Mono Sodium Glutamate

I recently proved to myself that the tummy issues I have had through most of my adult life are due to monosodium glutamate (MSG).  Wikipedia seems to disagree:

wikipedia wrote:It is a popular misconception that MSG can cause headaches and other feelings of discomfort, known as "Chinese restaurant syndrome". Several blinded studies show no such effects when MSG is combined with food in normal concentrations, and are inconclusive when MSG is added to broth in large concentrations

Here is my evidence:

In my early thirties I started to notice a pattern of waking up in the night with racing pulse and churning tummy - a slight ache like a period pain. I saw my doctor. Various investigations followed mostly to eliminate serious conditions like cancer.....I went on an elimination diet for three months avoiding wheat, dairy and various other common triggers - no change. I went part time at work to reduce stress levels, taking the opportunity to volunteer at the Organic Gardens at Ryton which weren't that far from me... no change. I tried the FODMAP diet (which reduces foods that can ferment in your gut) no change.

I moved from Birmingham UK suburbia to the Isle of Skye.

Gradually I realised that my gut issues had got better. Not gone, but almost always only happened after I had eaten one of our nice meat pies from the shop. I thought it might be the onion powder as that was high in the ingredients (and fitted with the FODMAP theory)...I lived with it and tried to reduce the number of pies we scrap off!

This summer I visited my family down in England and on the last evening I stayed with my youngest sister. We had a very nice supper with sausages and posh gravy. Oh my ! I hardly slept at all! My mind was racing and my tummy churning. I was really uncomfortable and it wasn't down to the bed!
In the morning I checked the ingredients on the gravy - No onion but monosodium glutamate. Today I checked the ingredients on our pies - yes, monosodium glutamate!

One thing I miss being up here is the access to a range of takeaway food options that we had in suburbia - a very nice chip shop, several nice Indian food outlets and a chinese restaurant and (rarely) pizza. I think that is the main reason I have felt better since living here - fewer takeaway meals. Not that we had a takeaway every night, but once a week wasn't unusual. Now (since the nearest takeaway is 30 miles away) it is pretty unusual for me to have one.


source

Happy   Happy   Happy!!!

Now I really know what has been my problem, I can a) avoid it and b) add onions back in my diet in larger amounts as they don't seem to have been the issue.


Here is how it hides (from wikipedia):

   Monosodium glutamate or sodium glutamate
   Sodium 2-aminopentanedioate
   Glutamic acid, monosodium salt, monohydrate
   L-Glutamic acid, monosodium salt, monohydrate
   L-Monosodium glutamate monohydrate
   Monosodium L-glutamate monohydrate
   MSG monohydrate
   Sodium glutamate monohydrate
   UNII-W81N5U6R6U
   Flavour enhancer E621

It was the e number that fooled me

Hi Nancy,
what a fitting forum category

I'm happy you have figured it out for you.

I have read up on it once and most of the problems of "chinese food syndrome" when studied seem to have turned out to be not connected to the MSG. Overly greasy and salty fast food in most cases. And often other ingredients that cause it.
MSG itself "only" makes you want to eat more MSG stuff, changes your appetite and taste. The studies showed its not per se bad for you.

Here's one of them: https://academic.oup.com/shm/article-abstract/22/1/133/1627040?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false

But of course in your specific case you might react to it and it's cool you found out and can avoid it from now on!

I don't know a whole lot of information on the 'technical' side of MSG but once upon a time I worked in a hospital kitchen that employed nutritionists.

One conversation I remember having was about MSG and how some populations can be sensitive to it. The way it is described in current literature is that it is not an allergy per se but rather a food intolerance. Does that change anything? I'm not so sure but I thought it was an interesting tidbit of information.

While most people can eat a meal with MSG without issue, a small subset — less than 1% of the general population — may be particularly sensitive to MSG. Symptoms typically appear in the first two hours after consuming foods with MSG, and can include headache, skin flushing, sweating, nausea, numbness, and fatigue. An even smaller subset of people have a serious allergic reaction.

source

I'm sure that if I was allergic to MSG then it would have been spotted straight away - symptoms are usually much worse for allergies than intolerances. It may be something that built up over time too; one thing that came back from the colonoscopy was high inflammation which would probably have build up gradually (and decrease gradually too). It would be interesting to see what level of inflammation I have now and (assuming I can manage a low MSG diet from now) test again in a year or so. I'm not about to do that though.

I did have a lady come through the shop this year that was checking labels for MSG, which is why I thought of it.


monosodium glutamate
source: https://msgfacts.com/about-monosodium-glutamate-msg/ - MSG facts (the Glutamate association)

Glutamate is of course present naturally in many foods and in our own bodies too. The difference is a sodium ion instead of a hydrogen ion and probably the dose....

Results of taste panel studies indicate that a level of 0.1 to 0.8 percent monosodium glutamate by weight in food provides optimum enhancement of the food’s natural flavor

(source the glutamate association again) So I assume 0.5% is a dose that will affect me in a meal.  wikipedia repeats 5g is possible in a highly seasoned restaurant meal.
Natural sources seem to range between 3% (in dried kelp) to and 1.5% in yeast extracts to 0.15% in tomatoes, so it is unlikely that I would manage a 5g dose from natural sources without really trying.

