Let’s start at the very beginning.. It’s a very good place to start!
Last modified on 2010-03-24 22:43:41 GMT. 0 comments. Top.
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 just generally 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 when I was pregnant went down for the first time in six years! I lost FIVE INCHES in my waist in two days just from the swelling of my GI system going down. (And get this: I put four and a half inches of those five back on in an hour and a half when I ate a little piece of bread for a little self test. I went from my 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!)
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.)
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.
So now I’m off on a new phase in my food lifestyle change: Being casein-free as well as gluten-free. Here’s to success! 