Rhubarb allergy? This is a new one....

[Gimpy]

My Mom's grown rhubarb as long as I can remember, and we've had it every summer in pies and crisps. When I was heading home from a stay with Mom, she gifted me with some to make a crisp.

The humidity here was too high to make a pie, so I tried a crisp. It ended up more like a splat, but the rhubarb was definitely cooked well.

Hubby had some to take to work, and he had an allergic reaction to it: immediate sore throat, little sores in his throat and on his tongue, stomach cramps, and in general feeling sick.

Rhubarb leaves are poisonous, but I washed and soaked the stalks as I've always done. I've been racking my brain trying to think if I've done anything different other than adding a few chopped apples to the mix...and I've never had a reaction like this to anything but tree nuts.

That's why this is bothering me: he's showing signs of a serious reaction if he keeps eating rhubarb, and food allergies tend to go in food families. Rhubarb includes buckwheat, which I've made a lot of stuff with here at home. (I'd been planning on trying my hand at making buckwheat noodles.) Now I'm not willing to try anything til I know for sure if its going to hurt Hubby.

I found out a few minutes ago that, 'just to be sure', he took more crisp to work and ate it!

The reaction was worse than last time, and I've just got off the phone trying to convince him he needs to get a food sensitivity test done asap. He thinks I'm over reacting, but I've lived with severe food allergies my whole life, and it can get life threatening in a hurry.

Apologies for the mini rant...this just scares me, and makes me angry when he doesn't take it seriously. I mean...he really does KNOW better!

PS
Yes, I got rid of the rest of the crisp, since he won't quit eating it.

 

[Gertrudes]

Hy Gimpy,

Has he actually connected the after effects with having eaten rhubarb, as in, is he aware that rhubarb was responsible for the reactions you described?

 

[RyanX]

Maybe it is the oxalate content of the rhubarb? I know it's mostly contained in the leaves, but I think the stems contain some as well.

More info here: http://www.rhubarbinfo.com/poison

What else was in the crisp recipe besides rhubarb?

I hope you guys can get to the bottom of whatever problem he's experiencing. That doesn't sound good what you describe.

 

[Voyageur]

[quote author=Gimpy]
[...]
The reaction was worse than last time, and I've just got off the phone trying to convince him he needs to get a food sensitivity test done asap. He thinks I'm over reacting, but I've lived with severe food allergies my whole life, and it can get life threatening in a hurry.

Apologies for the mini rant...this just scares me, and makes me angry when he doesn't take it seriously. I mean...he really does KNOW better!

PS
Yes, I got rid of the rest of the crisp, since he won't quit eating it.
[/quote]

Hope he recovers well Gimpy; came across this rather interesting description of rhubarb.

http://chinesemedicinegem.com/herbs/rhubarb-da-huang/

“Rhubarb is a courageous and unstoppable general in the battlefield, who can pull down the enemy’s stronghold and completely destroy all the enemies. Furthermore, rhubarb makes a clean sweep of all obstacles wherever it goes.”

This metaphor refers to the violent nature of rhubarb, which helps the body’s metabolism to exclude the old accumulations and give rise to the new fashion. Therefore, rhubarb was categorized to the herbs of eliminating evil energy in ancient Chinese medicine books.

[...]

Although rhubarb has the tiger and wolf-like nature of violence, it can drain heat and purge accumulations, namely clearing up all the excessive by-products, toxic and waste in the body. Anyway, rhubarb is safe and will not do harm to people at all only if it is used under the guideline of syndrome differentiation. Therefore, rhubarb is widely used in treatments for high fever, profuse sweating, thirst, constipation, abdominal distention and pain, delirium and so on.

In Traditional Chinese medicine, there is a very unique treatment that diarrhea can be treated with purgation. Chinese medicine thinks that this type of diarrhea is caused by inveterate excrement attached in folds of intestinal wall. Rhubarb can effectively clean inveterate excrement from the body and then diarrhea stop accordingly....

 

[D Rusak]

We just learned abut da huang/rhubarb in class for TCM school. Generally it is the root which is used but there are similar properties in the whole plant.

I am by no means anywhere near an expert in this (12 more semesters to go!) but rhubarb is usually seen as a pretty safe herb. The purgative effects listed in the quote are dependent on how long it is cooked- if brewed in a tea, generally you want to add it the last 10 minutes of cooking, otherwise it looses the purgative effect.

I did find this info which might be related, further down on the page:

Side effects of rhubarb (Da Huang)

The side effects of rhubarb mainly include as follows:

Overdose rhubarb can cause nausea, dizziness, abdominal pain, diarrhea and jaundice.
Rhubarb can cause allergic reactions such as allergic purpura, drug eruption, dermatitis, blisters and worsened asthma.
Taking rhubarb too long can cause adenoma-like changes in thyroid, degenerative reversion in liver cells, venous stasis and prostate epithelial hypertrophy or hyperplasia.

However, we don’t need to be intimidated by the above-mentioned side effects of rhubarb. Actually rhubarb is rather safe as long as using rhubarb based on the guideline of syndrome differentiation in Chinese medicine. A long history of rhubarb application and widespread use of rhubarb prove that rhubarb obtains the abilities of general and minister in herbs, which can be used regardless of sex, elderly or young.

It is contraindicated for someone with a diagnosis of Stomach qi deficiency, which would need to be given by a TCM professional. Some symptoms could include:
Epigastric fullness and distention
No desire for food and drink
Loss of sensation of taste
Frequent belching
Stools not solid
Urine clear and abundant
Diagnosis of Dyspepsia, Anorexia, or Chronic gastritis

But anyway, my first thought was- did your mom use any spray, fertilizer, pesticides on the rhubarb? How about the water used (being that the part you are eating is above ground and in direct contact with water when you water the plants)? If no one else had the same reaction I think your hypothesis of an allergy/intolerance is probably it.

 

[Gimpy]

Maybe it is the oxalate content of the rhubarb? I know it's mostly contained in the leaves, but I think the stems contain some as well.

More info here: http://www.rhubarbinfo.com/poison

What else was in the crisp recipe besides rhubarb?

I hope you guys can get to the bottom of whatever problem he's experiencing. That doesn't sound good what you describe.

I made the 'crisp' part of it with organic brown sugar, ghee, and gluten free flour mix. (The flour had no buckwheat btw.) Hubby wanted apples added in, and he's never reacted to those before either.

He's also been reacting to the high levels of cottonwood fluff and other pollens that are floating around at night. He's under a deadline at work, and has been working late hours for the last three weeks. This additional stress may also be playing a role.

The timing is weird, as he's reading Gary Taubes book "Good Calories, Bad Calories", and decided to change his diet. But he's having a very hard time giving up soft drinks and fast foods since he's being forced to work such late hours.

 

[Gimpy]

But anyway, my first thought was- did your mom use any spray, fertilizer, pesticides on the rhubarb? How about the water used (being that the part you are eating is above ground and in direct contact with water when you water the plants)? If no one else had the same reaction I think your hypothesis of an allergy/intolerance is probably it.

Nope. The rhubarb is left alone. Its pretty hardy, and they've had so much rain lately there's been no need to water it either. Mom cut and washed the stalks before bagging them up for the trip home, and I washed them again before chopping them for the crisp.

Rhubarb is a very seasonal plant for my family, and Hubby's seldom ever had it, even when he was young. That's why I'm wondering if its an allergy.

I'm keeping an eye on him for any other digestive problems, it can take a few days for an allergen to work out of the body when you eat it. So far he's doing ok, but he's gotten real stubborn about checking to see if he's got a true allergy.