Dizzy And Never Full

[Ms. Isley]

One of the reasons why I found out was because I was always becoming dizzy and tired extremely easily and we found out I had low blood sugar and was very anemic. As soon as I started the diet this changed and I was feeling healthy again! A few weeks later I started to once again to feel tired and hungry all the time. My guess is I started feeling better right away because I was starting to soak up all this nutrition but now my body is missing gluten? Maybe?

I was wondering if having more buckwheat and flax seed may help this... I have plenty of dairy, rice (white and brown), meat, veggies, etc in my diet.

Any thoughts?

[Ms. Isley]

One of the reasons why I found out was because I was always becoming dizzy and tired extremely easily and we found out I had low blood sugar and was very anemic. As soon as I started the diet this changed and I was feeling healthy again! A few weeks later I started to once again to feel tired and hungry all the time. My guess is I started feeling better right away because I was starting to soak up all this nutrition but now my body is missing gluten? Maybe?

I was wondering if having more buckwheat and flax seed may help this... I have plenty of dairy, rice (white and brown), meat, veggies, etc in my diet.

Any thoughts?

Also, please keep in mind I have been tested many times, my blood sugar and iron are now perfect and all my other vitamins are good as well...

[kwylee]

Perhaps you are reacting to something else besides gluten. Ingesting casein in dairy makes me dizzy. Some say that response could go away in time, but for now, I avoid all of it and I've felt great now for months.

[tarnalberry]

Your blood sugar changes all the time - what you have noted are classic hypoglycemic symptoms, and you don't have to have fasting blood sugar levels below 70 for it to be hypoglycemia - it depends on what your body needs. Have you varied the composition of your meals (proportions of fat/protein/carbs/fiber) to see if any particular ratio helps with the symptoms?

[missy'smom]

You could still be experiencing problematic blood sugar changes that would not show up on the some of the tests that they do at the doctor's office. I would advise you to test regulary at home with a meter, esp. when you experience symptoms.

[T.H.]

I don't know that this would be relevant to your case, but I'll share in case it is!

I've only been gluten free about a year, but after a rough patch of it, I was trying to get on the 'normal' gluten free diet. However, the last few months I discovered that I am more sensitive to gluten than average. Here's one of the weird things, though. When I eliminated a certain level of gluten in my my diet (this is already a <20ppm of gluten, gluten FREE diet, mind you), I noticed a pretty quick increase in my health. And then over time I'd start to feel a little sick here and there, not doing so well, etc...

And I eliminated even more gluten, and again, I felt better. And then I'd start to feel a little sick again, and eliminated even more gluten.

My daughter has now gone through the same thing, where we have had to eliminate more and more gluten from her diet. But when we both finally hit a point where we don't eat enough gluten to react, then we both stopped getting sick anymore at all.

Now, just to clarify, when I say eliminating gluten, this is when both my daughter and I were already ON the gluten free diet. We were always very careful to eat <20ppm of gluten. My diet was restricted even further, actually, for a long while, but that's another story. But we called all these gluten-free companies and made sure that we only bought foods that were <10ppm of gluten for a while (you have to really hunt to find any grains that hit below this level, including rice). My daughter improved. Then she's been having trouble again, and we went to foods from companies with products that were <5ppm of gluten, and that seems to have done the trick, as long as she doesn't eat very much from them.

I honestly have no idea why the getting better, then reacting and having to eliminate more gluten, happens. My theory, totally and utterly made up with nothing other than a bit of thought and no facts whatsoever, is, well.... I kind of see it in my head like light. When there's a lot of light, like from the sun, we can't see anything else. When the sun goes down and the moon's out, all of a sudden we can notice lots of little stars of light that we didn't notice before. And when the moon is gone, we notice even MORE little stars of light.

So I imagine that our body's reaction to gluten might be similar. When we have a flood of gluten, our body just reacts all over the place. It doesn't even have to look for it, it can just shoot out something from the immune system and BLAM, there's some gluten. When the flood slows to a trickle, maybe the body doesn't notice it as much, or it takes a while to adjust to focusing on the smaller amounts, but eventually, perhaps, it does. And then when that trickle gets even smaller, perhaps the same thing happens again.

Again, this is ENTIRELY theory, and not researched or documented theory, at that. But...eh, couldn't hurt to cut out a bit more gluten and see if that helped, eh? And I'll admit, part of my so-called theory felt reinforced lately when I saw an article mentioning that many gluten-free diets seemed to be less effective for celiacs, or stop working, after a while. I put that sucker in my category of 'things that make me go hmmmm.'

