Hello Povi,
I see that you're rather new to the site and new to allergies. I hope that I'm not crossing any boundaries or anything, and if so I'll apologize up front!
However, the pattern that I see is similiar to my pattern at 40. The fact that you speak about the sunflower seeds really caught my eye because it happened to me. I loved them, then all of a sudden they were causing hallucinations for me. This was AFTER I started and stopped bioidentical hormone replacement.
You'll find that many women who begin going into perimenopause, although they don't know what it is, start to have allergies to things. I was one of those women, recently who became allergic to EVERYTHING processed. That feeling was rather daunting for me since I was already ill, was already doing a whole food diet and had for three years, and suddenly this.
In a nutshell, your body is reacting like that because you have high levels of estrogen recirculating which the liver can't seem to process because it has become sluggish and because of leaky gut. Until you start detoxifying the liver so that it can function normally and healing your leaky gut issues, you will gain weight, you will continue to have allergies that will worsen, you will continue to be fatigued, and the cycle continues until full blown autoimmune disease sets in. You can eat well all day long but a sluggish liver will not process the nutrients in what you eat correctly (the liver breaks everything down), but until we begin to detox the body of the recirculating toxins and stop using toxic substances, as well as begin to heal the gut issues with fermented foods (also called probiotics) things will continue to get worse.
If you are interested in detoxifying yourself, you can check out my diary which has some great detoxification protocols. If not, good luck to you but keep this information in the back of your mind. Because while medication may help, the doctors have no clue (except for temporary solutions that may work to COVER UP the symptoms that are still attacking the body underneath) and the medications could just cause things to escalate. I would recommend a good Naturopath but when it comes to women's issues doctors have no clue but you may be able to find one that focuses on cleansing and vitamins/minerals.
Detoxification is the key and a good book to help you heal is The Body Ecology Diet by Donna Gates, it's more about healing than about a diet. You can also check out the Natural Foods and Natural Nutrition and Holistic Forums. You can also check out the Candida forum which lists a range of fermented foods that will help you heal your leaky gut issues.
Faith 
Post edited by: ohfaithful, at: 03/24/2010 07:12 PM
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