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Do you feel sick after eating eggs, but not all eggs? I may have cracked the code on why some eggs leave me feeling nauseous and achy, while others leave me feeling fine.
I’ve been meaning to write about this for a long time. Someone other than me must be suffering from this and not know it. It took me months to figure out that eggs were making me sick to my stomach. Maybe I can help someone figure it out quicker than I did.
About fifteen months ago I started feeling sick to my stomach. Not always nauseous, more like how you feel when you know you’re going to have diarrhea (sorry – that’s the last time I’ll be using that word in this post). And my back was killing me all the time. Sometimes I felt feverish. I felt like this all day, every day, for the summer of 2013. It really sucked.
Ruling Out Wheat
My big fear, at first, was that I was having a problem with wheat. I live on bread and pasta. Take away my carbs and you might as well take away my soul as well. But I was feeling so terrible that I actually tried giving up wheat.
My plan was to do it for a week and see if things got better. But I quit after four days because there was no change. On the one hand I was glad – I could still eat bread! But on the other, I still had no clue what was going on.
Tests
After about a month I really started to get worried. Did I have some kind of horrible intestinal disease? Were the amoebas that had hitch-hiked back home with me after a trip to South America in 1998 making a comeback tour? Did I have some kind of cancer?
Do some eggs make you sick, while other eggs leave you feeling fine? I think I may have cracked the code! #eggs #healthClick To TweetI went to my doctor, who checked me out and ordered some blood tests and stool tests (man was that an experience, let me tell you…on second thought, I’m not going to, because it was a really really really gross process). I was afraid of what the tests would find, but whatever it was would be better than not knowing and just feeling sick all the time.
The tests showed nothing.
Breakthrough
Then, after about three months of feeling like that (it was beginning to feel normal – I have no idea how I was functioning), I took the kids to my mom’s house in Buffalo for a six day visit. One of the reasons I love visiting my mom is that my favorite fast food restaurant, Mighty Taco, is on her corner. Usually when I’m staying with her I just wait to eat until MT opens up at 10:30 and have a nice healthy breakfast of burritos and nachos.
Despite how I was feeling, my MT habit didn’t change (I mean, it wasn’t going to make my stomach worse). And by day three I realized that I was feeling better. Not just better, but good. By the time I left my mom’s house to head back to Brooklyn I felt totally normal.
And on the drive back it hit me. It hit me like a ton of bricks falling on my head. I hadn’t had a single egg in six days.
At home I start pretty much every single day off with an egg or two, scrambled or in an omelet. I’ve been doing this for decades. And now, suddenly, eggs appeared to be making me sick.
Confirmation
When I got home I started experimenting. First, I made some cookies using eggs as an ingredient, and ate a couple. I was fine. Phew.
Then I hard-boiled an egg and ate that. Again, no reaction. Eggs cooked very well seemed to be OK.
Then, just to make sure, I scrambled an egg on my third morning back and ate it. And within three or four hours, that sick feeling came back. Bingo. It took almost two days until I felt OK again.
I was glad (dancing-in-the-streets thrilled, actually) that I’d found the culprit. But I missed eating eggs.
Fresh Eggs
A couple months later I was back at my doctor’s office for something routine and I mentioned what I’d discovered. She suggested that I try a really fresh egg. Like, right out of the chicken fresh.
I figured that Fresh Direct was my best shot. I bought the freshest, most expensive eggs they carried. And I ate one scrambled. And I was fine!!!
Then the next time I bought them, I felt sick again. What the heck was going on? I kept experimenting with different brands, and found a couple that never make me sick. Maybe they’re quicker about getting the eggs off of the farm and into stores?
I’m still not 100% sure what’s going on. Some people have suggested to me that it has to do with antibiotics and such but honestly, the rest of my diet is such crap that I doubt it. Antibiotics in milk don’t seem to bother me (but ALL milk bothers me without taking a Lactaid tablet first).
