I have problems with my ears. They can become filled with fluid and I end up sounding like I’m talking underwater. It only happens when the pemphigus (my auto-immune disorder) is active. I’m not quite sure how I came to this conclusion, but at one point I decided to go off of dairy products. They’re mucous producers and I wondered if that could be the culprit.
It was partially successful the first time I tried it, in 2019. It happened again this year, so I went off of dairy again. My pemphigus doctor also suggested Zyrtec, an over-the-counter antihistamine. The meds make me dizzy and tired, but else is new? I swigged it down with the rest of my medications and found that it provided relief.
I’m not a huge dairy consumer, with the exception of breakfast. I like milk with both my cereal as well as my oatmeal and enjoy the mental boost dairy provides as a source of protein. I’ve been substituting nuts for dairy in my morning repasts and so far that’s been working, but only to an extent. My mouth is sensitive because of the pemphigus and crunching down on nuts is a challenging proposition. Still, I’ve been able to manage. I have a reduced severity of symptoms this time around (thank you, prednisone and how I hate you!) and I’ve been going easy on the parts of my mouth that are the most sensitive. It’s not ideal, but I can live with it for now.
I was using almond milk a few years ago, but gave it up for ecological reasons. Almonds are very water-intensive crops and I couldn’t see using increasingly scarce water resources for a fruit smoothie. I’m not consuming dairy these days, though, so I’ve reluctantly gone back to water-hogging almond milk. It took a little getting used to, but I now prefer its taste to dairy milk in cold and hot cereals. I’m going to try the plain, unsweetened variety the next time I go shopping. Up until now I’ve used vanilla unsweetened almond milk but that’s not particularly tasty in my morning tea. I’ve been using a non-dairy creamer for that. The taste of Coffee Mate in my English breakfast is to gag for, so I’ll try the almond milk instead. See if that gets me any further. If worse comes to worse, I’ll splash a little dairy milk in my tea (yes, I take it British-style) and hope that doesn’t toss me over the edge.