Spunky's Blog

Gluten?!

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Could it really be? I've long since written it off. Especially as I see the previous commonly-missed condition become all the rage now: GI problems = gluten problem. Yet such a rare condition, all be it an extreme one, unlike traditional allergies/intolerances.

It's caught me off guard in my latest attempt to solve the mess.

Once again willing to do whatever it takes for a new kind of life--and more desperate than ever to figure it out.

And once again left confused, lost, even with the most thorough possible techniques to find what I can eat, to establish a baseline and oh-so-carefully build to find "my menu" -types and amounts-that address any food issues or how I eat as works with whatever condition may be going on.

As I find a more safe baseline than ever-the individualized elimination starting with a diet consistenting solely of a couple absolutely safe foods, my baseline offers initial hope. Massive flareup improving within 24 hours, maintaining somewhat stable.

And yet it stops there. Normal function does not follow, giving me grounds to test.

As I tire of the diet without the results, I loosen up on my careful testing plan...

Once again adding to the confusion is an initial "help" from adding more food. Obvious perhaps, except that it's in foods I thought I knew were problamatic. massive amounts of veggies? Even milk?

What a mess: from my "happy foods" being anti-normal-problem foods [coffee? Lactaid? chick peas?] to the mixed messages about what can help/hurt. And no means of being absolutely safe to try standard testing!

With the relief and help from the massive veggies, no real difference with soy or lactose, the laxity continues. Try a new approach...pick up trends. Just maybe, if I've noticed key problems in the past, I can sort through some basics with more careful logging, as I meanwhile establish consistent and adequate intake.

I keep tally's on questionable foods, hoping to pick up trends: is it fructose? IBS related? certain problem foods?

And then something odd happens. My steady days continue to improve. Even when I mess up the basics-don't get adequate intake, drink 2 pots of coffee.

While the symptoms don't evaporate entirely, I find myself feeling more and more free of the constant GI agony. I brace myself to pay the price when I think I'm eating my worst, to find I can handle things like never before.

I've even purposefully start eating lactose and soy again, even though I've tied them directly to problems in the past, because more research has lead me to believe that these problems are a symptom of the root problem, not an intolerance to the foods themselves.

And oddly enough, for the most part they don't effect me. I have some of my best moments of GI peace following straight up milk and/or soy nuts.

Even with my favorite but most problamatic fruit--the apple.

The only thing I keep completely free of is gluten:

I want to resist the urge to just say "nevermind" and dive into all the breads and cereals I gravitate towards because I'm tired of wondering, and I know this one needs time.

I know that it's a matter of my intestines heaing if gluten is the issue, and if it IS at the core of all this, I need to finally find out.

It's been brought up far to much, since repeatedly, for years now, people I've consulted who know abotu GI matter have brought it up. Said my symptoms really describe a gluten intolerance vs. X, Y, Z [whatever condition I'm exploring at the time].

From the first time I confided in a professor about my frustration with GI matters hijaking my genuine attempts to eat big, bulk up during my undergraduate education--to this past year, as I continue to repeat the process of "anything and everything, maximal nourishment" only to wind up with a new low physically and a mess of a life, not free at all.

Now, eating perhaps half as much, I find myself with the kind of results I had always gone for with the "big eating" quests. Not only can I digest better than ever before, but I feel like I had no idea I could! The energy, the strength, the physical healing.

I feel like all the areas of my life that have been hijaxed due to malnourishment have made a dramatic turnaround, the kind I could only dream of...except it's catching me by surprise because I feel like I'm a good 1000 calories away from the kind of intake I need for that!

It really does seem to be coming down to the message I've gotten over and over: I have to be able to digest in order to get anything out of the best nourishment possible.

-just as enjoyment of "whatever I feel like" couldn't matter less when it creates the life chained to the bathroom, surviving in coping mode.

Deep down, I knew that.

But I really, really didn't think it was gluten that was the core of it all...

I was in awe today, at the nonstop energy at my workout, at feeling so great physically and appetite despite a [for me] low calorie, limited options, diet.

And how my digestion continued to improve as I continued to lose the motivation to apply myself to any sort of makeup guidelines for what I ate.

And then I realized I was on day 12 gluten free...

...followed by another freaky realization: the one day in the last few weeks I had a true flareup was not after a veggie binge or overdoing coffee or drinking milk.

It followed my eating an accidental flour ingredient in homemade soup--something I didn't realize unti long after the flareup had set in [couldn't have mentally triggered it].

To think I was just wondering what the point was of holding off gluten anymore, while everything else was "down the drain."

And I have to reconsider my idea that gluten is most likely not the issue...

Could it be? the core of it all:

-why mixed messages other good/bad, why elimination helps but adding helps

[b/c CAN digest fruit/veg...and those can help...once digestive system working

problem foods when system destroyed by gluten]

-why anti-yeast [also gluten free] helped, why easy cereal harder than veggie omelette

-why I continue to improve to a point of at least "normal digestion problems", to a point where, even if other problem foods are involved, I can identify them in an overall better functioning digestion.

*And though I have a ways to go before i'd truly consider my GI system "working"--if it can be this different, and on the improvement, after 12 days gluten free while eating more and more helter skelter with everything else: could this really be the "time to heal" so often referred to? And if so...what will it be like after twice this long? A month? The time really required to heal?

Not to mention that if this trend continues I'll be much more rigorous about all the little things--my toothpaste, cross contamination in a shared kitchen, etc.

Most interesting is the physical change-so unexpected, so backwards:

How I've been feeling better and better physically [healing, strength, endurance, energy]-and gaining weight-despite eating less and working out more last week or so.

absorping = my key to nourishing and results from that I've always wanted!?

As opposed to the escalating GI disaster and crappy coping mode I feel in when I'm just fixated on "maximally nourishing."

When I can digest....wow.

I won't truly believe unless and until it continues like this.

But the way it caught me off guard from every end: the change in digestion and physical results just when I thought it'd all be getting worse--right when the one thing I've done is continue gluten free, meanwhile losing other variables to consider--I just have to wonder.

yes, it opens a ray of new hope.

And just a little bit of terror--what? I might have to live gluten free?

BUT--it'd be worth it if it got me a new kind of life!