Is GMO CORN making you sick? 

How one woman was told that the popular ingredient was the cause of her insomnia, headaches and chronic nausea

• Corn is in everything from take-away coffee cups to Vitamin E supplements
• Experts say that natural cross-pollination from genetically modified crops to organic crops means there is no such thing as GMO-free corn anymore

A woman who suffered from 'weird' symptoms like burning face rashes, pain in her joints, chronic fatigue, nausea, severe insomnia and a constant head cold, has opened up about her deteriorating health and how genetically modified corn may be to blame.

In an essay for Elle.com, Caitlin Shetterly, 37, explains how after nearly four years of frustrating doctor visits and no explanation in sight, the mother-of-one was diagnosed as having developed a reaction to genetically modified corn by allergist Paris Mansmann.

But the MD's directive to strip all corn from her diet was harder than the Portand, Maine resident and  author of Made for You and Me: Going West, Going Broke, Finding Home, could have ever imagined.

Mr Mansmann’s advice was to eliminate all corn, even organic corn, because 'it's almost impossible to find a corn source in the U.S. that doesn’t have the [genetically modified protein] in it,' he said.

Many experts agree that because of cross-pollination via winds, birds, and bees, from genetically modified crops to organic crops, there is no such thing as GMO-free corn anymore. 

A desperate Mrs Shetterly, whose tight, achy joints meant that her hands froze into claws while she slept and hurt to uncurl in the morning, expected Mr Mansmann's recommended diet to be a cinch.

'After all, how hard could it be to give up corn?' she wrote. 'The answer was: way harder than I imagined.'

Corn popped up everywhere: in tea bags, juice, and cheese culture; it lined her take-away coffee cups and even plastic bags full of frozen vegetables.

'Almost everything my family used, no matter how piously natural and organic, had corn in it. It came under the guise of dozens of names like “xanthan gum,” “natural flavors,” “free-flowing agents,” “vitamin E,” “ascorbic acid,” “citric acid,” and “cellulose,” to name a few,' she explained.

And because corn is fed to animals whose meat and eggs she ate, and whose milk she drank, Mrs Shetterly had to restrict her diet to only vegetables, grains other than corn, grass-fed beef and dairy, and wild fish. 

'We eschewed anything premade and began gathering foods from local sources we could trust. I stopped taking every medicine or supplement with corn in it (which was most of them). Wherever I went, I took my own stainless-steel coffee cup.''My husband and I threw ourselves into the corn-free diet with gusto: We began baking all our bread, we learned how to make our own flour tortillas and sweet treats like muffins and cakes.

Mr Mansmann estimated that it would take about four months of eliminating corn for the white blood cells called eosinophil - which were in overproduction thanks to the genetically modified corn's proteins, which were acting as allergens - to cycle out of Mrs Shetterly's body.

But blaming genetically modified foods for any kind of health problem is controversial.

Amal Assa’ad, MD, dismissed anxiety over the safety of genetically modified corn. 

'What’s wrong with chemicals?' she asked. 'A lot of chemicals have helped us—a lot of medications are chemicals.

'[Genetically modified organisms] produce better crops that have increased production, that are resistant to pesticides—crops that can feed the rest of the world.'

Starting in the Eighties, the biotechnology giant Monsanto began to genetically alter corn to withstand its herbicide Roundup, so that weeds but be eradicated but not crops. MAILONLINE