Credit: SWNS / Jenna Gestetner
This woman suffers from an immunological condition that causes her to suffer hundreds of food allergies - which means she can only able to eat NINE things.
Jenna Gestetner has been having reactions to foods that included intense cramping pains, bloating, nausea and frequent malaise since she was a child.
Over the years, she found that eliminating foods from her diet was the only thing that helped.
After years of eliminating allergens, Jenna is now only able eat turkey, mahi mahi, cucumber, green beans, zucchini, olive oil, salt, lime and glucose supplements.
She was officially diagnosed with Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) in March 2021 after travelling across the country to meet with a specialist.
This woman suffers from an immunological condition that causes her to suffer hundreds of food allergies - which means she can only able to eat NINE things.
Jenna Gestetner has been having reactions to foods that included intense cramping pains, bloating, nausea and frequent malaise since she was a child.
Over the years, she found that eliminating foods from her diet was the only thing that helped.
After years of eliminating allergens, Jenna is now only able eat turkey, mahi mahi, cucumber, green beans, zucchini, olive oil, salt, lime and glucose supplements.
She was officially diagnosed with Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) in March 2021 after travelling across the country to meet with a specialist.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 I can only eat 9 foods and yes I really do mean only 9 foods.
00:03 I have a few different health issues that have contributed to this, the main one being
00:07 MCAS.
00:08 And I just want to say everyone with MCAS is very different.
00:11 Some people have no food allergies and some have more than me.
00:14 The reactions people have can also be extremely different and like this person said in their
00:18 comment, they can also only eat 10 foods but they're completely different from mine.
00:22 And I will go into the 9 foods that I can eat but I just want to say a couple of things
00:24 before I do that.
00:25 Eating like this is not healthy for most people.
00:28 This is just what I have to do given all my complicated health issues.
00:31 I have a team of doctors and dietitians and nutritionists that look at what I eat and
00:35 they make sure that I'm getting the best possible nutrition that I can given these circumstances.
00:40 And showing what I eat and talking about all of this is not meant for inspiration.
00:43 This is just to give you insight into what my life is like and some of the challenges
00:46 I have that you wouldn't know about unless I told you.
00:48 If seeing somebody eat like this is triggering to you then you don't need to watch the videos.
00:52 In the end it's up to me what I decide to share and what I don't but you never know
00:55 the full picture so please just don't make assumptions.
00:57 Okay I know you've all been waiting so I'm now going to tell you what the 9 foods are
01:00 that I can eat.
01:01 The 2 proteins I can have are turkey and mahi mahi.
01:03 The vegetables I can have are cucumber, green beans and zucchini.
01:08 And then the 3 things that I can like add to my food are olive oil, salt and lime.
01:13 And then I also have the glucose supplement.
01:14 And I eat about 6 more meals a day just because I feel like I need to eat every few hours
01:19 just because my body digests the food so quickly because it's so simple.
01:22 And I do also get a lot of calories from the glucose drink which is a medical dietary supplement.
01:26 This is how I figured out that I was allergic to everything except the 9 foods that I eat.
01:50 So how did I determine what I could and couldn't eat?
01:52 I used to be able to eat almost anything and when my symptoms started to get a lot worse
01:57 I had to figure out what was causing them and I realised that it was whatever foods
02:00 I was eating.
02:01 So over the past 5 years I've worked to figure out what foods were causing those symptoms
02:05 and just basically eliminating them one by one out of my diet.
02:08 If I ate a food and had some kind of allergic reaction to it and that happened multiple
02:12 times in a row over multiple weeks then I would know that that was a food that I shouldn't
02:16 be eating.
02:17 And a lot of people ask if the foods ever change and the answer is yes they do but so
02:21 far for me I haven't ever been able to eat a food that I previously was unable to eat
02:25 it's only been the other way around.
02:27 MCAS there are flare ups and some of them can last anywhere from a few minutes to a
02:31 few days but some of them can be longer and more permanent.
02:35 Those permanent flare ups basically what happens is your mast cells become more reactive to
02:39 certain things.
02:40 This could happen if I get sick or if I have an extended period of extreme stress.
02:45 And when I've had those permanent flare ups I have become allergic to more foods that
02:48 I previously wasn't allergic to.
02:57 (gentle music)
02:59 [BLANK_AUDIO]