Pattern recognition has been both my greatest analytical asset and my psychological burden. For years, I've essentially been a human bioassay, conducting single-subject experimental design on myself because there was no other option. I have the blood test evidence, the clinical history, the controlled observations – but no external validation loop, no peer review, no collaborative hypothesis testing. Just me, treating myself like a guinea pig of sorts.

For a single aspect of my food allergies/intolerances, the process went like this: I would eat bread, I would feel sick. Seems simple really. It can't be the water, so it must be something in the bread. For three years, I thought it was wheat because my symptoms improved vastly when I avoided it, but not 100%. Then that yeast incident – pure yeast by accident, hospital by necessity – forced the revelation: yeast was another offender, fitting perfectly with my fungal allergies. So of course, I realised it had to be both. I'd been as reductive as anyone else, trying to force a simple answer onto a complex biological problem.

But then, on occasion I would eat some brands of bread and flour and have only minor symptoms, if any. Other brands I would break out in a rash and be in bed for days. I could also have wheat without yeast – like a pastry – without a reaction. Joining all of those dots was incredibly time consuming, emotionally taxing, difficult and uncertain.

So I avoided all foods with any form of yeast and wheat. This is a lot of foods. I would occasionally have a trigger bender because I love a sandwich or I was sick of trying to figure it all out. This was five years.

It's hard, It's just hard, It's just kinda hard to say. It goes, that's the way it goes, it goes that way.

Then in November 2025, I discovered allergic cross-reactivity. This applies to many of my allergies and with wheat is such a recognised phenomenon that there's legislation requiring it be considered an occupational hazard for people who work in the grain and baking industries.

The Work Health and Safety Act - Workplace Exposure Limits (WEL) recognises flour dust not merely as an irritant (no longer 'nuisance dust') but as a potent respiratory sensitiser. Exposure limits for flour dust are being slashed from 4.0 mg/m³ to 0.5 mg/m³ by December 2026 because the dust contains multiple biological allergens: fungal enzymes like alpha-amylase from mould species, insect proteins from storage mites and grain pests and various grain proteins. Each contributes to the occupational biohazard; their interaction amplifies risk through cumulative allergenic loads.

This explains why some batches of flour would wreck me while others seemed fine. Commercial flour is biologically variable - contamination from moulds and storage mites creates "hotspots" that are inconsistently distributed between batches. Environmental conditions during storage - temperature, moisture - favour mould and mite proliferation in unpredictable ways. Analytical testing shows this variability clearly: even identical labels can't guarantee identical safety because the biological load shifts batch to batch. What I'd been experiencing as confusing inconsistency was actually documented biological inequality in the product itself.

I once had to leave a trial for a job mid way through because I had an allergy attack while helping prepare pizza bases and inhaled a tiny amount of flour. At the time, I was not aware that cross-reactivity can come from mould and insects, both of which show high on my specific IgE tests. Mould and mites are some of my worst allergies - among the highest readings. There are about 10 strains on that list. Additionally, an enzyme derived from Alternaria alternata (a common mould species) is also added to flours like pizza and bread flour to increase its strength.

Under Australian Consumer Law, manufacturers are strictly liable if goods have safety defects causing injury, and certain allergens must be declared in food processing or ingredients according to the Food Standards Code. Currently mould and insect proteins are not part of that list. For individuals with heightened allergic sensitivities such as elevated IgE levels to Tropomyosin and Alternaria, no exposure level is truly safe. There is a striking disconnect here.

So the culprits it turns out are not only wheat and yeast but mould and insects. From flour! Even bread that I made myself that I thought I knew everything that was going into it contained an unknown and potentially hostile invisible enemy.

Every symptom became a data point, every meal a trial and I was simultaneously the researcher and the subject with no capacity for blinding or distance. Whether I would end up flat on my back for days feeling like I was trying to breathe under water, a spotty itchy mess, a sneezing wreck or completely fine also augmented this uncertainty.

I was trying to solve a multi-variable problem with incomplete information about what the variables even were. What I often concluded as potential confirmation bias - joining dots that weren't there - was working with the best available model until new information forced a paradigm shift.

All of this took its toll. The emotional weight isn't just about the physical symptoms or the diagnostic odyssey. It's also about the epistemological loneliness of knowing something is wrong, having my body tell me repeatedly that something is wrong, and existing in a space where others either can't or won't engage with the complexity of my documented symptoms and experience. While the cross-reactivity issue is far less of a consideration for the general population, one small consolation is the legislative changes recognise grain contaminants as allergen/sensitisers for more than just highly sensitised individuals.

I'm glad I figured much of this out. What it has taken to figure it out on my own has been profound. How many other people are experiencing this? It can't just be me. The realisation that my body and mind were learning through these exposures led me to examine the broader biological mechanics of this process in The Cumulative Logic of a Sensitised System.

A maverick, a radical, a fuss-pot in this realm I have sometimes felt - but I am not. Unlike Jacques Cousteau, whose explorations revealed wonder and beauty in the ocean, I have been diving into the invisible, unglamorous biological depths of reactivity - not to discover new worlds, but to survive in this one. Bridging the gap between complexity and palatability, translating what I find into something I and others will hopefully understand.