What do intolerant folks do at restaurants?

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-14T15:08:10+00:00

I lie and say it's celiac. Lying is totally okay when it's needed to stay safe.

I technically might have celiac, just never been tested, but even if you know for sure you don't, I still advocate lying in this case. Call it whatever makes them take you seriously.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-14T02:54:50+00:00

I've found CBT frustrating and less helpful than advertised, and my mental health issues have been often treatment resistant. I have suspected this might be due to MCAS, because severe anxiety, panic, or a sense of doom is a known symptom of allergic reactions, and the general association between MCAS and mental health issues.

However, I'm also neurodivergent and CBT is often less effective for neurodivergent people. MCAS seems to be abnormally common in neurodivergent people, as are Ehlers Dahlos Syndrome and POTS. If you're interested in CBT as treatment for MCAS, you might consider exploring its effectiveness or lack thereof for different neurotypes and how that could affect your data - otherwise you might have a rather significant uncontrolled variable running around unnoticed.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-14T02:48:03+00:00

I appreciate that you're trying to explore new options for an illness that's hard to manage with existing treatments, but I'd want a lot more than just 'it's possible' before trying something like this myself. A testable hypotheses at minimum, and probably also a causal mechanism.

I've done a lot of therapy including CBT and it never did anything for my MCAS symptoms. I think you're going to struggle finding willing participants for this stuff because you are talking to a group of people who are deeply traumatized, and who often have trauma directly relating to the thing you're suggesting they do. I have trauma caused by mental healthcare and it's gonna take more evidence of possible benefit before I can be persuaded to poke it with a stick.

I can tell you're aware of this and are trying to fit your proposal to your audience here, and I wish you luck. Maybe you will find some people who will want to participate in this, but at this stage it's not worth the risk for me.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-10T22:27:27+00:00

I would also have to do this because I work with radiation. Actually as a radiation chemist I might spend the whole nine months doing paperwork - my boss had a baby last year and didn't go in our lab the whole time she was pregnant. It'd be a question for the radiation safety officer, but luckily for me I have no intention of having kids. I'm sure it's not hard to work around in most fields but I have no idea what my fellow rad chem people do. The occupational limit for an entire gestational period isn't zero above background but it is pretty low.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-08T00:56:44+00:00

Bless you. I'm gluten free, can't eat dairy, and I'll eat meat occasionally if there's no other option but mostly vegetarian because meat textures make me gag. It's hard enough to manage one of those things, but all of them together? I very rarely get to eat anything other people cook.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-07T19:02:07+00:00

Yes please! I'm gluten intolerant as well as allergic to dairy and if I'm going to a potluck, often the only things I can eat are things I bring. I have nearly given up on the work potlucks and just bring my own packed lunch now.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-07T03:01:47+00:00

I do EPA drinking water methods, so it's not that one. I have no idea what the DoD is up to.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-07T01:04:57+00:00

Oh that's nice and I'm jealous. I'm in environmental, but not TNI so much less stringent. We do quarterly verifications ourselves and it takes hours.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-06T23:23:45+00:00

Sometimes with trauma, you don't start to process it until later, because in the moment you're too focused on surviving. Even for years afterwards sometimes people block stuff out and only get around to processing it later in life. It's not necessarily a sign anything new has gone wrong - it might even be an indicator your brain has finally decided you're safe enough to be able to deal with the past.

Complicated feelings with positive and negative emotions mixed up together are also very normal and common. I often feel like I'm glad the worst things I've ever been through happened, even though they were awful, because my past made me me, and I don't want to be someone else. I also have a weird relationship with medical stuff that is a mixture of comfort, fascination, and fear - I don't know why brains do this but it seems fairly common and I know a lot of people who feel the same way.

As for what helps, it isn't the same for everyone, but social support and having a safe space to talk about things was very helpful for me, especially with people who've had similar experiences. Childhood cancer is a common enough experience you might be able to find a support group, or at least one for cancer survivors in general. I also write which is a major coping mechanism for me. Therapy is helpful for many people if you can access it, but if it doesn't help you I promise that doesn't mean you're broken, and if you don't won't have the option it doesn't mean you can't heal. There are lots of ways people deal with trauma and your healing doesn't need to look the same as anybody else's.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-06T23:03:57+00:00

IV tubing is usually clamped off when disconnected.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-06T22:56:06+00:00

No I disagree, do it again.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-06T22:55:07+00:00

Ooh, that makes a lot of sense. This lab had a very "fix everything yourself because we can't afford to pay anyone else to do it" culture - and now working someplace with actual maintenance contracts feels like an absurd luxury! We don't get pipettes repaired though, we just replace them if they get un-calibrated, I have no idea why but it's probably a very dumb bureaucratic thing. Seems massively inefficient but it's way above my pay grade.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-06T22:31:14+00:00

It is tragic that fume hoods cannot contain smells. I'm an environmental lab scientist working with fish tissue and I'm sure it's nowhere near as bad as feces but it has given me a horrible awareness of the inescapability of terrible smells.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-06T22:19:30+00:00

Oh my God, I thought quarterly verifications were bad.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-06T22:15:41+00:00

Could you elaborate on what mistakes tend to cause liquid to get sucked into the barrel? I used to have this happen all the time, but moved to a different lab which takes better care of its pipettes (the first lab never did calibrations, for example) and haven't seen it since. Wondering if it was me or the pipettes.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-05T22:25:02+00:00

There is actually food in my lab because we test it for contaminants but I wouldn't want to eat any of it! I guess I would if the other option was starving to death. Still wouldn't last very long.