Neat and congratulations!

I guess for me, I'd want to test the hypothesis be eating something very plain like rice with MSG sprinkles and see if that causes the issue. But I'm also hesitant to do things that might provoke a miserable night!

Hmm, I can probably source MSG as an additive, and yes that would help prove my hypothesis..... Looks like I can buy a small pack online here I don't think any of my own shop suppliers stock it.
I've happily eaten pies knowing I'd probably regret it afterwards, so I'd be prepared to give it a go.

One of the reasons it took so long to seek medical help was my symptoms were subtle and erratic. I didn't spot any pattern when keeping a food diary previously. I still have that somewhere - I'll have to dig that out and look with fresh eyes!

Timothy Norton wrote: The way it is described in current literature is that it is not an allergy per se but rather a food intolerance. Does that change anything? I'm not so sure but I thought it was an interesting tidbit of information.

Pick a person off the street and expose them to a pissed off wasp, and they will get a reaction anywhere from, "oh, that's annoying," to a lot of swelling, to anaphylactic shock. One doctor I knew, would only diagnose an "allergy to wasp venom" if the patient was at, or close to anaphylactic shock. So I just got labelled as "extreme swelling" and offered no real solutions.

So what is the fine line between calling it an "allergy," an "intolerance," an "irritation that causes inflammation," or a bunch of other descriptors doctors and people might use?

Why might it be happening with MSG in Nancy's case - maybe she lacks or is short on an enzyme that disassembles it in the gut? - maybe she lacks a specific microbe that helps deal with it in her gut? - maybe it causes an undesirable microbe in her gut to go ballistic? - maybe some combination of things that a doctor or a "study" won't call an "allergy" but still gives her a crappy night's sleep and inflames her digestive tract if she eats it too often.

There's so much we don't know about how things interact. I'm just glad for Nancy that she's narrowed this one down!

(OT: But then I started hanging out on permies and learned about poultices. The natural ones didn't seem to touch the sting problem, but crushed Ibuprofen put on the sting seems to stop my body from over-reacting, without me sending the drug through my whole body which was less effective and I prefer not to do for other reasons. At some point I may research alternatives to the typical easy to grab plants that seem to help many people, but for an event that happens rarely, I am just happy I have a tool that does the job. )

Jay Angler wrote:So what is the fine line between calling it an "allergy," an "intolerance," an "irritation that causes inflammation," or a bunch of other descriptors doctors and people might use?

There are actually some differences.

Most people think intolerance means a less severe allergy, but they are actually quite different. An allergy is when your immune system over-reacts to a substance and can cause life threatening symptoms. Allergies are not to be experimented with lightly. An intolerance is when your body cannot digest a substance properly, causing discomfort, but nothing life threatening, and does not include the immune system at all. An intolerance, I would absolutely experiment with, with the knowledge that I might get diahrea, feel bloated, foggy brain, or any number of things.

And there are also chemical sensitivities which are what, another category?

Christopher Weeks wrote:And there are also chemical sensitivities which are what, another category?

To me it depends on whether the immune system gets involved or not. If it does, it is an allergy. If it's just the digestive system trying to deal with it, then I would label it an intolerance.

Sensitivity and allergy both have too many meanings, even within the medical community.  

It helped me to learn about IgG, IgA, IgM....immune response.  This seems the best way to think about it we have at this snapshot in history.

Sometimes the body encounters a threat so great, it turns off all the stupid nonessential stuff like brains, lungs, etc.  Saves our lives when falling through the ice into the river, not so great when it's just peanuts.  Other times, the body knows something is a threat, but not so urgent.  For this, it uses a different immune response like for an injury.  Change thickness of blood to wash or clot wound, send army of inflammation dodads to fight off primary infection, put autonomic fight or flight system on red alert in case we need to send the body into full shock... great for wounds, not so fun for irritating bowels.  And sometimes the body can treat foods as a low grade threat or can engage full on projectile expulsion to make the toxin get out as quickly as possible.  These types can sometimes be measured in the blood with the IgG, IgA... thingies.

The body is really nifty that way.  It has about a thousand ways to respond to threats (or perceived ones) and we only know how a handfull of these work.

Jay Angler wrote:Pick a person off the street and expose them to a pissed off wasp, and they will get a reaction anywhere from, "oh, that's annoying," to a lot of swelling, to anaphylactic shock. One doctor I knew, would only diagnose an "allergy to wasp venom" if the patient was at, or close to anaphylactic shock. So I just got labelled as "extreme swelling" and offered no real solutions.

I think this sums it up perfectly. To make things even more interesting, a person's reactions and sensitivity can change over time and with repeated exposure. There is a lot of advice out there from allergy specialists that says if you start out with a sensitivity, prolonged or multiple incidents run the risk of turning that from a nuisance to a debilitating or even life-threatening situation.