Old Eggs
As eggs age, they develop sulfur, and I’m guessing that that’s the key here for me (and it’s only a guess—I am very much not a doctor!). Really really old, rotten eggs smell overwhelmingly like sulfur, but it takes a long time for an egg to get to that point. You can get a clue as to how old an egg is based on whether it floats, stands, or sinks in water. As an egg ages, its protective membrane gets weaker, and air gets inside. A fresh egg will sink, an older egg will stand on end, and a really old egg will float (doesn’t mean that that egg isn’t safe, it’s just old).
According to the USDA, which regulates eggs, the “use by” date can be as long as 45 days after the egg was packed (and they don’t seem to define how long the egg can hang around the farm before being packed, either!):
Terminology such as “Use by”, “Use before”, “Best before” indicates a period that the eggs should be consumed before overall quality diminishes. Code dating using these terms may not exceed 45 days including the day the eggs were packed into the carton.
But here is a factory egg on the left and an expensive farm-fresh egg on the right. Both sank. So if age really is the culprit, we’re talking about an amount of time that’s a lot smaller than this test can determine.
If I had the patience, I would buy several dozen eggs with the same dates and eat one a day until I got sick, to determine how old an egg could be before it affected me. But I don’t see myself doing that any time soon. I buy a dozen eggs from pastured hens each week, and I use the leftovers from the week before for hard-boiled eggs or baking.
My advice to you, if you think you’re having this problem, is to go find the very freshest egg you can (farmers’ markets are great for this) and see if that makes a difference.
Restaurants
I can no longer eat eggs at any old restaurant. Sometimes if I’m at a really nice restaurant I’ll grill my server on how fresh the eggs are (yes, I’ve had to become that person) and get some, but usually, I just skip them.
Incidentally, I seem to be fine eating a breakfast sandwich from Burger King. Since they use a pasteurized liquid egg product in their sandwiches, I guess that’s safe for my stomach! I haven’t tried McDonald’s breakfast biscuits yet. When I worked at McDonald’s we used whole, freshly cracked eggs when making breakfast, but that was more than twenty years ago. [Since I first wrote this almost four years ago, I’ve eaten many McDonald’s egg-and-cheese biscuit sandwiches, and have been fine!]
Why Write Now?
So why am I writing about this today of all days? Because I’m still getting tripped up by this and did it to myself again yesterday. I made fresh pasta the way I always make fresh pasta: one egg per person. And since I was making a large amount of pasta and meatballs, I had to send my husband to the store for a couple cartons of eggs. Cheap, factory eggs, because that’s what he buys. And since I wasn’t cracking the eggs into a pan and eating them right away, it totally didn’t occur to me that I needed to use the good eggs!!!
I had two big bowls of pasta last night and then went to bed. I woke up several times last night with reflux and I felt terrible. Feverish and crampy and nauseous. I woke up this morning thinking it was just the red sauce, which always gives me trouble if I eat it too late. But as the day wore on I felt worse and worse. I asked my husband if he felt OK. I was going to ask our dinner guests from the night before if they felt sick. Had I poisoned our friends somehow?
And then my back started to hurt and I realized what was going on. Crap.
The good news is (besides the fact that I didn’t sicken my friends and family with a pasta dinner somehow), I know that I should feel fine by this time tomorrow.
I learned a while back I can’t eat eggs anymore either. I’m willing to try farm fresh eggs, and luckily there is a farmer’s market on the same street where I work.
Now, you do know you’re going to have to share that pasta recipe with us, right?
@Rita: You should totally try it, good luck!
The egg pasta recipe I use it totally easy: 4 eggs and 470g of all-purpose flour for four servings. Mix together and knead by hand or stand mixer until smooth and shiny (it’s really hard to knead so I wouldn’t advise doing it by hand, but people do!). Wrap in plastic wrap and let sit out for between 30 minutes and 3 hours. Roll out, cut, and cook! I have an Atlas pasta maker that I’ve had for more than 20 years that works great. http://slf.sh/1vGGUiS (affiliate link)
I swear what you experienced is exactly what’s happening to me right now..back pain and all!
I’ve eaten eggs all my life (I’m 71) and have never had this problem before. Beings I’m not a youngster anymore I thought I’d pay the extra and try some cage-free eggs. That was about 2 weeks ago and I’ve been sick almost every day since then. And yes, egg or eggs for breakfast, usually poached. I’m throwing the remainder away! I’m so glad I read your post….now maybe I can start feeling human again!!
