My name is Noi. I’m a mom to a wonderful 5-year-old boy and wife to my best friend in the whole world. I’m a video editor by trade (have been editing TV shows, commercials and music videos since 1992). I’m a compulsive graphic designer (I’m constantly creating things for print and web – much to the delight of friends and family and to the chagrin of my DH, who somehow puts up with my need to create things without getting paid- like this blog!!). My dream is to someday be a working screenwriter instead of a working editor (at any given time I’m working on three or four screenplays… but that’s a whole ‘nother blog).
Oh, and I’m newly gluten-free and casein-free.
I went gluten-free on December 3, 2009 because although it turns out that I don’t have Celiac, I’m very gluten intolerant. I was pretty sick for a long time (years of feeling tired and unwell culminated into many awful months of severe sickness). But doctor after doctor, expensive test after test, no one could figure out why. Around October ’09, things got WAY worse and I thought I had something very, very wrong with me. Perhaps terminally wrong. I went through every test known to western medicine: blood work, CAT Scans, MRIs, Endoscopies, Colonoscopies… You name it, I had the test. But they couldn’t really find anything wrong with me. Doctors called it all kinds of different things (IBS, stress, fibromyalgia, depression) and prescribed all kinds of medications to mask the growing list of symptoms. Doctors sure do like to give you prescriptions!
But it was a nurse practitioner who’d recently seen something on TV about Celiac Disease that put me on the road to Gluten Intolerance and, ultimately, to recovery. While her interest in food intolerance waned once my $800 Celiac genetic marker blood work came back negative, I finally took matters into my own hands and began an exclusionary diet the day after my Endoscopy. (I was told to keep up with the gluten FULL diet until the Endoscopy, which was difficult, but I’m glad I did: it showed severely blunted villi.)
Once an actual “disease” was ruled out, all my doctors (GI, urologist, primary care, allergy) told me that it wasn’t the food that was making me sick. The blood test was negative! So there’s nothing wrong with me. But, hello..! When I give it up for just 4 days I feel SOOO much better! No weakness and tiredness (well, no more than an active mom to a five year old would have!), no cold sweats, no GI distress (I could tell you some stories that would turn your stomach! Pun intended. :). The swelling of my hands, feet and face, that started six years ago when I was pregnant went down. I lost FIVE INCHES in my waist in two days. (And put them back on in an hour and a half when I ate a little piece of bread for a little test. I went from a new size 12 back up to my old usual 16 in just an HOUR and a HALF because I ate one bite of white bread!)
Who knew that just NOT doing something could make you well?! By just avoiding gluten (which, I was amazed to find out, is in, like, EVERYthing!), I’m feeling better than I have in years. Just by eating what my body wants and consciously avoiding what my body was rejecting with it’s allergies.
Now it’s been three months that I’ve been GF — which has been HARD enough! But I’d been noticing that now I’m having trouble whenever I have my mid-morning Chai Latte… So this week I decided to go back to my allergist and had him run a full panel of scratch tests on foods. And I found out I’m actually ALLERGIC to Casien (the protein in milk). Allergic to milk?! Yikes! Adding Casein/Dairy to my already daunting list of foods I must avoid is going to be very hard. (Especially since I LOVE CHEESE!! Boo hoo.) It’s very intimidating and more than a bit overwhelming. (I don’t know what I’d do without the wonderful, loving support of my DH! I hope that everyone reading this has just as wonderful of a support system as I have with my son and husband.)
So I figured I’d blog about my new journey to a healthier GFCF lifestyle. This way someone else may benefit from my experiences (and mistakes I’m sure I’m going to make along the way!).