Hi, I’m Cameron.
I built BiteSense for myself.
I’ve had eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) for over eight years. After a decade of guessing, eliminating, and reacting — I decided to build the tool I always needed.
Eight years of managing EoE — and what I learned
I was diagnosed with eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) about eight years ago. Since then I’ve been prescribed five different medications, gone through multiple month-long elimination diets, permanently cut dozens of foods from my diet, consulted four different doctors, tried naturopathic treatments, had barium swallows, upper endoscopies, and esophageal dilation — and had one serious reaction that landed me in hospital on IV.
I’m in my 20s. I’m still figuring it out. And I stubbornly believe something I’m eating is causing or worsening my EoE — which is exactly why I built BiteSense.
My allergy history
Growing up I never had severe allergies like anaphylactic peanut allergies. But I did carry an EpiPen for a few years after an unexplained allergic reaction outdoors. I was later professionally diagnosed with mild allergies to certain vegetables — beans, peas, apples — and I tend to react to the skins of vegetables like cucumbers and peppers. I also avoid nuts, and I’ve had seasonal allergies for as long as I can remember.
These all fall under atopic — or allergic — diseases. And EoE is part of that same umbrella. Looking back, my allergy history was telling a story I didn’t know how to read yet.
When symptoms first appeared
I didn’t keep notes back then, so the details are vague. But my mom remembers I had trouble eating certain foods, ate much slower than everyone else, and sometimes coughed food back up because I couldn’t swallow properly.
After speaking with our family doctor I was referred to a youth gastroenterologist. I was informally diagnosed with EoE — and because I was still young, they recommended avoiding an upper endoscopy at that time.
The treatment attempts
My GI doctor gave me a three-step plan: try an elimination diet first, then acid-reducing medications if that didn’t work, then a liquid steroid if nothing else helped.
Over the next few years I went through all three steps with no real success. Additional medications — mostly acid-reducing drugs — came and went. My doctor sent me for a barium swallow. I spent about a year working with a naturopathic doctor trying herbal tea treatments.
Still nothing changed. Eventually I aged out of the youth GI program and was referred to a specialist, where an upper endoscopy formally confirmed my EoE diagnosis.
When things got worse
Around age 20 my reactions started escalating. Instead of quick episodes, they could last hours. I often had to induce vomiting just to clear my throat. It felt like almost every week I was leaving dinner early to deal with another episode.
Meals stopped being something I looked forward to. They became something that filled me with anxiety — I started worrying before every bite whether I was about to have another reaction.
I couldn’t enjoy meals anymore. Even talking at the dinner table sometimes triggered reactions. EoE was starting to affect my social life, not just my diet.
The hospital incident
At 21 I had my first major food impaction. I had been off medication for about eight months and tried eating steak. A piece became stuck in my throat.
At first I assumed it was a normal reaction and tried to induce vomiting like usual. But this time nothing worked. I couldn’t eat, drink, or swallow saliva. I had to spit constantly. My breathing started to feel more difficult.
I tried to sleep it off. Sixteen hours later I went to the hospital.
They put me on IV, transferred me to gastroenterology, removed the impacted food, and dilated my esophagus. That experience shook both me and my family. It made us realize how serious EoE can actually become.
For months afterward, every bite of food made me nervous. I started avoiding social situations that involved meals. EoE wasn’t just a digestive condition anymore — it was reshaping how I lived.
The moment everything clicked
Three months after the hospital visit, I had another reaction. Oddly enough, it ended up being the most positive reaction I’ve ever had.
While leaning over the toilet trying to clear my throat again, I had a sudden realization.
I needed to build a tool. Something that could track what I was eating, what symptoms followed, what elimination diets worked — and connect the dots between all of it.
Doctors always ask what you ate, when symptoms started, and what changed. But it’s almost impossible to remember accurately. I wanted something that could log meals, symptoms, and elimination diets — and highlight the patterns I was missing.
So I started building it.
One year later — BiteSense is real
After about a year of planning, learning, coding, and testing — well over 1,000 hours — the app is live on the App Store.
It’s called BiteSense. The goal is simple: help people with food sensitivities track meals, symptoms, and elimination diets, and discover patterns between them. It also generates reports you can share with your doctor.
I built it for myself. But I quickly realized it could help anyone dealing with EoE, IBS, Celiac, or unexplained food reactions.
EoE is still something I deal with every day. I’m still trying to understand my triggers. But I’m hopeful — and one day I fully plan on eating another juicy steak with zero problems.
What I’ve been reading about EoE — and why it matters
One of the things that’s always frustrated me about EoE is how little most people — including many doctors — seem to understand about why it happens. It’s not just a digestive problem. It’s an immune problem. And once I started reading the science, a lot of things from my own history started making sense.
EoE is a Th2-driven immune disease
EoE is classified as a type 2 helper T cell (Th2) immune-mediated disease. In plain language: your immune system is overreacting to something — usually a food — and sending the wrong type of immune response to your esophagus.
This Th2 response triggers the release of cytokines — specifically IL-4, IL-5, and IL-13 — which are signalling proteins that recruit eosinophils (a type of white blood cell) to the esophageal lining. Those eosinophils cause the inflammation, the thickening, and eventually the scarring and narrowing that makes swallowing difficult or impossible.
An overactive immune response to food allergens that drives inflammation in the esophagus.
Cytokines released by Th2 cells that recruit eosinophils and cause esophageal inflammation.
White blood cells accumulate in the esophagus, causing swelling, scarring, and difficulty swallowing.
The atopic march — and why my allergy history matters
Here’s what connected a lot of dots for me. EoE shares its underlying immune mechanism with other atopic diseases — atopic dermatitis (eczema), food allergies, asthma, and allergic rhinitis. These conditions often appear in sequence across a person’s life, a pattern researchers call the atopic march.
Some researchers now suggest EoE is the fifth member of the atopic march — appearing after the others, driven by the same Th2-skewed immune system, just expressed in a different tissue: the esophagus instead of the skin or airways.
When I read that, my own history suddenly made more sense. The unexplained outdoor allergic reaction as a kid, the EpiPen, the vegetable skin reactions, the seasonal allergies — these weren’t random. They were my immune system signalling a pattern that eventually showed up as EoE.
Why tracking matters more than it seems
One of the most frustrating things about EoE is that reactions are often delayed. You don’t react immediately after eating a trigger food — it can take hours or even days for symptoms to appear. That delay makes it incredibly hard to identify what’s actually causing your reactions.
This is exactly the problem BiteSense is designed to solve. By logging meals and symptoms over time and looking for statistical patterns across the full history, it becomes possible to identify correlations that would be invisible to memory alone. The delay between cause and effect is what makes tracking so important — and what makes manual food diaries so inadequate.
Common questions about EoE
I’m planning to write more about what I’ve learned — the science, the patterns I’ve noticed in my own data, and my longer-term thoughts on EoE. I’ll share it on the BiteSense blog when it’s ready.
If you’re still guessing,
BiteSense can help.
I built it because I needed it. If you’re managing EoE, IBS, Celiac, or any unexplained food sensitivity — it was built for you too.
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