Ugh, I’m so sorry, it’s such a terrible feeling!
Thanks for sharing this, I thought I was the only one. Eggs affect me in the same way it’s mentioned here. I thought I was going crazy. Sometimes I eat them I’m fine and others I’m not. I’ve noticed it especially with scrambled eggs.
See, what *I* took away from all of that was that clearly the answer is that you need to subsist on a diet of Mighty Taco.
@Toni: IF ONLY!!!
Genius! I have been searching for years. I could eat eggs fine until I had my son. 7yrs ago. It’s been like playing roulette sometimes they make me sick sometimes they don’t. But fresh yard eggs from my neighbor never make me sick. It makes so much sense it’s scary the thought never crossed my mind as to the age.of the eggs. It explains so much. Unfortunately I lost today and have to deal with being sick all day. Thank you
So glad you could figure it out! When I finally did it was like a giant light bulb going off over my head.
This describes exactly me, and it also started after I had my son!
This is me as well. After each kid I’ve lost something i can eat. Eggs and corn products. It’s rough.
Oh that sucks, corn syrup is in everything!! I’m so sorry.
Hey Amy. Thank you so much for your comments. I suddenly could no longer eat eggs about 3 years ago after a 3-6 egg white a day life. It took me forever also to figure out it was eggs. I have the same symptoms you describe above. I’ll try them again after a few months without (I’ve gone as long as 6 months without) and it depends, more often than not they will make me sick.
Your comments about sulfur is what got my attention, because I developed an allergy to sulfur about 3-5 years ago. I’m curious if this might be related. I intend to test it out this weekend with the freshest eggs I can find.
Wish me luck. I miss eggs!
Oh good luck! I hope this is it because at least you’d be able to work some eggs back in. I’m so glad I wrote this. We need to spread this info!!
I have a similar issue with eggs. I purchased a dozen Eggland 2 days ago, Exp Sept 26th. Yesterday I ate 2 and they tasted great, no sickness, this morning i ate 2 more from the same carton and I got sick so I’m not sure about the freshness thing. Any Ideas besides the possibility the eggs packaged are not from the same batch?
No clue, but I will say that the eggs I’ve been buying that are supposedly from pastured chickens always have an expiration date further out than that – usually about 45 days or more.
I have had the problem with eggs for many, many years. I have many environmental allergies so I just added it to my list of ‘allergies’ I used to love eggs and could not figure out why those baked, highly cooked foods didn’t bother me. I love this article. Thank you.
I have long discovered I can eat the low cholesterol eggs in a carton. They are a great substitute when you are missing your scrambled egg and toast in the morning.
I have also found out that it may have something to do with sanitizing mass quantities of eggs from the packagers. Apparently they blast the eggs with high pressure cleaner that pulls off the outer most cover of the shell. This is believed to be why some of us get sick from eggs. It must be a very protective layer that is stripped away and those of us who are sensitive will feel the consequences. Wish I could find the article I had read and site the reference.
This may also be why many of us can easily eat very, very fresh farm eggs and not have a reaction.
Thought you may want to hear another possible theory.
I was just happy to find out it was not just me and I had not lost my mind.
I was so bad that I couldn’t even walk into the kitchen if someone was cooking eggs.
Thanks for the insight.
You’re so welcome!!
I’ve read the same thing about the washing of eggs. It’s why people in other parts of the world can keep their eggs on the counter while we have to keep them in the fridge. I wouldn’t be surprised if that process causes sulfur to develop faster too!
After all my online searches, typing “why store eggs make me sick” finally landed me on this blog post – and it confirms everything I thought it was. I have never had any food intolerances up until summer last year, when I seemed to be sick with many of the above symptoms almost daily. It was at this time I started to think it was food related and started slowly eliminating things from my diet.
I still had a hard time figuring it out – I had eggs almost everyday, but they were fully cooked and I’d never had problems with them before. So why now? I couldn’t imagine that the eggs were the culprit because they never had been in the past. I slowly eliminated them altogether, and wasn’t getting sick anymore. I honestly feared that it was the eggs…with the exception of baked goods where it’s like one egg to 24 cookies. It wasn’t until around October when I ate a basic piece of wheat toast with an egg over easy, that it finally clicked. Like all other times when I ate eggs, I was sick almost immediately upon finishing my food! I was so sick it was physically draining and I would just be tired for hours. I knew right then, it was the eggs (insert crying face emoji here).
