I think we’ve found the trigger (or one of them) for Miss Frugal’s abdominal migraines!
You might remember in January I wrote about the increasing pains that poor Miss Frugal got and I said we were trying to figure out what the trigger was (if there even was one). Someone, and I can’t for the life of me remember who, said that one trigger may well be processed meat as something used in the process is a known trigger for some people.
We cut it out of her diet completely just under three weeks ago and things have improved dramatically for her. We’ve only had one attack (I’ll get to that later) and she’s felt much better within herself. She seems to have more energy as well although I could easily be imagining that!
A lot of the food we eat can be classed as processed and I need to do a bit more research on it to see what she can and can’t eat. I didn’t do much research before we started, simply because we’ve tried to cut lots of things out in the past and nothing has helped. So, when someone said try cutting out processed meat, we’ve started there and then and cut out everything that I *think* could be classed as processed meat. Now that it seems to be working, I need to look into it a bit more because it feels like we’ve cut out a lot.
No more of these sad eyes (fingers crossed)
As a rule we don’t generally eat much processed food – we usually have one night a week which is quick tea night like chicken nuggets, fries and beans but even though the chicken nuggets say they are 100% chicken, they”re still processed meat. I think. I also usually cook something like this whenever we have friends round for tea as it’s easy and most children will eat it. I did once try macaroni cheese but it went untouched 😉
Sausages for toad in the hole or sausage casserole are out. Hot dogs, burgers, pot noodles – all things that she would rarely eat to be honest but still things that I’ve had to say no to over the last few weeks. I even had to say no when one of her friend’s mums asked if she could go to McDonalds with them the other night as there’s not much on the menu that she could actually eat (she doesn’t even really like the fries).
When she goes to her friends houses, I have to mention what she can and can’t eat and she’s going on a residential with the school in a few weeks and the majority of the food looks like it’s going to be off the menu for her.
I have had one blip though since we started this. Last week she was going on a day out with the school and I put a sausage roll in her packed lunch for some unknown reason. I meant to put it in Master Frugal’s as he doesn’t like sandwiches very much but I put it in hers and gave him a sandwich. As they weren’t sat together, they didn’t click that I’d made a mistake and she ended up eating it. She thought it was OK as I’d packed it for her!
Uh oh. She was poorly within a few hours and all the way home on the bus, she felt ill. I gave her some paracetamol when we got home and it went off after a little while thankfully but I felt awful. She was pale and felt a bit off for the rest of the day but was back to her normal self the next day.
In a way, it was a good thing (not the pain obviously) because now I know that it’s not just a coincidence that she hasn’t been poorly since we started this. It’s just a shame that her trigger wasn’t something obscure like avocado or asparagus!