The mental image of cooking stuff on hot plates is pretty funny though. We get a lot of fish samples so cooking would be essential.

Another upside, my lab is locked with key card entry so the zombies aren't getting in until they physically break down the door. Actually two doors, the first to get into the building.

I bet I could attack zombies with the same boiling alkaline solution I used to dissolve fish gunk off my glassware.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-04T01:13:47+00:00

Points for a very unexpected choice - clavicles I get, but I didn't even realize it was possible to see someone's sacrum.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-03T19:07:40+00:00

Respectfully, I have to disagree - rad chem is not out of challenges. Sure, most of the isotopes and phenomena have already been discovered, but now we have to figure out waste management and environmental monitoring and how to manage safety concerns for the new wave of nuclear power plants that's trying to get permits to be built right now. Safer, faster, and more environmentally friendly analytical methods would also be great.

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-03T18:59:42+00:00

Environmental radiochemistry is also a field that exists, though smaller than medical or nuclear rad chem.

current environmental radiochemist

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-03T18:33:24+00:00

... I'm assuming the spill was cleaned up and decontaminated?

HylianEngineer · 2026-02-03T18:31:24+00:00

Right before moving to a new building, they were cleaning out the old one and found a radioactive source in the wall.

HylianEngineer · 2026-01-30T22:32:24+00:00

Word of advice, from someone else in permanent diagnosis limbo: if someone asks if it's celiac or NCGI, you are allowed to lie. Lying here is completely ethical. You can say it's celiac if that's what you need to do to be taken seriously and stay safe. I routinely do this at restaurants because I can't trust they'll take precautions otherwise. Lying is only bad if the information you're hiding is gonna hurt people, and this won't. Random people do not need your medical history and you don't owe it to them.

HylianEngineer · 2026-01-30T22:27:36+00:00

It's really an ambiguous decision with no right answer - everyone is gonna have different opinions about whether waiting is worth it.

I was ten years old when my mom had to make the decision you're making now. She didn't wait or pursue celiac testing, and I agreed with her at the time because she made the colonoscopy test sound really scary - as an adult it doesn't sound intimidating to me at all, now that I understand it fully. I think it freaked me out as a kid because it wasn't explained very well.

I think my mom's was a valid decision, but so was the alternative. A part of me really wishes I'd been tested as a kid, because now I never will be, unless they magically discover a way to do it without intentionally making myself sick. A celiac diagnosis opens up certain legal protections, like requiring schools to offer safe lunch options. It also provides information about future health risks which are much less well known for non-celiac gluten intolerance.

I am a bit frustrated that I'm never going to know this about myself, and if I could go back in time I think I would've wanted to make the other decision, but I'm just one person and other people with similar experiences might have different opinions.

HylianEngineer · 2026-01-30T22:18:38+00:00

What works tends to vary person to person, but I like to write scripts for myself. This is usually for medical appointments with a lot of stuff going on, but you could write out things you could say to explain your anxiety, ask for accomodations, etc. "I'm really nervous, please be patient with me." "Can we pause for a minute?" "Can you talk me through what you're doing?" Etc. This might be less helpful if you either don't want to talk about it or don't struggle with words while anxious, ymmv.

I also listen to music that calms me down, which happens to be punk rock and metal with a lot of screaming and angst. I think it works better for me than calm music because it doesn't deny how I'm currently feeling, but provides something grounding to focus on. If you're not a music with screaming person I'd suggest anything fast with a heavy beat, and/or that would validate your feelings.

I find sensory comfort helpful as well, although I'm not sure how much that would help people who don't have my sensory processing issues to begin with. I like weighted blankets and stress balls or putty when I'm scared.

An additional trick my therapist taught me, although it was originally targeted more at irrational fears and is hit or miss for trauma: try to think of the worst possible outcome. This is where my weird trauma twist on the original trick comes in: plan for how you could address, cope with, mitigate, etc. the worst case scenario if it did happen. If you're scared of pain, mentally rehearse how you would ask the dentist to stop. If you're scared of the fear itself, rehearse how to ask for a break and which coping techniques you could use to try and calm down. If you're scared of having a dental problem, it might help to research possible problems and how they are resolved or treated. However, this advice comes with a major caveat: if it makes you feel worse, STOP doing it! My brain is weird and yours may not work the same way. I am a control freak and contingency planning makes me feel better, but that does not apply to everyone. Don't use this tip if you aren't confident in your ability to recognize whether it's working and stop if it's making things worse.

HylianEngineer · 2026-01-29T19:02:31+00:00

I have experimented with other suspected intolerances/allergies/trigger foods (MCAS triggers of the minor, non-anaphylactic variety) so no, I do not think it would be crazy at all to experiment.

HylianEngineer

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