So I limited to them in my diet, and was able to eat them if I took a special supplement beforehand. At least I could eat them if I had enough forethought to take it. But I was still bothered by the fact that at 31, my body decided it didn’t like eggs anymore. And then Christmas morning came around…and I was daring enough to try some scrambled eggs with veggies, without the supplement, and I hoped like crazy I wouldn’t be spending the remainder of the morning in the bathroom.
I.Was.Fine.
Not even the slightest upset to my digestive system in any way. But why?! How?! I started to think I knew what it was…but wanted to be sure it wasn’t a fluke. Turns out, Christmas morning I had fresh eggs from a neighbor of the family. I wanted to further this theory…so a few days later I made a frittata with some of the eggs we took home at Christmas. I.Was.Fine. I made another frittata a week later, still fine. And today, the finality of my experiment, an egg that wasn’t fully cooked… I made one of these fresh eggs over easy on an English muffin. I’m fine!
I really had confirmed that at least for me, I’m completely fine with fresh eggs straight from the chicken coop. Even still, I couldn’t help but wonder why that is – or if other people had similar experiences to mine. Enter: your blog. I’m so glad you took the time to write about your experience. And although I still have questions as to the exact reason it is this way – I almost don’t care! Because I can eat eggs without getting sick! Fresh eggs, that is!
Our stories are SO similar. I’m so glad you found my post!
So glad I found this. Same problem since my second child. A couple of weeks ago my mom invited me to have dinner with her. She was having bacon, eggs and pancakes. I told her I would have to pass on the eggs and she mentioned she had blue eggs! I thought it’s a worth a try and I had been craving eggs for a while. So she fried me 2 and they were delicious..kept waiting for the horrible belly and back pain, but nothing happened….I was so relieved that I could have eggs again…yae!!!. Next I’m going to try fresh eggs. Thanks so much
I’ve been wondering for 2 years if I’d ever eat an omelet again. It hadn’t become a problem for me until about the 3rd trimester of my pregnancy. Every time I ate eggs I would vomit. I assumed the ‘baby didn’t like it’ and waited for my pregnancy to end. First time I ate an omelet I was so sick and it appeared it hadn’t gotten any better. I tried organic eggs, antibiotic, cage free eggs, and nothing seemed to work. Boiled eggs aren’t a problem though…just scrambled eggs, omelets, etc. This is great insight! Thanks for sharing!
I know this is old, but I could have written this myself!! I’ve been suffering with this for months. Roughly 5!! Anyhow, we eaten farm fresh eggs for years. And this went away for about a month and today, had some eggs (as usual) and BAM….stomach pain again. I’m like you…it’s takes a few days to get back to normal.
I just found this today. Thank you sooo much! I have the same issue and could never find someone to tell me if eggs actually had sulphur in them. I am allergic to sulphur and have wondered for years why scrambled eggs made me queasy. Now I have an answer.
It makes my day every time I help one more person figure this out. Thank you for letting me know!!
Glad to have found this! All of a sudden I can’t eat scrambled eggs anymore. I get nauseated right away. I am going to try fresh eggs and see if it makes a difference!
Oh, I sincerely hope it works out well! Good luck!!
I can eat mayo, cookies, cakes, pastas, etc with no issues. If I have the tiniest amount of scrambled egg I get indigestion immediately, which then leads to cramping, vomiting, and other horrible stomach stuff.
We have chickens and ducks who should all start laying soon, hoping to try eating them with success! I’ve been told people with chicken egg allergies can often eat duck eggs with no issues. Have you ever had duck eggs?
Someone once told me it had something to do with proteins in either the yolk or whites, and how they break down while cooking. So cookies and the like break down further than a scrambled egg. But that doesn’t fully make sense since I can eat mayo like a champ, and cookie dough has never made me sick (i don’t do that often but sometimes it’s hard to resist).
