once in a while I'll eat something that will catch me off guard. I had sushi with masago last Christmas, knowing that masago was fish eggs. What I didn't know until afterwards was that masago is packed and shipped in soy sauce. I had Jenny-O turkey brats on a family vacation in July which got me, even though nothing on the label seems to indicate anything soy related. I guess I have to watch out for "Natural Flavors" now. Wonderful.
These days, I drive over 20 mins each way to shop at the nearest Whole Foods, because the normal grocery store just down the road doesn't have a single brand/type of bread that doesn't include un-specified vegetable oil. (If it doesn't specify which "vegetable," it's definitely soy.) At the regular grocery store, lunch meats include various soy fillers, juices contain non-specific vegetable oil to help with coloring/appearance, and any quick-and-easy boxed/frozen dinner thing? Forget about it!
I eat out a lot less and cook a lot more at home, which is probably good for me, but there are certain things I just can't make/replicate - like Everything Bagels with the crunchy stuff on top. And Buffalo Wings. And Chinese Food, my favs were always spicy chicken dishes like General Tso's and Kung Pao.
My soy intolerance has gotten worse since I discovered it. I wonder if before, when I was regularly eating soy, the reaction was constant but less severe. Now that I go without any soy for months at a time, the reactions are a lot worse.
On the other hand, maybe it would have still gotten worse even if I kept pouring soy milk on my cereal every morning and I just would have withered away and died by now.
Here's what happens if I ever eat soy now:
(WARNING: This is gross)
If I ever inadvertently eat soy, after about 2 hours I purge EVERYTHING out my butt. It's bad. It's painful. It makes me want to die. After that, anything I eat for the next day will fall out my butt in about 2 to 3 hours. It's like my digestive system just says, "nope, see ya'!" Now that I am familiar with this, during the first day I only have water, and even then, I end up pooping out "stragglers" in my digestive system. My intestines are swollen during this time and I'm visibly bloated. I have to wait a full 24 hours before eating again, and even then, I need to keep it restricted to apple sauce and soft fruits without seeds. By the third day, I can usually start eating meat and soft noodles. It takes a week before I feel completely "back to normal."
Right now, I haven't had a problem since the turkey brats in July, and that's probably the longest I've gone without an attack.
***
I actually saw a doctor about something else last January, the first time I'd been to the doctor since I was 18. I was 32. I only went because I had discovered 2 lumps that I didn't have before - one on my right arm, one on my left leg. It turns out they were harmless lipomas - benign tumors made of stray fat cells. He decided since I was there, to ask me questions to establish a medical history. When I told him about my soy problems, he seemed skeptical.
I am absolutely convinced that if I had gone to a doctor before I had figured this out on my own, at best I'd have been diagnosed with the catch-all "IBS," and at worst they would have removed my colon and I'd be wearing a colostomy bag right now.
Everything I've learned about this shit, I researched myself on the internet. It's not always easy, sometimes I get lucky and just happen to find things. I try to imagine what this would be like for me in the 80s or 90s. My dad always had stomach problems/ulcers, but he was an alcoholic and drug addict, so it's hard to say. My mother has an aunt who literally hated eating, and was known for barely eating anything. Everyone thought she was nuts, but now we kind of wonder if she had some kind of gluten and/or soy problem that was never diagnosed. I mentioned my gluten-intolerant sister, she was a lot of help early on and had some helpful suggestions (like eating apple sauce and mashed potatoes to help reduce intestinal swelling after an "incident").
I know I come across as very anti-doctor, but I'm not an anti-vac'er or new ager or something like that. I believe very strongly in science and its power to enrich humanity. But somewhere along the way, commercial medicine, where people have ailments and pay doctors to diagnose and treat them, has gone way wrong. Regular ol' doctors - the kinds that you and I get to go to - don't seem to link what people eat to what ails them, and instead try to ward off every symptom with some drug or by cutting out some organ.
I also suspect that my soy intolerance is due to consuming so much soy over 10+ years. Maybe if I hadn't had all that soy milk, I would be able to tolerate soybean oil better? Impossible to know for sure without years of scientific study, and I hate be conspiracy mongering, but I also wonder if Genetically Modified soybeans might be part of my problem, too.
So, yeah... that's my life now. I'm soy-free. But I can eat all the fuckin' gluten that I want, bitches! *knocks on wood*
