I think you're overthinking it.
What he said.
I think I had something else to say, but following your train of thought got all my neurotransmitters mis-firing.
Anyway, just cause I've nothing else to do this minute but sleep...
My daughter used to have major eczema and asthmatic attacks which sent her to the emergency room on more than a few occasions, starting as young as 4. The doctors said "asthma, here's the nebulizer". My Sis in-law, a head nurse at CHOP, said "There's a typical triad; Eczema, Asthma and allergies and they're all related." Knowing that we tend to crave things to which we are allergic, and not wanting to put my little girl through a barrage of allergy testing unless absolutely necessary, I thought of Shannon's diet and came up with the highest suspects based on common allergens, cravings and their occurrence in her diet. I came up with the three highest probabilities... nuts, eggs and strawberries. All were prevalent foods for her and all are common allergens.
So I removed the most probable, nuts, which she loved and would climb on the counter and eat out of the mixed nut jar with two hands. We lucked out. A few weeks went by and the Eczema which she had for years started healing. A bit later the pigment returned to her arms. We found that her breathing issues only happened if she got a cold while she had signs of eczema or rashes(the beginning stage of eczema) on her arms. A cold with rashes would almost guarantee a trip to the emergency room, a cold without rashes would have no effect. Furthermore, she had a latent and non-anaphylactic response to nut exposure and would not show signs of nut exposure(rashes) for three to five days after touching/eating them.
All this made for an extremely difficult diagnosis, but one that I think doctors would have had even more trouble than I did in tracking down. Do I have a definitive diagnosis that she has a nut allergy? No, but if she eats nuts(which she still loves and chooses to sneak on occasion) she gets rashes... (uhmm, that's good enough for me). When we see the rashes we know that if she gets a cold, she may need the nebulizer. No cold, no nebulizer. It's like a built in early warning system.
Do we know which particular nuts affect her? No, but she has had definite issues with peanuts as well as with tree nuts and it's just not worth playing with them to find out which nut is which. Someday, if she chooses, she can have the testing done for each possible allergen. For now, there's too many other food options available to bother dwelling on what she can't have.
For Shannon, if I just accepted the diagnosis of Asthma, I'd have a little girl covered with itchy, unsightly rashes with multiple patches of lost pigmentation. She'd have periodic ambulance trips to the ER in the middle of the night in breathing distress. She'd be less confident and more unsure of herself because of her health. She'd never go anywhere without an inhaler and emergency phone #'s up the wazoo.
So, my point I guess is, Good luck and persevere. I hope they can point in a specific direction but if they don't, all is not lost.
If it is a food sensitivity, the doctors may never come to the right allergen.
But you might stumble upon it by making your list of suspects and eliminating them as you see fit. Weigh whatever diagnosis you get and trust that your suspicions may just be your body telling you what it needs and what it really should not have.
You may just know you best.
But just like the other GF foods I've bought, putting it up against my beloved Nature Valley Fruit and Nut bars yields a MUCH higher calorie and dietary sugar count...