Thanks for this post, it’s difficult to navigate what eggs and dishes I shouldn’t eat. The sickness is so bad and gross I stay clear from any type of egg dish.
Also, I was allergy tested and tested no reaction to eggs! Was upset of all the allergies they said I do have when eggs was the reason I was there!
Oh man, sounds like you have it worse than I do – it never made me throw up!! I haven’t tried duck eggs. But I hope they work for you!!
This seems to be my issue as well! I can eat cake and cookies all day, but one scrambled, hard-boiled egg or omelette and about an hour later my digestive tract hates me. I messed up today because I had too much ice-cream that had egg listed as an ingredient.
I’m going to try super fresh eggs someday when I can afford to be sick as a dog that night just in case…
Thanks!
I’ve had a bizarre reaction to pretty much just overcooked eggs. Hard-boiled, fried and poached are fine…even scrambled soft when I make them myself are tasty and make me feel good. whenever I eat (what I consider) over-cooked eggs, and/or if they are beaten and cooked in such a way that the curd is really tiny I feel nauseated immediately and can’t shake that queasiness for hours. What is with this? We don’t use milk in them and seems to be worse if that’s the case in a scramble, omelette or baked egg thing. Ugh barf.
Eww, that sounds awful.
I have resolved to NOT eating eggs anymore ~ and I can occasionally eat an egg from a Amish farm nearby but I don’t like not knowing if they are new or old enough to make me sick. That being said I also have issues with antibiotics that say “don’t eat eggs” and now knee injections that say to not use if you have allergies to eggs. Well, it’s not an allergy ~ I just get sick. I had injections yesterday and this morning a ~ well you know loose toileting ~ and am nauseous SERIOUSLY? can a shot in the knee produce that effect? I don’t understand~ I did NOT eat it~ I am not terribly ill so will continue with the knee injections for 5 weeks but surprised none the less that a shot in the knee could make me ill
WOW! I coud have written this myself! We had been buying local eggs from a feed store. I was eating them ALL the time. The do sit in the fridge there for a week at time. How fresh do they need to be? I realized my issue was eggs just a few weeks ago. We thought is was the local eggs we were buying. Unfortunately for me it is like roulette on whether I get sick or not. I know that a bad egg will float. Unfortunately, the eggs I had today were upright…but not floating. At the time I thought..hmmmm I wonder if that is air inside making it stand up? It HAS to be. It took and hour but I got seriously ill..and have hit the bathroom! Looks like I will be avoiding eggs again! I’m so sad!
For me I’ve found that around two weeks after the 3-digit date on the carton is about it. The carton I have in my fridge now says “308” (just look for a 3-digit number without any letters or anything else). That means November 3rd (the 308th day of the year). I honestly don’t know if the number represents the day the eggs were laid or the day they were packaged up or what, but that’s what I use as a reference. Once they’re about two weeks old I feed them to my family or make them into hard-boiled eggs, which don’t seem to bother me at all.
This is awesome, I recently discovered that if I eat brown eggs they don’t bother my stomach and at the farmers market they cost less than the ones at the store. For some reason white eggs give me gas, I know there is no difference but still. The gas smells and tastes awful, but the brown ones don’t do that and no one knows why.
I have avoided eggs for a long time because they made me vomit. Deviled eggs and hard boil eggs in a salad with vinegarette dressing were no problem. I made and an ate an omelette and had no problem. I made another omelette from the same carton and ate two bites and had to run to the bathroom to puke. I looked at the “best if used by” date on the carton an saw that it was a few days past the date. I often wondered why I why sometimes I’d get sick and sometimes I didn’t. I will try eating only the freshest eggs to see if this will make a difference.
I hope it works so that you can enjoy eggs again!
Egg issues here as well……. Not that I eat them a lot….. it’s just that when I do it’s roulette whether I get stomach anguish or not……. to me it’s not worth it, I’m just staying away from them. I don’t want to have a grumbling stomach for two days just because I wanted to eat an egg……NO THNX !!
Plenty of things I can live without during my lifetime, and an EGG is one of them.
I was wondering if you could store your eggs in water (so no air can get to them)? I don’t see how that could hurt to store them in water…… that would surely keep them airtight. Just a thought. Best to all…….
