Help! I’m Reacting to Water???!
This is a message I’ve gotten a few times, and I haven’t had a very complete response to it to date because I haven’t been able to solve the problem for myself. And now that I have it mostly solved, I still don’t have any clear explanation for the phenomenon or any guaranteed solutions for anyone. Just some suggestions. But here is literally everything I know about and have tried re: finding safe water to drink when you have corn allergy, chemical sensitivity, or a mast cell disorder.
I am making many claims below that need elaboration or references. I will come back and add details and links as I have time, but I thought it was important to just do a brain dump ASAP because there are people who need this info that currently don’t have safe water.
tl;dr – The Short Version
If you are allergic to corn and are reacting to your water, DO NOT DRINK Dasani or Aquafina. These are KNOWN to contain corn derivatives in the form of “added minerals” and/or the bottles are made from corn plastic.
Try buying Crystal Geyser Alpine Spring brand (owned by CG Roxane) bottled water before you try anything else. It is cheap and easily attainable in many areas at drugstores, grocery stores, dollar stores, liquidation stores, etc. There are several spring sources and not all of them work for everyone, and also there are still people who cannot tolerate this water. If that doesn’t work, begin trialing: Fiji, Starbucks Ethos brand, Voss in glass bottles, Poland Springs. Also join the Facebook Corn Allergy and Intolerance group, because you are going to need some real-time group support getting this figured out.
Update 2020: I have not tolerated any of the dozens of brands of bottled water I tried over the last 8 years. But I recently tried Starkey Water, made by Whole Foods, and tolerated it! Please note that if you google Starkey, the first thing you will see is a Consumer Reports study stating that it contains high levels of arsenic, as does Crystal Geyser. There are other articles explaining that this isn’t a big deal, but I’ll let you do your own research on how worried to be about that. I would suggest that if you are concerned, filtering your bottled water would be an option.