The life of an American woman suffering from a mysterious illness has been transformed ever since she left the US.
Over the course of three years, Bee, who uses the diminutive moniker online, endured countless bouts of anaphylaxis, hives and stomach aches triggered by the sort of foods that most Americans love, including cheese, wheat breads and even fresh produce.
“I didn’t want to leave behind my entire life in the US, but I didn’t feel like I had a choice,” Bee said of moving to Europe in November 2024, per Newsweek. “I had to, I felt like my body was slowly shutting down from lack of nutrition because my diet was so limited.”
At the time of her departure, her diet purportedly consisted of a paltry three foods: broccoli, coconut and chicken.
Bee soon began to document the surprising effects — or lack thereof — that food had on her body abroad.
“Welcome to my series where I test foods that normally give me … histamine reactions in America outside of America to see if I get the same reaction,” Bee told viewers of the TikTok page she uses to broadcast her findings online.
She recalled bracing for the worst after accidentally consuming one of her trigger foods in another country — but the reaction never came.
The shocking reveal inspired her quest to test all the foods that used to make her sick in the US, such as pizza, french fries and pasta.
In the clip, she described what it’s like to live with mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), an allergy-adjacent condition that can reportedly develop out of the blue.
MCAS is a condtion in which toxins or pathogens prompt immune cells to over-produce a cascade of chemicals to combat the invader, including histamines, causing uncomfortable symptoms in the body, such as flushing, itching and hives, abdominal pain and diarrhea, low blood pressure, dizziness and brain fog.
Bee blamed her MCAS reactions on food-based mycotoxins, a chemical product of fungi, which she claimed to have confirmed with a battery of medical tests.
Certain mycotoxins, such as ochratoxins, gliotoxins and fliotoxins, are known to find their way into our kitchens as a result poor storage conditions and limited food safety regulations. And it takes more than throwing out moldy food to prevent these toxic substances from building up in the body.
Research has shown that laws prohibiting the proliferation of mycotoxins tend to be more stringent outside of the US.
A recent video in which Bee consumes breaded shrimp at a Thai restaurant caught the eye of nearly 2.1 million on the app, including TikTok’s best-known allergist, Dr. Rubin.
In a duet video post with Bee, Dr. Rubin cautioned others with food allergies not to try this without medical supervision. “You should not be going to another country to try foods if you were prescribed epinephrine because food allergies can be potentially life threatening.”
Read the full article here