I think the problem there would be that the shells are porous (that’s how air gets in and makes older eggs float), so I’m guessing the water would get in as well.
Late to the party but…I found this post after searching for a reason for my husband’s nausea. It seems to happen every time I make scrambled eggs. The difference for us is that we only eat freshly laid eggs from my sister’s ducks and he still can’t handle it. After reading through this article and the subsequent comments I’m wondering if it’s related to his allergy to sulfa drugs. Is it possible that sulfur is the real culprit here?
Thanks so much for sharing this info. At least I think we’re finally on the right track.
I’ve had the same problem for years. Try cage free organic brown eggs.ie Egglands best..it took me years to figure out cheaper eggs caused the problem .good luck.
I just tried cage free and these have made me sick! Never was bothered before with regular eggs. Weird, huh!
Hi just read this article after eating an egg and ur making me feel sick so I googled it and it makes so much sense to me!! I’ve always suspected the same – sometimes – like 6 or 7 out of ten eggs will make me feel a little ill. Especially scrambled but sometimes just an egg and bacon sandwich. BUT if I ever eat a fresh farm egg (eg at my dads farm) no problem at all. Thank you glad to hear I’m not alone. My mum said even as a small child eggs made me a bit sick, maybe this was (and still is) why!! Thank you x
Thanks for this post.. I used to eat eggs daily. Hard boiled eggs mostly every morning. Then about a year ago became so ill.. vomiting stomach cramps. I thought maybe it was a bad egg and kinda avoided them. If I get a scrambled egg occasionally I seem to be ok. This morning decided to have boiled egg and back again. Nausea.. stomach cramps. Makes sense about the age of the egg.. I was also worried about wheat allergy too. Thanks for the post.. Makes a lot of sense.. To my knowledge I don’t have a Sulfur allergy..
I love that you tried them in cookie recipe! I noticed this for me as well! I can eat them in recipes and hard boiled but the fired eggs I love will hit me after a few hours and it is very unpleasant. I’ll have to start marking our chickens eggs for when we bring them in and make sure they are only the most fresh ones. :)
You can see where my priorities were. Not the baked goods! I have to be able to eat the cookies!!
Hi, thanks for writing this article. I am impressed by the experimentation that you conducted, and i think it would be worthwhile to buy the fresh eggs and see how old they get before you get sick. Would be a nice addendum to the article. But anyways, eggs make me sick too, but i cant quite pin it down. For instance, i can eat eggs in things…like cookies or crusts or whatever else they’re mixed into. But scrambled eggs make me SO sick – like i had been kicked in the gut and totally entirely disgusting (nausea). I feel like its the egg white? I dont know. Anyways…im stoned and rambling. Bye!
Sounds like you’re in exactly the same situation I am: if they’re cooked well enough, they don’t bother you.
Some recent news from a friend told me that after YEARS of eating eggs, she met with her doctor to find that the albimum ( egg white) coats the inside of your gut. This albimum cam block the bodies ability to absorb essential nutrients and be absorbed into the lining of the intestine and affect the stomach causing inflamation, bloating, diarrhea, chills and back pain.
I can agree that fresher eggs help with the problem. I would say that knowing is the first step.
Oh wow OK…thanks for info…I hear different things…one person says the yoke is what messes with your stomach..but this sounds so much better…I just don’t eat eggs no more..lol thanks
So happy I found this article. Exactly my problem. I’ll be getting some fresh eggs now to try! Unbelievable how sick I’ve been getting!
Omg and I thought I was the only one who has been having upset stomach to eggs…thanks for sharing yal!! At first I thought it was dairy period!! But I eat nothing but cereal now..special k with banana’s and mix two different kinds of special k…they all are very good…with a lil honey too…I so want an omelet… But won’t dare… So thanks for the tips…
Sheila Bob
I have most of the same experience. Luckily for me I have only one symptom – diarrhea. I don’t have any other food sensitivities and my only allergy is mild hay fever. I have been worrying that I am developing an allergy to eggs, but I know that I have no problems with fresh local eggs and am even able to eat certain brands from certain stores. I have considered the age question but was also thinking that the chicken feed might also be a source of the trouble. The more I think of it, the more the age of the eggs makes sense to me. I’m going to use the info in this article to look at my own situation more carefully. Thank you.