Oh, the grains? That would be the thing you want to avoid (CC issues) rather than add if you are trying to get more gluten free. Also, most celiacs are lactose intolerant at first, because the villi damage is the same area of the villi that produces lactase to digest the lactose. So dairy can slow your healing, I understand.

[sandsurfgirl]

You are still such a newbie to the diet that your body is still healing. Withdrawals can last for months. Use the search function on this forum to read old threads about people's experience with withdrawals.

It could also be dehydration. My dizzy spells were debilitating and i went to a celiac specialist. He said people with celiac and other autoimmune disorders are more prone to dehydration and electrolyte imbalance. So I started drinking a small bottle of Gatorade in the morning and made sure I was hydrated all day long. As long as I did that I could function. If I didn't the dizzy spells came back again.

I tried natural electrolytes replacements and they made me much worse. Gatorade is gluten free, has no high fructose corn syrup and was life changing for me. Literally.

So... try to hydrate. Get your electrolytes and just be patient and give it time.

[Ms. Isley]

Thanks everyone for the types! I'll be sure to try them :-)

To answer a few questions:

I have tried the whole "many small meals" vs "A few big meals" and found small meals do nothing for me and with the bigger meals I have to have 3 or 4 a day, sometimes with snacks in between... I do try to mix up what I eat but it's hard on a budget and with little time :-( I think the thing I have the least of is sugar and the most of are starches (rice, corn, potato) and Protein

As for the blood sugar, I've been tested different ways and one of them includes an at home meter (My mom is diabetic so we have a few) Every time it came out normal. And I was also tested for hypoglycemia and my thyroid was tested as well.

[tarnalberry]

The reason we're not paying much attention to your tests is that the reference numbers for blood sugar don't mean a lot if you have reactive hypoglycemia. Your NUMBERS are not terribly important, rather how fast they change. If you're eating a lot of starches, your blood sugar rises quickly, and if you have reactive hypoglycemia, it falls quickly. It's not the number of the high or low that's the problem in this case, but the speed of the swing. I measure normal on a meter every time you test me (I have one too), but I'm reactive hypoglycemic, and you can only see it if I test every half hour before/after a meal for four or five hours. But I can tell you by the symptoms far more easily.

The "small" and "big" meal advice is bubkis, imho. It's about balance. For me, I need something around 25% protein, 25% fat, 50% carbs. If I eat well, I can deviate from that once in a while, but if I don't still near it the majority of the time, it gets bad.

[heliotrope42]

The exact same thing happened to me. My celiac disease was activated in 2002, after a stressful event. After 6 months or so (before I had figured out that I had celiac disease) I started to get symptoms of hypoglycemia. I blamed it on my body not being able to properly absorb nutrients.

After I figured out that I was a celiac and went on a gluten-free diet my abdominal symptoms disappeared but the reactive hypoglycemia continued. I'm no expert, but I tend to agree with the person here who thinks you still may have reactive hypoglycemia.

My condition is pretty severe...I wake up at about 5 in the morning hot and sweaty with kind of a panicky, suffocating feeling. I keep an apple by my bed, and take a few bites which allows me to sleep for another hour.

I've found that it is necessary to be fairly strict in avoiding sugar and starchy foods. I eat very little, if any fruit. Definitely no orange juice, for instance. The bedstand apples are the exception, but I've found that if I eat half an apple in the middle of the day it throws me off.

No potatos, definitely no bananas, no beets. Be careful, even, with carrots...they are very sweet. Basically nothing sweet or starchy. Beans are acceptable in moderation. Brown rice and blue corn chips for some reason seem to be OK for me as a source of carbs.

I made some mistakes in trying to cope with the condition. First I tried drinking unsweetened soy milk as a go-to food for when my blood sugar got low. I also tried regular milk. What I've found is that soy milk and cow milk are actually very sugary foods that made my condition worse. I ended up drinking way too much and gaining a lot of weight in my midsection.

Intuitively, I would recommend experiment with cutting out dairy altogether. I love cheese, but it's energy doesn't seem to last for me and I wonder if I'd be better off without it.

It's also very important, I think, to eliminate caffeine.

So that leaves meat, not-sweet veggies like broccoli and kale, and moderate amounts of brown rice as my perfect food combination.

It is important to note that this diet takes some time to help. In the info I read it mentioned six months, but I noticed improvement after one or two months.

Wow, I'm so glad I came to this forum! I hope someone can be helped by my experience.