Help! Nausea At Night!

[amylouise]

hellooooo,

i'm an 18 yr old girl from england and i've had problems with gulten for a year and a half...it started with serious acid reflux and then my oesophagus started to swell up when i ate certain foods causing me to sick up undigested food (yuck!) so i had an endoscopy and stuff to check for ulcers and the doctors couldnt find anything so decided to put me on steroids (which i was not having!) and coz i knew that it was a problem with food because i was fine - unless i ate, i decided to sort the problem out myself, i started trying out wheat free but that didnt seem to work so i tried gluten and within weeks the changes we're incredible - i had so much more energy and i was so much more healthier and the acid and swelling completely stopped! i've been gluten free for a year now...and i havent been that strict on my diet :s and recently when i do eat something with gluten in the side effects are really bad. my syptoms include abdominal pains, extreme nausea (at night when i lie on my side?!), constipation, wind, indegestion and i get red rashes with white spots on that really itch. i also get extremely itchy shins? so bad that i've scratched them till they bleed...i don't know if any of these are related to the gluten free diet but i was just wondering about the nausea at night time, it comes with stomach cramps where my belly button is...small intestine area? and i know that gluten intolerances can affect the absorbtion of food in the small intestines? anyway i get these pains in my stomach when i lie on my side and i then feel really really sick and faint - but i'm never sick. and the feeling subsides if i get up or lie on my back - but the feeling quickly returns if i go back onto my side - its really getting to me because i'm finding it difficult to sleep. basically..the point of this post is do you think i should just stick to being gluten free and maybe occasionally letting go and eating a burger once in a while or do you think i should get checked out by a doctor incase it could be coeliac disease?

any answers would be appreciated!

thanks! xxxxxx

[Kaycee]

Amylouise. I'm like you and do get that nauseous feeling at night as well. I find that it is usually because I had accidentally eaten gluten. I'm usually okay the next day, but that nauseous feeling is not a good one and only seems to happen at night. Sometimes I wake up feeling that my head is about a second behind and when I move I feel quite seasick.

To be tested for coeliac, you would have to go back to eating gluten, and I think it would be for quite a length of time. As you have been more or less gluten free for a couple of years, blood tests would probably come back negative. as they are designed to pick up your re-actions to eating gluten, and if you are not eating gluten, the antibodies will not show up. The fact that your endoscopy didn't show up anything is not surprising. Checking for ulcers I guess they didn't go further down into your small intestines.

Not an easy choice to make, but you might just want to stay where you are on a gluten free diet without the diagnosis.

As for eating a burger once in a while, if it makes you feel as sick as you describe, why would you want to eat one?

Cathy

[amylouise]

Thank you so much! your advice has really helped! eating gluten makes me feel so crap in so many ways so i don't think i could cope going back to eating gluten! i have so many of the symptoms i think i might just accept it and be completely 100% gluten free! no more occasional burgers! i eat them because i go so long without eating one and i forget how it affects me...i always feel like an idiot after because i know i shouldnt have eaten it. Thank you so much!! take care!! xxx