Star fruit and Sweet Potatoes- poisonous combo?

I’m having a bout of food poisoning. It all began with breakfast. I had a few pieces of starfruit followed by steamed sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes contain complex carbohydrates plus other nutrients and I thought it was good for me. These were washed down with warm water. I don’t take coffee or tea at breakfast time.I felt good having eaten the fruit and the sweet potatoes.

Then at about 11 a.m. the pains began, just after I boarded my flight. The upper part of my abdomen had sharp pains and I felt very uncomfortable. I thought it was gastric pains brought about by my having ingested a painkiller the previous day for the aftermath of a steroid injection in my elbow.

The airhostess who noticed my distress, kindly gave me 2 tablets to chew, thinking that it would help alleviate the pain. However it didn’t. She gave me a couple of buns and hot milo instead of the usual lunch. I ate part of it. Soon I felt feverish.

Once we disembarked, I took a cab back home and rushed to the toilet where I vomited for the next two hours. Sweat was running down profusely yet I felt very cold.Those of you who have had vomitting spells will know how awful it is, throwing up and sometimes retching without anything coming up. The pain didn’t get any better and I lay down, exhausted. I must have dozed off for the next thing I heard was the key in the door.

My daughter had returned and when she felt my forehead, she said I was very hot. So she sent me to the doctor who prescribed some medication and gave me a jab to ease the pain.

She said I should not have eaten the sweet potatoes as they have a lot of wind.
My abdomen had a lot of wind, she said and she gave me some pills to remove the wind and told me to go on a light diet of bread and plenty of water for the next couple of days. She also said that people who have gastric should not eat starfruit. I told her I do not have gastric but it could have come about because of the painkiller.

I believe I did blog about the starfruit sometime back. It’s a lovely fruit but it contains a neurotoxin that is not present in other fruits. This toxin affects the brain and nerves.

A healthy person is able to filter the toxin out of his system but those who have kidney problems are not able to remove the toxin and the consequences can be fatal. The symptoms of starfruit poisoning are: hiccups, numbness and weakness, confusion, agitation and in some cases, epileptic fits.

So those who love starfruit, like me, do beware.

I’m still not ok yet as the pain comes back and there is still a bit of fever and I feel very lethargic. It could have been the unwise combination of these two types of food. I've always had starfruit without any problems. This is the first time I've eaten both starfruit and sweet potatoes together so I'm inclined to think that this is a bad combination leading to food poisoning.