My eldest was born with so many allergies, I couldn't even nurse her because the allergens came through in my breast milk and made her sick. She lived on pre-digested formula, which cost a fortune, for the first two years.

We narrowed down and cut out most of the foods/dyes/environmental triggers at a young age, and unless she combines a few allergens in one day, ie. playing out door sports (grass) + eating bark tree fruits (apples), she is normally ok.

She started getting bad headaches about a year ago, and it never occurred to us that it may be her allergies. Her doctor told her to keep a diary of what she ate to see if there was any pattern.

A few weeks back, she had like a migraine that didn't let up for about 5 days, and within a few days it was back. We started thinking about what she had eaten that day . . . and she mentioned she had a "Rock Star". She remembered back to the 5-day headache, and she had been at a ball tournament and sucking back Rock Stars for energy (1-2 a day).

We've been testing this for about two weeks now, and she has figured out that she gets sick or a headache, even with a 1/2 cup of coffee and/or a Coke. This seems to be escalating each time she takes caffeine now, which is what happened with everything I introduced when she was a baby too.

I started reading up on caffeine allergies recently, and there are a lot of reactions that can occur for people who are sensitive:

"Because a caffeine allergic person is unaware of the allergy, he/she continues ingesting caffeine and suffers from progressive poisoning (3-6). Symptoms include, but are not limited to, attention deficits, anxiety, obsessive thoughts, panic, delusions, hallucinations, paranoia, PMS, TMJD, rashes, muscle weakness, and numerous other symptoms (3-5). All symptoms do not have to be present for a diagnosis. However, most doctors do not diagnose allergic response to caffeine because most doctors do not know about caffeine allergy."

http://www.goodtherapy.com.au/librar...l_health/565/1

There's lots more information about this on the net too, especially about how it can trigger headaches and strange behaviour. Fortunately for her, it is so far limited to headaches . . . but perhaps some people might recognize "panic" or anxiety/ADHD-type reactions for themselves. Since PwMS sometimes have these problems, I thought it was worth mentioning to consider cutting out caffeine to see if it helps.

I'm sure glad I don't have to cut out caffeine.

Cherie