Question: HI, My wife is having an issue with Severe Spikes in Blood Pressure with the attendant confusion weakness and slight dizziness. It appears to be food related. She has had MRI-blood work -nothing is out of order that they could find. It happened several months ago and by eliminating different foods it appeared to be the high manganese in some fortified flour in the bread she was eating . We took her off the bread and blood pressure remained normal for several months-but she did not like the taste of the white bread that I put her on-so we started on rye bread, which worked fine for a while but now the symptoms have returned even though there is no stated heavy metal content in this new bread./ I phoned the company to get information on what additive they were using to enrich the bread and was told that it was a patented process and they would not divulge it????????Killing people by secrecy is not my idea of where life should be going. Is there any reference medically to any of the additives used in flour that might cause these symptoms- What started me in near panic mode originally was when the spike hit 180--I was ready to take her to emergency but the spike came down in about 20 minutes. the recent ones are not that severe but I want to stay on top of it-She does not smoke or drink alcohol-is about 30# overweight. Are there other food allergies that might cause similar reaction--needless to say I have gotten quite cautious about what foods I prepare.

THANK YOU. She has had monitor both in Dr. office/clinic and one that she wore for 24 hours, there does not appear to be a cardiac problem. When we started to search, I thought that gluten might be the issue also, but when she was able to eat some bread without an issue, I had to look further and narrowed it down to the breads made out of the richly fortified flours. By selective deduction manganese over 10% of the RDA appears to be the issue - that is when I asked the bread companies what their additives were since it would be possible that it would be in other flour products as well-that is when I ran into the stone wall. Rye bread worked well for a time, but lately she requested the dark European style Rye bread--it shows no high metal content but by her body reaction apparently it is there as well. The gluten intolerance may well be there but only becomes critical when in combination with the heavy metals. That may also be a factor for others who react as gluten intolerant when in actuality it is the heavy metals in the flour that is the issue--I did some reading about the various metals and the body and in all my studying manganese was the only one that appeared to be toxic in just over the RDA--the limits/tolerances were much higher on the other heavy metals. An interesting point this intolerance to flour products appears to be a cumulative thing--1slice a day has little or no effect but any more than that the issues start to crop up--which is too bad because she loves bread--I think partially it is a body craving for the alcohol she gave up-and the lesser rush from the flour fermenting in the body takes its place. I appreciate the help thank you