I don’t know if you’re taking supplements, or if you purchase them from these retailers, but this report from the New York Attorney General is kind of scary, especially if, like me, you believe that your vertigo is caused primarily by particular foods and other items you might ingest, like supplements. Here’s the first part of the Attorney General’s report.

NEW YORK — Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman today announced that his office sent letters to four major retailers, GNC, Target, Walmart, and Walgreens, for allegedly selling store brand herbal supplement products in New York that either could not be verified to contain the labeled substance, or which were found to contain ingredients not listed on the labels. The letters, sent Monday, call for the retailers to immediately stop the sale of certain popular products, including Echinacea, Ginseng, St. John’s Wort, and others.

See the full report here

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I dreaded the possibility, but now I have to admit that I think dairy products can also cause me to have vertigo. A few weeks ago I ate a gluten-free, soy-free pizza, and a day later I had a pretty bad vertigo attack. (Constant reader will remember that I have celiac and that eating soy causes me to have violent vertigo attacks). I’ve previously had vertigo attacks after eating ice cream, but most ice creams contain soy (WHY?), so I attributed the vertigo to the soy.

BTW, don’t ask me why it takes a day or two for me to react. That’s one of the mysteries of my little piece of the universe. People who have peanut allergies react instantly. Working with dusty hay (we have horses) will result in me sneezing in a few minutes. A bug touching my hair will make me itch for hours or until I shower (got that particular problem from my Mom). When my GI specialist told me years ago that I had celiac, he also told me that his celiac patients reacted strangely to eating wheat/gluten. They did not have an instantaneous reaction, but would have a reaction in a couple days. He couldn’t explain it, but he knew it to be true. It probably has something to do with how long it takes the body to digest the food, or how long it takes the liver to clear it, or something similar.

Anyway, I thought shrewdly, maybe some of the other stuff that I thought was giving me vertigo really wasn’t to blame because I might also have had some butter on the same day. Not a bad theory. I bought some bags of my favorite chips, the ones that I thought had given me vertigo. For a couple weeks I was happily downing half a bag of chips at a sitting (can’t eat just one!). I was avoiding dairy products and having no problems. I was in heaven. Then I ate another bag of those chips from a different sales batch and WHAM! Vertigo attack. Therefore, I concluded that I really am allergic to one or more of the four oils that are listed as possibilities on the packaging: cottonseed oil, palm oil, sunflower oil, canola oil. How to determine which one? I don’t know. I’ll just avoid them all for now.

So the things that give me vertigo attacks are soy, dairy, one or more of those four oils. Maybe eggs? Don’t know. Hate to do the testing because of the possibility of a vertigo attack. Are these causing my vertigo because of gene manipulation, or antibiotics given to farm animals, or some other contamination of our food supplies?

What causes your vertigo? Have you tried cutting out the most common allergens? You owe it to yourself to try.

Thankfully vertigo-free for a couple weeks,
Dan

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Once again I had a (thankfully mild) vertigo attack this weekend. The only thing I ate that was different was a handful (Ok, a double handful, heaping) of potato chips processed in cottonseed oil. I guess that was it.

A few minutes ago I read on the web how cottonseed oil is bad for everyone because it has pesticides, toxins, etc., but it’s cheap, so companies like to use it instead of more expensive oils.  Also they say that if the packaging states “processed with cottonseed oil, sunflower oil, or canola oil”, it’s probably cottonseed oil.

So I’ll be avoiding those chips from now on.  I’d like to find some that are Ok, because I really love ’em.  Bet you can’t eat just one!

Dan

Posted under Causes