You’re very welcome!
I do believe this iOS my problem as well . I’m not sure of when it really started but I do remember about 1 1/2 yes who I had eggs and then went out to do my shopping and within a few hrs I started feeling nauseous and thought something more serious was happening. I had to pull into the nearest parking lot because I thought I was going to be sick. It didn’t happen of course, but I started to feel even worse with cramping and bloating, I just tried to lay back in my vehicle seat and wished it would pass and after about an hour of misery I had to call my hubby to come get me and take me to the hospital, the pain was so bad! The doc ruled it as food poisoning..
About 6 mo the later, same thing happened, it was then that I realized I had eggs for breakfast again that day so told the doc, they put me on morphine for the pain, it was comparable to childbirth if not worse . At the hospital I sit in a chair hooked up to a drip and they gave me a second shot of morphine until the doc could talk to me. I had recently been diagnosed with IBS a few months prior so they ruled it as such and sent me on my way.
I have since been scared to eat eggs and when I do it is hit or miss, realized it must be whether they are store bought or fresh farm eggs..had store bought eggs a few times this week and only today they bothered me . Now I lay here in bed feeling nauseous, thankfully not in agony with cramping pains but still sucks. I feel like this is sucking he life out of me feeling like throw regularly when I do try to eat eggs because I love them so much..time to decide whether they are worth it or not…
Oh that’s terrible! I hope you can find a solution. No food is worth that pain! Is there some place where you can get really fresh eggs to test the theory out?
I’m lying doubled over in pain after eating home made scrambled eggs! If I eat McDonald’s eggs I’m fine! I went camping two weeks ago and ate eggs cooked on a BBQ 2 mornings in a row and was fine!
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head! It must be the age of the eggs! I think I’m just going to avoid them completely. Ugh I feel soooo sick right now :(
Sounds VERY similar to my experience. I’ve never had a problem with McDonald’s. My local bagel place? Can’t eat the eggs!
I have the same problem that whenever I eat fresh eggs… I feel fine, but whenever I eat eggs that are older… I get really bad indigestion. I discovered this 5 years ago. To counteract my symptoms, “Personally” I take activated charcoal capsules and drink lots of water. I have read that both organic farms and conventional farms “May” sanitize their eggs with chlorine or a(n) UV light. I have a sensitivity to chlorine but have no reaction to sulfur (According to my tests). Egg shells are like the skins of humans and can absorb any type of odor near it.
I made this discovery a few years ago!!! The egg feeling is awful. But fresh organic eggs seem to not kill me as long as they’re cooked really well.
I have a similar problem but a bit different. It could be an egg age thing but I don’t know. I’ve narrowed down my Digestive problem to eggs, but I have been getting them fresh for quite a while now from a distant neighbor. I don’t know her except that she sells eggs from her farm. It doesn’t seem to matter that I get them fresh, I still get sick. I did notice that if I add water to them, as in when I make an omelet, I don’t get sick. Has anyone noticed this? The last two times I added water I didn’t get sick. Today I purposely didn’t and I’m sick. Maybe a change in chemical makeup??
Oh wow, that’s so weird! I have no idea!
Oh my gosh, this article answers so many of my questions. I had the exact same symptoms but I figured out it was eggs pretty quickly. It was strange though because sometimes I didn’t get sick at all, sometimes I was so nauseous and crampy that I couldn’t move. Eggs baked into things were fine, but eggs on their own were dangerous. Last week I went to Germany to visit a friend, and when offered eggs I declined, telling her about my issues. She suggested I try German eggs because they don’t spray them with the bleach solution they use in the states (and also don’t need to refrigerate them). I ate eggs every day that I was there and never got sick. I’m determined to try farm-fresh eggs now at home and see how I feel!
Oh good luck, I really hope that’s the answer for you!! I eat 3 or 4 eggs every single day and I would be so sad without them.
