Gluten Free Diet Has Had Unexpected Side Effects

[Gatomon]

I'm a 25 year old white female. I am really worried about this problem now.

 

I have had diarrhea nearly all the time since sometime in my (late?) teens (I can't remember when exactly it started). I am 25 now. I have had trouble really getting doctors to listen to me regarding it (so never had any tests or anything), and I had originally suspect lactose as a cause as whenever I ate it, I'd have explosive diarrhea within minutes. But that didn't solve the problem.

 

More recently I wondered if gluten was the cause. For about the last 2 months I've tried to maintain a low gluten diet as the doctor said there is little difference between no gluten and low gluten and that no gluten is really difficult to achieve. It seemed to help a bit (i.e.I've had more energy and bizarely a lot less period pain (not something I was expecting at all)), but I still had the diarrhea. My tolerance to lactose seemed to be up (i.e. no immediate effect) so I started eating more of that.

 

So I decided to try do a full gluten avoidance diet. I started that about a week ago. I now have the opposite problem; no diarrhea at all, but very little comes out. As the week has gone on, I have felt more and more blocked up. The weight gain from it is noticable.

 

I don't think my fibre intake is any less than a few weeks; I'd cut out pasta/bread/ other high gluten and high fibre foods weeks ago. It seems that my intenstines are just spectacularly lazy and just don't want to move at all without me nagging at them a lot! What could cause this? Is it possible that because they were so used to just diarrhea to get rid of waste, that now that it isn't getting triggered for some reason they just don't want to do their "normal" job? (I only rarely had "normal" output previously)

 

still not entirely sure if I am gluten intolerant. But it is weird that avoiding gluten leads to the opposite problem. From what I've read of celiac disease though, it seems unlikely that it is the problem?

[bartfull]

First of all, that doctor was 100% wrong! The difference between low gluten and no gluten is this: If you have celiac disease and eat low gluten, you might as well eat full gluten for all the good it will do you. Even on a low gluten diet, you are damaging your body tremendously.

 

Second of all, if you do have celiac, you are probably having trouble because of the dairy. The part of our body that digests dairy is the same part that is damaged by gluten. If it is damaged it can't digest dairy and that could well be why you are having trouble.

 

Also, you need to watch out for cross-contamination. Go to the coping section here and read the Newbie 101 thread. Click on all the links provided in that thread too. It will teach you a LOT.

 

And finally, you may want to go back on gluten and get tested. If you stay gluten-free and decide later to get tested you will have to do a gluten challenge and that is HARD. You will most likely find that your reactions to gluten are more severe than they were before.

 

And for the constipation? Try eating nuts. Planter's nuts in the blue cans are safe.  I eat their peanuts and cashews every day.

 

Now, go read that Newbie 101 thread and then come back with any questions you might have.

[nvsmom]

Ditto Bartfull. If you think you will ever want to be tested for celiac disease it is best to get it out of the way now.  A gluten challenge is around 1-2 slices of bread per day for 2-3 months - that's incredibly hard to go through if you have started feeling better. KWIM?

 

Nuts are really good to get you going. I find coconut will do it too. Coffee too.... I suffered from the reverse of your problem, I was constipated for a few decades and then when I went gluten-free (and had my thyroid treated) I eventually switched to the runs for a few months. It has evened out now (yeah!) but the extremes were annoying for a while.

 

Oh! Also be aware that many prepackaged gluten-free foods, like breads and muffins, will not have the same fibre or vitamins that items made with fortified wheat flour will have.  If you stay gluten-free and use gluten-free substitute foods, you may need extra fibre and vitamins.

 

Best wishes and welcome to the board.