About Salicylate Intolerance

Salicylates are naturally occurring chemicals found in plants. Most fruits and vegetables have salicylates, but meat and dairy do not. Anything fruit-flavoured or minty, like candy or gum, has salicylates.

The crazy thing about salicylates is that it’s also found in medications, cleaning products, laundry products, candles, air fresheners, perfume, deodorant, oral hygiene products, makeup, skin products, hair products, and soap. If it has a fragrance, it has salicylates.

Salicylate intolerance is thought to be caused by an overproduction of leukotrienes, which are inflammatory mediators. Leukotrienes are controlled by an enzyme called cyclooxygenase. When cyclooxygenase is inhibited, we get allergy-like symptoms. Similar to histamines, it’s like a bucket. Once overflowing, the body cannot metabolize or excrete salicylates properly. This leads to all kinds of symptoms. I think having unchecked celiac disease contributed to my salicylate intolerance.

I experience the following symptoms when I eat salicylates:

My home is 99% fragrance free. (The last 1% is the Herbal Essences shampoo my family uses.) When I switched to unscented products, I started to feel better, and it allowed me to eat a wider variety of food because my salicylate bucket wasn’t overflowing all the time from environmental exposures.

The problem with eating a low salicylate diet is that many low salicylate foods are also high in histamine. This narrows what I can have quite a bit. Also, it’s hard to eat a well-rounded diet when so much must be eliminated.

I can count on 1 hand how many different fruits I can safely eat for example. It can be very depressing and discouraging because I cannot eat any berries, stone fruits, or tropical fruits. I miss these food a lot.