Then there are the outliers: I got my first bee sting when I was five and it was pretty damn scary...the finger swelled up so much that it pressed against its neighbours and my airway constricted like an asthma attack. My mother was getting ready to take me to the emergency room, but the symptoms started to recede and I calmed down. For most of my childhood after that, I was super careful around bees because the doc said a reaction to my next sting could be worse (and we didn't have epi pens in those days).

Then when I was a teenager I got stung on the foot. It hurt and I was worried, but I didn't get any of the classic anaphylactic symptoms that I was expecting. Instead, after a couple of hours all I had was a lingering itchiness and a mark to show where it had happened. About a year later I got stung on the cheek, and it was even less dramatic. Since then, I've had dozens of stings, averaging 3-4 most summers (I go barefoot a lot and the pasture is full of clover). I've actually started to experience a mildly addictive pleasure response to the endorphins that flood my system after a sting (but I don't go looking for trouble and really don't want to sacrifice my pollinator friends).

A few months ago I blundered into a wasp nest while clearing a weedy hugel. A few of them got under my clothing and I probably got around 20 stings. That hurt. But I didn't have any reaction apart from the immediate intense pain and the lingering ache that hung around for a few days. Then about a month later I was stacking branches in my drying shed and I got stung on the hand by a monster Korean wasp, which I can comfortably say was the most painful one I've had to date (they are huge). But the only reaction was a bit of redness and swelling that was gone the following morning.

So I consider myself lucky, and probably well outside the norms for sensitivity and reaction to multiple exposures. I've had less positive results with lifelong hayfever, but some types of pollen no longer bother me.

Well, I've ordered a small pack of MSG from an Asian supermarket (rather than the link above which needed a mobile phone number for some reason and wouldn't accept a fake one). I also ordered a little pack of dried seaweed (which happens to be one of the more concentrated natural sources of glutamic acid) but that's not for me.

I will report back on the 'rice with sprinkles' effect on me in a week or so!

Nancy Reading wrote:Well, I've ordered a small pack of MSG from an Asian supermarket (rather than the link above which needed a mobile phone number for some reason and wouldn't accept a fake one). I also ordered a little pack of dried seaweed (which happens to be one of the more concentrated natural sources of glutamic acid) but that's not for me.

I will report back on the 'rice with sprinkles' effect on me in a week or so!

This is a good choice and I will be very interested in your results.

Author Wendell Berry talks about, how some of the folly of our culture, has to do with the notion that we can know everything. When you think you can know the human body completely and do not allow any mysteriousness, you then create categories. These categories don't acknowledge the uniqueness of every individual or the mysteriousness of the body/creation/etc.

Most negative studies or experiences on any widely accepted thing in our culture, especially in the medical and pharmaceutical industries, will be hard to turn up.

I expect you will confirm what you wrote in your initial post with your experiment.

Hi Nancy,

I find it really interesting that Wiki refers to blind studies rather than double blind.


It matters little.   I royally ticked off an instructor while working in my doctorate by asking what research methods were used to put the double blind study at the apex.   Of course, the most immediate answer that comes to mind is the blind study.  And, if that’s the answer, then what methods were used to establish the blind study …. Then we have to ask the same about the case review. And, that leads us to the weakest link.

While I have no axe to grind with legit research, I would still go with what works for you.  I have what can develop into rather painful arthritis in my hands.  It goes away when I wear tight work gloves.  It shouldn’t… but it does. So, I wear tight work gloves.

I'm not aiming to prove to Science; just to myself, and share with you all.

As you say John we are all individuals. It is also very human to spot patterns where there is actually no correlation, so I may well be wrong too

Well I tried it last night....about 1/4 teaspoon of Mono Sodium Glutamate crystals in a bowl of plain rice, which I think would be a moderate dose. I didn't want to overdo it and make myself ill. Even that little gave it a pleasant savoury flavour. I ate later than I like, but at a pretty normal time on a working day - about 8.30pm. I have been trying to eat earlier as eating late is one factor that also does not seem to help.
By the time I went to bed I felt that I was slightly jittery, and also noticed for the first time a slight numbness across my upper lip. I took a little while to go to sleep and woke up at 4.20 with pounding heart and churning tummy, sleeping pretty lightly after that. It wasn't as it sometimes can be, probably because it was a light meal.

My conclusion is that I am sensitive to MSG. I'm happy and frustrated at the same time. Happy because I hope that I can improve my quality of life further, now I know what to avoid. Frustrated because everything savoury preprepared seems to have it in and that noone ever suggested before (over 25 years!) that MSG could have been a factor in my health issues.
I'm exaggerating slightly, but I checked in my shop and most of the meat pies, and I think all of the sausages (including what I consider to be the 'good' butcher's sausages have E621 in them. Savoury snacks like crisps are less of an issue, since I rarely have those anyway. Luckily one of our ingulgences, Praveen Kumar frozen curries, do not include MSG so I should be safe with those still.

One action now is to suggest to my little sister that she review her diet, since if the problem is genetic, her health issues might be partly down to it too. Also to double down on efforts to reduce waste in the shop so I don't feel obliged to consume food that is bad for me. In addition - review my suppliers to try and get savoury convenience foods without MSG, starting with our butcher!

Anyone want 98g of Mono Sodium Glutamate? Going cheap!