Tips Regarding Food

[dlcummings]

First a short backstory that I think might be useful. I've battled with variants of digestive issues since I quite smoking back in 2002. Things seemed to gradually get worse for me and at one point I even dealt with severe anxiety--including a bad fight with some SSRIs. At any rate, I insisted to my doctors that something in my diet was to blame but got nowhere. I was given various heartburn related medications--all which seemed to work for a while, but then stop. Fast forward a number of years, I had been dealing with some heartburn for like three days in a row. I started inventorying what I ate and determined that I had consumed more cheese than normal. Though skeptical, I opted to just try it out and removed dairy from my diet. I now explain it as heartburn went away practically overnight. I still get it from time to time, but it's really not very often and rarely as severe.

Then, after some research I determined I should stop consuming refined sugars. It seemed that I would have hypoglycemic-like reactions, even though blood sugar tests come back fine. After this, I noticed that my skin--particularly my face and back--became much, much clearer and I wasn't having issues with acne.

I still contend with various other issues like gas, bloating, fatigue and other things. A co-worker has a daughter with celiac and suggested that I strongly pursue this as a potential suspect still--even though my blood work came back negative for celiac (and a whole host of other food tests). Occasionally, I wake up after plenty of sleep groggy as hell. Sometimes I notice that my hands seem to be "cramped" or "tired" as if I held them clenched through the night. While not lately, I used to notice that I would have pain in my lower back, as if my kidneys hurt when I would rollerblade. There's more, but that's what sticks out right now.

Lately, I was preoccupied with work and a budding romance (which became quite stressful), so I really didn't put a lot of effort into my diet. Even worse, I am a terrible person when it comes to sticking to a regiment (though I've done pretty good with dairy), so my efforts into going gluten free as a test didn't seem to go anywhere. At any rate, last weekend I had a very enjoyable time with various friends. This followed a stressful and romantically disastrous weekend, so my focus was purely on enjoying myself. As such, I at a lot of things I don't normally eat, or would at least restrict myself to a minimal amount. Sunday night, I noticed that I had broke out in a rash which was light, spotty and sporadically all over. It was on my upper and lower back, upper arms, stomach and legs. Kind of freaked me out a bit and brought me back to the notion of celiac.

Here's where I'm having a very difficult time. It seems like certain foods may be worse than others--or at least impose a stronger reaction. For example, I thoroughly enjoy pot stickers and purchase them from the local asian store. Saturday night, I had like 12 of them--which I hadn't eaten in like months. Follow that with lunch Sunday where I had about 3 more at a local restaurant. There were other things I ate, but this is now the second time I seemed to have traced some poor reaction to this particular food.

So my question is this: If you lay out a variety of different foods that have gluten in them, is it possible that some may invoke a worse reaction than others? If so, how might one go about determining this?

Right now, I'm working with very vague notions and I don't do a terribly good job at keeping a food log.

Lastly, based on what I've written, should I even still consider celiac as a potential?

Thanks

[Laennie]

I'm new to this whole thing myself so don't have a lot of good answers for you. From what I can tell a lot of the things that you mention seem like they could be caused by celiac. Even your issue with dairy could be because of Celiac. I just received a negative blood test last week. On the doctor's recommendation I started gluten free the day after the blood test. I am a little over two weeks into gluten free, after a few days of noticeable problems after eating dairy I've cut most of it out of my diet as well. I started with almond milk but then bought some soy milk too. I plan to go back to almond milk once I finish my soy because a lot of people on here report issues with soy as well. I feel soooo much better. I have no more crazy GI problems. I still have minor indigestion & heartburn sometimes (usually when eating spicy stuff instead of from just anything like it used to be).

I've seen that a lot of celiacs have other food intolerances. Dairy would definetly be a problem at least for a while. In my case I am hoping that once I am gluten free several months I can try dairy again & see how it goes. One recommendation I heard before is to start with whole foods & then slowly reintroduce things to see if you get any reactions. I am not a cooking type person & I love convenient & easy. Nothing about any of this is really convenient or easy but I'm tired of feeling like crap. I've had a lot of help from my mom & really do love chicken so it hasn't been too hard. Put some seasonings or create a safe marinade for your chicken, then grill it or something & have it with white rice. I've been eating that often as well as taco salad, corn tacos, corn enchiladas. As a tip, one good marinade we made was crushed pineapple, ginger root, garlic, basil & La Choy soysauce (gluten free).

I think you really have to have the motivation to feel better to do this. I have been increasingly more & more miserable since I had my son 16 months ago. My symptoms continued to get more & more severe. I fall often & in March I basically snapped my whole foot off right above my ankle. After 6 months of no walking I finally started being able to walk some. I finally started driving about 2 months ago & for a little over a month I have been walking with no aid though I still can't walk too far or stay on my feet too long. This was my 3rd & most severe break over the last 15yrs or so & I'm just tired of it. Going gluten free has made such an amazing difference for me. My boss commented yesterday that I look better than I have in almost 2yrs. I am soo happy that I have had a hard time not exploding with joy & bursting into tears.

If you think there is a chance this might be your problem. Even when the tests come back negative, for your own sake, you really should try to commit to the diet for a few weeks or months. They say that the GI symptoms are usually the first thing you notice an improvement with. Though I am still not 100% in that area, I have noticed a dramatic difference & I've only been gluten free going on 18 days. In the end it all comes down to you, do you want to feel better? Do you want an answer? Then what are you willing to do to get it.

Good luck my friend. I hope you do it & it works for you like it has for me.

[Skylark]

Wheat gluten is pretty much in all flour so if you're gluten sensitive the pot stickers would be as bad as a similar amount of bread or pasta. My reactions to rye and barley are milder, but they are different grains.

You may be reacting to other things you eat with the wheat. Yeast is one thing to look at, since there isn't yeast in pot stickers, but there is yeast in breads. It sounds like you need to start keeping a food diary with ingredient lists that might help you narrow things down.