Me, Doubting?!

[tarnalberry]

With dairy showing up as a problem in my elimination diet, my mother-in-law asked something along the lines of "So are you still thinking you have to avoid gluten?". Argh! The seed of doubt! Oh no!

You might not think that this would cause me the "mental anguish" (I'm being facetious) that it is, but my major test for gluten-intolerance was only ever a dietary challenge. My blood tests were inconclusive. But my dietary challenge was a tablespoon of vital wheat gluten in a cup of yogurt. Oh, the dairy contamination! Of course, I had been eating yogurt all along back then, so I don't _think_ that was a bit problem.

So... I could go back on gluten for months and repeat the blood test, but I have my doubts that I'd get very firm results after only three months on gluten. Or I could redo my dietary challenge with something a little more obviously just wheat. Which means I currently have a small bag of bulgar (mmm... pure wheat) sitting in my pantry (well wrapped in plastic! ) waiting for me to work up the courage, and the decent timing, to test it. I go on travel again next week, so it may well have to be today. But on a holiday?! (My symptoms are never _that bad_, if you know what I mean, so it's not the end of the world, but still...)

I'm torn. I probably will just do the dietary challenge, but... Argh.

[ponita]

Tiffany,

Isn't it amazing that things can not be clear cut! Should you ... shouldn't you? What types of sym. did you have prior to your challenge? How quickly do your sym. return if you have anything on your list of foods to avoid? Good luck!

Melissa

[tarnalberry]

Well, I've been eating gluten-free for a year now, so I really haven't had much in the way of gluten any time recently - and no gluten that I can pin my finger on in a year. ;-) My symptoms aren't particularly classic, but not that far off classic either, but I never was very sick, so it really isn't that easy to quantify. To the best of my knowledge, gluten gets me within half an hour, and dairy is almost exactly two hours. But I haven't done a clear test of the gluten, apparently, which is what causes the doubting.

[coin-op]

you don't have to do any of that. Fast for 3 days (only water), then drink a litre of milk. You find out quickly enough You must be simple and straightforward with the tests - otherwise your complex diet will keep tricking you.

-cass

[tarnalberry]

Fasting for three days is NOT an option. I have hypoglycemic tendencies and fasting for one day puts me down. Additionally, fasting for three days - unless you use a laxative at the beginning - will not move the material already in your intestines out of your system so that you can rule out a response to what is still in your body.

If my body could handle a fast like that, I definitely would have considered it. Well... I guess I did consider it, but I know my own limitations, and it just wasn't a viable route for me. For those who can do it, you're right, it does simplify the experiment.

As noted, I was able to determine that milk was a problem for me anyway, so it worked out in the end.

[burdee]

Tiffany: It's very likely you are intolerant to gluten AND dairy AND any other major allergens. Try eliminating gluten AND dairy for a while to see how you feel. I wouldn't advise substituting soy for dairy products unless you are sure soy doesn't bother you.

Also ignore comments from doubting MILs who aren't concerned with how food affects THEIR bodies. Everybody has sensitivities to SOME foods, even if they only say they don't LIKE a certain foods. Their 'dislike' is usually based on their discomfort after eating those foods. I'm not sure how often your MIL cooks for you, but some hostesses are irritated by having to consider their guests' food intolerances/allergies when planning their menus. So the food choices you must make to stay healthy seem like a big bother to them. Listen to YOUR body cues and ignore those 'seeds of doubt'.

BURDEE

[tarnalberry]

lol, burdee, no worries about my MIL - she's not "doubting" or "irritated", she was just asking an innocent question. :-) (I have an unusually fabulous set of inlaws. It's MY father we all hate. ;-) )

As I mentioned in the posts on the elimination diet, I did determine that I was sensitive to casein, and have eliminated from my diet since the time of that test. I also tested soy while I was doing the test (of course on a separate day, after a day of being on only very safe foods, given two days before trying something different), and I did not have a reaction to it. The thing here is that - for me - my symptoms are not strong enough for a simple "remove it for a few days" to tell me anything - I HAVE to follow it with a challenge to be able to note the difference. And I did. I checked the other major allergens as well, through this process, and didn't turn up anything else that seemed to bother me. (What I didn't do was _specifically_ test the minor allergens, like watermelon, or strawberries, though I added them back in slowly enough that I would have been able to narrow down the possibilities if a reaction occured fairly well.)

So I've been Gluten-free Casein-free for... what, a month now. Something like that. It hasn't made a huge difference, but I didn't have a huge number of symptoms to start with. I know a lot of people on this board got VERY sick from their intolerances, but I was never that bad. (I'm not saying that's a reason to not look into it, just saying that it makes the process of looking into it a bit trickier to do. ;-) )

We cook for each other whenever we're around for the holidays. In fact, they were great about doing a gluten-free thanksgiving dinner, and I had only been on the diet for a two months. My FIL had a heart attack a while back, so they follow the Ornish diet, and do all their cooking from scratch and read ingredient labels up the wazoo as well. I learned a lot of my healthy cooking tips from her, actually. And they loved what we put together for a gluten-free thanksgiving dinner. And we'll do it again this year. Actually, besides the frozen yogurt we had for dessert, I think the whole meal was CF too. And SF, and PF, and EF. Homecooking is pretty basic stuff. ;-)

[burdee]

OOOOPPPPSSS!! Sorry I missed your 'drift' there. Similar doubts (about dairy as well as gluten) led me to also do an elimination test and later Enterolab tests. However, my symptoms (excruciating cramping pain plus the bloating and gas) are pretty obvious. But even after eliminating gluten/casein/soy, I still seem 'sensitive' to acidic foods, overly spicy dishes and a few other ingredients. I hope some healing time will lessen that sensitivity, since I've only been at this almost 5 months. Maybe after 6 months I'll start worrying about nagging symptoms ...

BURDEE

[tarnalberry]

no problem. "in-laws" can often bring up either very positive, or very negative reactions in a lot of people, and I think we often assume that mother-in-laws in particular, can be mean old bats. ;-) goodness knows there are enough jokes about them that way! ;-) (they are funny jokes, too. ;-) )

yeah, nagging symptoms can be annoying, and the thing I think a lot of us need to be careful about is NOT assuming that EVERYTHING is caused by food. there are some GI symptoms that we can get that really are physiological, and not related to the food we've ingested. (well, it could be related to the fact we ate, but not _what_ we ate.) of course, as we well know, it can also be the food. :-/ it's such a line to walk... :-) (I usually err on the side of assuming it's a specific food. easier that way...)

I remember something being mentioned about acidity on the webmd message boards, but can't quite remember what...

I hope you get relief soon!

[jendenise]

Well, I guess you could try gluten-free and Dairy/Lactose free for a month or two and see what happens? I don't think it can do anymore harm. If you want to try, you can go to amys.com and find foods that are both gluten-free and Dairy free, and they actually taste good. Maybe you have celiac disease with a sensitivity to Dairy? Have you seen a nutritionist? Allergy specialist? I'm kinda new so I don't know the background on everyone very well, so sorry if I'm being repetitive. I hope you get well soon though, I understand how painful and frustrating it can be.

[tarnalberry]

:-) As I stated previously, I've been Gluten-free Casein-free since doing the elimination diet - so for at least a month now. My symptoms have never been very severe, so merely removing something from my diet, without doing a challenge afterwards, has not been enough to determine the issues, but the elimination diet I did worked well for telling me what I was sensitive to.

(Neither is an allergy - both are intolerances. I've had a couple full allergy tests, and am under the care of an allergist for my asthma, but both the gluten and dairy are delayed-reaction IgG events, and didn't come up in allergy testing.)