Small Stools, A Symptom? Help

[badhairdude 0]

i've done some research and small stools (pebbles) are a form of constipation which i didnt know about. anyway. im on a gluten free diet for about 2 weeks now. originally i was on it (for a month-ish?), but cheated on thanksgiving. and is it me or does it take longer for the body to heal than the first time..

anyway, now i have small stools , they look insignificant haha. i know they aren't good for me. the thing thats hard for me is that i dont get major symptoms. fatigue, badbreath, and small stools, and some stomaches are some of the symptoms. no diarrhea, throwing up, dying feeling or anything.

so i'm not exactly sure if what i eat is hurting me. i do eat a lot of nut butter to gain weight, but im guessing that backs me up too? i primarily eat fruits veggies and meat, nut butter with the occasional wheat/gluten free waffle. im also on a no dairy very very few grain . but it also just be that i need time? i get really confused

now i know its common for celiacs to be intolerant to lactose or rice in the beginning but as time goes on, can slowly introduce it.

help!

[Jean'sBrainonGluten 0]

Hi,

I am a little confused by your post but since you mention that you feel confused I'm going to take that as a symptom and do a symptom list from what I see in your post

confusion

fatigue

mild constipation

stomachache

weight loss

bad breath

?hair trouble? - your name

The symptoms of celiac and gluten intolerance are really varied so you 'could' have one of those.

The gluten free diet is challenging - to stay on it, to be assertive in social and restaurant situations. Most people don't have the motivation to stick with it unless they feel really bad. I can't tell from your post if you don't feel that bad or do feel really bad, but come from a family where no one complains about health problems. You're the only one who can figure that out.

I have noticed that going gluten free did mean that I reacted unexpectedly strongly to being glutened. My guess is that when you have chronic exposure your body is making all kinds of stress adjustments to keep you functioning so you aren't aware of the full force of your reaction until you aren't exposed regularly and the stress adjustments are shut down. That bad reaction after being gluten free for awhile probably means you have some kind of sensitivity.

My guess is that you don't have enough overt symptoms to be able to convince an average doctor to do lab work. This is an advantage because you can just try the gluten free diet for yourself but a disadvantage long term if the diagnosis would help motivate you to stay on the diet after you start to feel better. You're the best judge of that.

So you can do a gluten free diet to see if you start to feel better. I would advise you to be careful about cross contamination and the way grain derivatives are often used for flavor enhancers and texturizers.

If you think you have multiple allergies you might try an elimination diet like that at http://www.drcranton.com/elimination_diet.htm I actually found that I was able to discern sensitivities after two weeks on the elimination portion, followed by reintroducing large quantities of suspected allergens. The doctor I was seeing then advised me to drink baking soda and water if I started to have a reaction to a food. Scientifically I cant' think why this would work, and it certainly doesn't allow me to eat gluten without suffering consequences, but it did seem to help when I was doing the challenge.

If you have grass allergies you might look into going completely grain free or following the Specific Carbohydrate diet.

At any rate it is true that for many people after they've been gluten free for several months they are less sensitive to other nongluten foods and can reintroduce dairy and so on.

For the constipation you might try drinking ginger tea every day. If you have more trouble with this there are other measures I can suggest but yours sounds like a relatively mild case and ginger tea and maybe magnesium supplements should be enough to help with that.

Whatever you decide to do I urge you to keep checking in iwth this forum and other celiac information since more is being learned all the time.

Good Luck!

[Fiddle-Faddle 18]

Small stools can also be a sign of dehydration: http://www.nature.com/ejcn/journal/v57/n2s...l/1601907a.html