For me, it seems to be all pastured eggs. I made the mistake of trying again tonight when i read a book that insisted free rqmge eggs fed all vegetarian feed were bad for you. So i gave up my wonderful (moderately expensive) Nellies eggs which never make me sick and tried a (very expensive) local pastured eggs from whole foods. Had one egg at 2pm Cooked as always and 9 pm sick as a dog. Ruined my fluid volume experiment too. Before i found Nellies there were some commercial brqnds that may have done it too, but pasturesd eggs 100 percent effect. Just thought of something – pasturesd eggs (chickens) arent contaminated with milk proteins are they? I react to milk. In terms of other pastured animals, oddly the chickens themselves are totally fine pastured. But pastured beef gets me sick too and pastures lamb tends to as well. Man what are those animals grazing on for ne to react that way?
Oh no! I’m not sure about the proteins, but I say if you find something that works, stick to it like glue.
Hi I discovered I couldnt eat eggs about two years ago. I love eggs and I miss eggs. I get terrible bowel issues everytime. Yesterday I ate some potato salad with eggs and im staying paying the price.
Ive tried eggs from the farmers market and i still gor sick. I usually can eat just egg whites and nothing happens but sometimes I still feel a little off.
Whats really strange is on our yearly trip to Cuba I can eat as many eggs as I want and because I know this I pretty much have an egg fest! I get to eat the most delicious omlets and the creamiest scrambled eggs. I eat them non stop the whole week and I feel fabulous!
I dont understand why I cant find an egg in Canada but Cuban eggs are fine.
Whoa, that’s so weird! I’m going to ask on social if anyone I know has any idea what the big difference could be in Cuban eggs.
I have never in my 53 years been allergic to eggs. I have eaten eggs from the farmer’s market for at least five years. The last year I switched to pasture fed organic eggs from the market. I ate two hard boiled eggs in August and got sick as a dog. Two weeks ago I ate two at lunch and had to be rushed to ER. Last Saturday I had scrambled eggs and I did fine. It appears I can have fried and scrambled eggs and do fine, but not boiled eggs. I’m so confused why and why all of a sudden. Aging is stupid!
OMG, that’s so confusing, it’s the opposite of me!
I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this yet, but many of you may have a genetic CBS snp that makes it difficult for you to process sulfur foods.
I was made to eat eggs as a small child and threw up / got headaches every time. It was no surprise when I found out I have a homozygous CBS and heterozygous CBS mutation.
No, I know nothing about that! But I will definitely start googling! I guess that couldn’t be the case for me though, right, if I developed this after 40? Or could that still be it?
My symptoms are a lot like your when I eat eggs. I literally feel like I’m getting the flu and am sick for about 2 days. And as I found out from making cornbread with eggs last night it doesn’t matter if I bake them into something or scramble them. I really wish the fresh egg approch worked for me but as my eggs are literally straight out of my backyard chickens I know that’s not my problem. :(
Oh that stinks! I’m so sorry.
I know you posted this awhile ago, but know that you are not crazy! store bought eggs make me soooooo sick (like food poisoning sick.) but if I buy local farm fresh eggs, I am fine!
The cheaper they are (Aldi .50/dozen) the worse they make me feel! I have absolutely no idea why, but red meat makes me ill as well. I wonder if grass fed local beef would be OK.
I also wonder if it isn’t a reaction to the hormones/chemicals/antibiotics they feed their chickens, that aren’t getting fed to my friend’s chickens, or the local farm.
Wow! You described my condition exactly. Nice to know I’m not the only one. I’m 47 and male. This hasn’t always been the case, just maybe the last 8 years. I can’t drink milk anymore either.
I was searching for a nsmed medical condition for this when I found this blog.
Thanks
I’ve had this issues for years. Finally figured it out it was eggs. The pain is caused by an “allergic reaction” from your gall bladder.
I’d heard that it could have something to do with my gallbladder as well, so I crossed my fingers that the problem would go away when I had my gallbladder out a few years ago. Nope, I still have the same issue!
I have the exact same problem. Had eggs this morning and feeling sick within an hour.
It comes and goes with me/ Think I’ll give up fresh eggs entirely as I’m not bothered buying and doing the age test.
I’ll keep baking but I bake for others so no worries for me.
Thanks for your post. Good to know it’s not just me.