A Lot Of Questions

[swcom120]

Im new to this forum and I must say I was so happy that I found it. I was thinking maybe this would be a good place to start with some questions.

Before I start out with whats happening to me, lets start out with a brief history.

Im a hispanic male, 33 years old. I was raised in a household where consuming gluten was an every day thing. Ive always been a big boy usually hovering at about 275 lbs. Never really watched what I ate, live a pretty hectic lifestyle so eating out was the norm.

To make a long story short my father had some health issues about 2 months ago. He had to start a new diet and eat healthier. Of course one starts thinking of a lifestyle change themselves after seeing a family member go through something like that. I decided to follow his lead and we started eating a lot of the same things. Our diet consisted of a lot of whole grains, nuts, fruits and salads etc. About a month into our diet I noticed I was becoming ill. I initially started having some constipation issues. Then one day driving home on the highway I got a tingling sensation on the left side of my body from my head to my toes. I must say I freaked out!

I ended up in the ER that night with a pain in my chest and a massive headache. They did an EKG and chest X rays, you name it. They found nothing. Went home figuring it was something small that turned big when I started to panic.

A few days later I started having some really bad dizzy spells and nausea along with the stomach problems I was having. I couldnt understand what was happening so I looked up a few things on the internet and thought maybe I was dehydrated. So I started taking in a lot of liquids and I felt a little better.

I couple of days after that I went into a herb store and explained my stomach issues to them. The man at the store thought I had Colitis and told me to take some fiber along with some aloe pills to clean out my stomach. Well the only thing that happened was that I got worse. Stomach issues became so bad that I started to bleed, so I ended up in the ER once again. They checked me and told me that I had a cut, probably from the constipation and that I had pretty muched cleaned out my stomach with all the laxatives etc. They still had no answer for my headaches and dizziness.

I started to get depressed and started to go through a lot of anxiety because I didnt know what was wrong with me. I was in bed with what felt like the biggest hangover I have ever felt. I wasnt eating because I wasnt hungry and I only felt like I was going to get sick if I ate anything. Worst thing I have ever gone through.

So, I took the advice of my mother and went to see an Alternative Medicine Doctor that practices Chinese medicine. He hooks me up to the voltage regulator looking thing and tells me its my gallbladder and liver that are not functioning well. He goes through a variety of nutrients on this machine thingy and when he puts wheat on it the needle starts going crazy. So he asks me if I had been eating a lot of wheat. BINGO!!!

My daily meals went something like this after my father got sick.

Some bran flakes in the morning.

Sandwiches, salads or whatever fast food came to mind for lunch. Always leaning to the healthier side of the menu of course.

Then for dinner we were doing a lot of whole grain pastas and home made pizzas and stuff like that. Also thinking we were doing better than before.

This was every day for about a month. There was no way I was going to disagree with him after I knew that I had taken up my wheat intake by a lot. He gave me some Nature Sunshine Gall Bladder pills along with some Natures Sunshine Food Enzymes. He told me I would start feeling better in a couple of days as long as I laid off the Gluten. So I decided to stop all Gluten since last friday and have felt considerably better. Still have an occasional headache but my stomach feels a lot better and I have not had and BM issues.

So naturally with all of this I am left with a lot of questions. If I was Gluten intolerant then why did it only become a problem until now? I never really had any problems other than what I thought were normal Gas and Stomach issues in the past. I knew I was allergic to Oats and never ate cereals like Cherrios and stuff like that but I never felt as sick as I did this past month. I feel tons better now but im not sure if I should even get tested with all that I have read on this forum. Is GI something that you can develop through time or should I have seen something a long time ago? Are these symptoms that I felt even related to GI and Celiac disease? I dont mind cutting out Gluten where its obvious. I can avoid it and go through life without much of a hassle, but should I even have to? I dont want to get sick again but if I was that sensitive why didnt I get sick before? I dont really know what to do other than finish the pills the doc gave me and stop the Gluten for now.

[Takala]

Gluten intolerance takes years to slowly attack the inside of the body until there is enough damage that it makes you uncomfortable. This damage is caused by malnutrition and the antibodies attacking your own flesh. Many don't become gluten intolerant or celiac until the are adults. It can happen at any time. Most people take over a decade to be diagnosed once they start having problems and trying to get a doctor to see it. Women are especially vulnerable to being told it's All In Your Head by docs who tell them it's "just Fibro" or "just IBS" and to "just eat more fiber."

(I had neurological symptoms that were mimicing MS, plus spinal stenosis in my c- spine, but even I was told that it was "just Fibro" by a few idiots who wanted to see a very skinny person wasting away and couldn't recognize any other symptoms. I've mostly recovered from the numbness after 8 years off gluten, but the spinal damage is a permanent feature. I got a lot worse after falling for the diet propaganda that said vegetarian is for everybody. I got a lot better after ditching that. I'm not politically correct anymore, but at least I'm not dying. Yet. )

If you go to wikipedia and look up the HLA DQ2 and HLA DQ8 genes, there are charts that show some populations have a high percentage of carriers of the genes that predispose one to being able to become celiac. My guess is that as the research progresses on Gluten Intolerance, the same thing is going to happen. Being a carrier is not a guarantee you will get the disease, just means that you're in the group that can. Maybe 1% of the general population is celiac and there is now speculation and preliminary research saying that anywhere from an additional 4 to 5% or even more is gluten intolerant.

There is a definite relationship between diabetes and celiac. Many Type 1 diabetics have the celiac genes, and vice versa. Many cases of Type 2 adult onset diabetics are probably also getting it because of weight gain and insulin resistance/metabolic syndrome, a slow thyroid function which is being caused by auto immunity problems directly caused by undiagnosed celiac disease or gluten intolerance.

Re your failure with the new wheat- heavy, "healthy" diet:

The conventional treatment in American "diet" medicine for heart disease is to lecture people on the evils of meat, ignore that whole problem with the genes, metabolic syndrome and not being able to handle large amounts of grain carbs, and tell them to go vegan or nearly vegetarian, eat high carbohydrate, very low fat, high amounts of of a plant based, grain based diet. Of course, this is an absolute disaster for some of us, but the skinny people who have the genes for it, and who are living off of granola don't care because they've read some book by Michael Pollin called "The Omnivore's Dilemma," and they think they're doing the Planet A Favor. The GMO plant breeding industry such as Monsanto has exploited this for all it is worth, and so far not only put former Monsanto employees in the FDA and at the U.S. Dept of Agriculture, but they've fooled Congress with lobbyists into changing the American School lunch program to include more grains and less potatoes and beans/peas under the false assumption that Grain is the Best Carbohydrate and Children Should Always Eat More of It

[swcom120]

Thank you Takala, thats a lot to try to take in.

I guess this whole thing is more confusing than anything. Im going to stick with my Gluten free diet for a while and see how I feel. With what I have gone through in the past few months I just want to get healthy. I might not know exactly what is wrong with me but I do know that I'm about 10 days into a Gluten free diet and I feel better by the day. I will stick with it until I feel like I am completely back to normal. I still have a little bit of the headaches and some body aches. My stomach has felt a lot better but I think it still has a way to go until I am back to normal.

I think maybe in the future I will try to reintroduce certain things and see what type of a reaction I get. But right now I dont care to.

Thank you for the information and I look forward to reading any more advice that I might find on these forums.