Hi, foodallergy people. I recently discovered I'm allergic to soy, and am pleased to have a place to rant about it.

I have felt like total crap for years. About five years ago, I started having health problems and had no idea where they were stemming from. When I went to doctors, they'd act like I was nuts when I said that I kept breaking out in a huge rash, felt faint, felt like my heart was pounding out of my chest, felt like I couldn't breathe, hadn't had normal poops in years... no one would help me. It completely destroyed my trust in doctors. I figured out relatively quickly that at age 23, when I previously had no allergies whatsoever, I was suddenly allergic to cats and pollen, and after about a year, I figured out that I had become lactose intolerant.

Still, for the first time in my life I felt lethargic and completely lost my appetite. And I was like this for years. I knew something was wrong, but I couldn't figure out what it was, and doctors continued to be entirely unhelpful. I had constant diarrhea and had no idea why. I started wondering what had changed on the few occasions that I didn't have diarrhea, and food allergies finally occurred to me. What if? So I started eating only raw foods, and lo and behold, I felt better and the diarrhea disappeared.

Several weeks later, I ate a can of mushrooms with some teriyaki sauce and immediately broke out in terrible hives. My lips swelled up, my face got itchy. It was undeniably an allergic reaction. I looked at the allergens on the ingredient lists of what I'd eaten, and the only thing there was soy.

Over the course of the next few weeks, it became clear that soy was the cause of my problems.

I've been avoiding it like the plague, but I never realized just how many foods contain soy. My diet now basically consists of carefully selected salami, olives and pickles, blue cheese, fresh vegetables, fruit, and occasional yogurt. It sucks. I never thought I'd get tired of fresh, healthy food, but I'm having a terrible time finding any variety in my diet when everything seems to contain soybean oil or soy lecithin these days. It's especially heartbreaking because I absolutely love Chinese food and now I have to make it myself and carefully exclude anything containing soy in order to eat it.

God, this is seriously awful. I have to check the ingredients before I consume anything. Right now, all I do is break out in hives and get itchy and feel faint, and then have three days of diarrhea after eating soy, but I've read that exposing yourself to something you're allergic to will make your reaction worse over time, and the last thing I want is to actually asphyxiate if I accidentally eat soy. But I keep messing up. There's soy in everything. I just finally recovered after thoughtlessly putting a third of a packet of Crystal Light into my water bottle three days ago. Why in the ever loving fuck is there soy in a pack of flavor powder for water???

I'm so afraid I'm going to be looked down upon as one of "those people" because I'm going to have to call any restaurant I want to eat at beforehand to ensure they have soy-free options before I eat there.