My month of alcohol and caffeine abstinence has ended, with curious fallout.<\/p>\n
Sometime mid-week between the 25th & 29th of January, I had a big glass of Kombucha<\/a> at work. Kombucha, you may or may not know, is a fermented tea beverage. There is a lady at work who’s WILD about Kombucha and its health benefits and she got another lady at work hooked and then they were trying to hook a THIRD lady but that lady went home for the day and I happened to be in the kitchen so the second lady evangelist offered me some and I said, sure. I didn’t actually know what it was. I guess I trust my co-workers. She poured me a HUGE glass of the stuff and I had a sip and it was good, I guess. It was a little fizzy, quite sour. Tasted like wine. <\/p>\n Hm, this tastes like wine, I said. I looked at the ingredients: tea, grape juice, yeast, bacterial culture. <\/p>\n This IS wine, I said. <\/p>\n But alive, and healing your gut! the lady evangelist said.<\/p>\n A few minutes later I was talking to someone, still sipping my beverage, and I felt that flush in the face I feel when I have alcohol. I noticed my voice sounded quite enthusiastic about whatever we were talking about. Was I DRUNK? At work? On Kombucha? Back at my desk, since I was incapable of working for the moment, I googled “can Kombucha make you drunk?” and learned that no, the alcohol level is quite low, at around 1% BUT if you have a histamine intolerance or lack the enzyme needed to neutralize histamines <\/a>you can FEEL as though you are drunk on very little alcohol indeed. (But really? That article? Lists all the food I eat all the time, to which I have no reaction at all, that I am aware of. My blood is 90% mixed nuts, for example.)<\/p>\n Interesting, I thought. Histamine intolerance? Sounds legit. So that Friday I had a glass of wine, to see if I had a histamine-like reaction like the ones I’d been reading about. It was my dad’s wine, homemade from grape juice and yeast. (JUST LIKE KOMBUCHA ALMOST OMG) The wine tasted fine. I did feel itchy on my chest and chin. I got a few hives. I got tired and went to sleep.<\/p>\n Now, I have a long history with random itchery. I used to get itchy spots a LOT and hadn’t really noticed they’d gone away until they came back. This is a revelation. Are they alcohol related? <\/p>\n The next night I had a beer (having decided my new rule is only have alcohol on non-school nights, so Saturdays only, or Friday too if there is no class on Saturday). The beer did not make me itchy. (whew!)<\/p>\n