Please Help!

[festeris]

I was diagnosed 4 years ago with Arthritis and Ulcerative Colitis and am on meds for both. I'm not in remission but ok with the meds, till the strangest thing happened last month.

In mid January I got a strain of that Norovirus that's been going around. After expelling everything in my system in the first 48 hours, I spent the next week or so very weak and eating very little. Although I was miserable I noticed two things:

1) No Colitis

2) No Arthritis

I felt fantastic!

At first I thought this was some kind of miracle and my cells mutated somehow and maybe I was healed? A friend of mine thought the obvious, maybe some type of food allergy. Duh!

Have any of you had my issues? Has anyone had this kind of awakening?

I haven't been tested for food allergies...yet!

Any comments and advice would be helpful...thanks.

[Ursa Major]

Hi, and welcome to this board.

Well, I had a similar experience. I've had fibromyalgia with awful joint and muscle pain from the time I was about five years old. I also had intermittent diarrhea and constipation all my life, as well as being as thin as a stick as a kid, unable to gain weight and being shorter than my younger brother.

Then, during my first pregnancy I gained a lot of weight, and that started my unexplained weight gain until the fall of 2005.

In May of 2005 I tried a herbal colon cleanse, which must have triggered full-blown celiac disease. I had chronic watery diarrhea and extreme weakness for six months. At one point I was really unable to eat anything for two weeks. And guess what, all my body aches went away, and I stopped taking the codeine I had been on 24 hours a day for five years!

Once I started eating again, the pain came back. Then finally in October a light bulb came on in my head, after I was doubled over with awful stomach pain half an hour after eating a slice of German rye bread (which has wheat in it as well).

When I stopped eating anything with gluten that day, the diarrhea stopped, too, as well as my body aches going away again.

In the meantime I have found that I am intolerant to much more than just gluten.

Some doctors believe that there is a definite connection between ulcerative colitis and gluten intolerance. Arthritis can be a symptom as well.

You may have found the cause of your problems. Go and get tested, but if you don't care about an official diagnosis (your choice), you can just try the gluten-free diet and see what happens.

Just be aware that after you go on the gluten-free diet, any tests done for celiac disease will be worthless and come back as false negatives, even if you have celiac disease. If you choose to do the official testing (blood test and endoscopy with biopsies), you need to keep eating gluten.

I hope you have found your answer and will be better soon!

[ravenwoodglass]

I was diagnosed 4 years ago with Arthritis and Ulcerative Colitis and am on meds for both. I'm not in remission but ok with the meds, till the strangest thing happened last month.

In mid January I got a strain of that Norovirus that's been going around. After expelling everything in my system in the first 48 hours, I spent the next week or so very weak and eating very little. Although I was miserable I noticed two things:

1) No Colitis

2) No Arthritis

I felt fantastic!

At first I thought this was some kind of miracle and my cells mutated somehow and maybe I was healed? A friend of mine thought the obvious, maybe some type of food allergy. Duh!

Have any of you had my issues? Has anyone had this kind of awakening?

I haven't been tested for food allergies...yet!

Any comments and advice would be helpful...thanks.

I asked my GI doctor after my first colonoscopy if I could take Golightly once a week because I noticed the same thing. He was still clueless and it was another 5 years before I was diagnosed. I would have gone gluten-free just to get rid of the arthritis pain, I couldn't even type by the time I was diagnosed and walking was only possible with canes. The canes became a sculpture within 6 months of my finally being diagnosed.

If you go to be tested for food allergies be aware that gluten will not show up on allergy testing but if the allergist will also guide you through an elimination diet it may be helpful.......or you could just go gluten-free yourself for a couple of months and get your answer without the money or having celiac on your permanent insurance record (sometimes not a good thing).

[festeris]

I asked my GI doctor after my first colonoscopy if I could take Golightly once a week because I noticed the same thing. He was still clueless and it was another 5 years before I was diagnosed. I would have gone gluten-free just to get rid of the arthritis pain, I couldn't even type by the time I was diagnosed and walking was only possible with canes. The canes became a sculpture within 6 months of my finally being diagnosed.

If you go to be tested for food allergies be aware that gluten will not show up on allergy testing but if the allergist will also guide you through an elimination diet it may be helpful.......or you could just go gluten-free yourself for a couple of months and get your answer without the money or having celiac on your permanent insurance record (sometimes not a good thing).

[festeris]

Thanks for the input. Please don't misunderstand me, I'm not really looking for a Doctor's validation as much as I am looking for people with similar issues, to see if I'm on the right track.

I went Gluten free on Monday and accidently ate a few items with wheat in them, I didn't die but I didn't feel good at all. Oops my Colitis is kicking in now.

Also is it just wheat gluten and wheat products. I spoke to someone who said he had other issues like red meat & refined sugars.

And one last thing. Whole foods is great but rice bread? Yuk...what do you people use?

Thanks, Nick

[Nantzie]

I had something like that happen.

I had to have my appendix out several years ago. Afterward you can't eat for a couple of days, so you just have an IV. I felt FANTASTIC. I remember thinking, Wow, it would be really cool to just have an IV and not have to eat. I had lots of energy too. At first I thought that my appendix had been making me feel so sick all the time. But once I started eating again, I started feeling worse again.

It wasn't until I found out that I had gluten intolerance that it all made sense.

For bread I use Pamela's Wheat Free Bread Mix. You have to bake it, but it's SOOOO goooood.

Nancy

[festeris]

Has anyone perfected a commercial brand yet? I hate baking!