How is your diet working for you these days? Do you feel like you have it figured out, don't get glutened anymore, or are you still struggling? Any other issues that you've discovered since you started searching for answers, or is gluten the main problem you have to contend with? Does it feel like things are going in the right direction, at least, or not so much?
And...guess I'll start it off.
I'm feeling pretty good, overall. My weight is fairly stable now and I am very close to a nutritionally complete diet, finally, woo hoo! I still have to be extremely careful to source my food, but so far, it's keeping me healthy.
My few food allergies are still present, but easy to avoid at this point, now that I know where they are used as ingredients.
My super-sensitivity is still kicking around, but I'm happy to say that the serious reactions are nearly a thing of the past. The first year gluten-free, they were monthly if not more often. This week, however, it will have been a year since I had a very serious gluten reaction! Low level ones still happen occasionally, but no serious, scary ones, and that makes me SO happy!
The sulfite sensitivity I discovered a few months back is confirmed as confirmed can be, although as mine involves naturally high sulfur foods and sulfates as well. This is frustrating in terms of figuring out why a reaction is happening, because it's quite similar to a gluten reaction to low levels of gluten (lots of neurological stuff).
It's also fairly common to have substances that are sulfited used in the same place as substances that are gluten derived/ cc'd, too. So figuring out whether a reaction is to gluten cc, to sulfites, or to potentially both is a real pain in the petutie. Slowly learning more and more, though.
Re: avoiding gluten, I've said before that I could never say for sure that all my reactions were to gluten, that I might find out someday that I'm avoiding something else when I'm avoiding the most minute traces of gluten.
Turns out, sometimes that 'something else' is sulfites and sulfur, like avoiding sulfur-containing soaps that are being used on organic greens as pest control aids. I kind of wish that it was sulfites only and NOT super-sensitivity to gluten, but so far, that doesn't tracked when I investigate it.
However, this whole thing has just cemented how I felt when I was first diagnosed with Celiac Disease after 20 years: we as patients need to trust ourselves.
If we do something and it makes us feel better or worse, we can investigate it, research it, analyze it, listen to opinions on it and whatever else gets us more information. But in the end, I truly believe that we need to trust ourselves and what our bodies are telling us more than doctors' opinions that we are 'healthy' when we feel sick, more than what we should be able to do or how we should react or even what seems reasonable to other people.
We're all different and we're all searching for answers and sometimes, we can find the solutions before we know exactly why those solutions even work. They may seem really weird to other people who aren't in the same place, but that doesn't mean they aren't the right solution for us, personally.
Or to quote one of those great Murphy's War Laws: if it's stupid but it works, it isn't stupid.
I hope that where ever anyone is at, in their diet, it is at least slowly getting better. Hope you are managing to react less frequently, feel better, and find more safe and tasty food all the time!
