Any Celiacs Who Decided To Be Completely Grain-Free?

[mushroom]

Do you have any indications that you have candida overgrowth? Naturopaths seem to be big on that right now

[jenngolightly]

Do you have any indications that you have candida overgrowth? Naturopaths seem to be big on that right now

I'm glad you said that. I was starting to wonder if I had candida because I'm seeing it pop up all over the forum.

[Jestgar]

There is a lab test for yeast overgrowth. I personally happen to be very skeptical of this "untestable" level of Candida growth that some holistic practitioners seem to diagnose. You know, the kind that isn't curable with anti-fungals. You need to purchase their supplements and follow a rigorous diet for months/years to cure it....

[chasbari]

There is a lab test for yeast overgrowth. I personally happen to be very skeptical of this "untestable" level of Candida growth that some holistic practitioners seem to diagnose. You know, the kind that isn't curable with anti-fungals. You need to purchase their supplements and follow a rigorous diet for months/years to cure it....

Now this is where I totally agree with your skepticism. When I started looking into some supposed helpful supplements for this I was astonished to read things like "although no studies have been done to show this, it is suspected..." Yikes! Seem suspect to me. I am also going radically in the direction of if it can't be managed by proper diet and rest I am not interested. Where the heck did our ancestors buy all the stuff that kept them healthy anyway?

[jstwnttbhealthy]

hi cass, i am an optimist and believe in the body fixing itself. that might be ignorant on my part, but anything to avoid meds.

yes i did have them tested in march 2010 (b 12 = 198 and vitamin d = 21) have been taking supplements for it and got retestet just a few days ago. still waiting for results. will keep you posted to see if the supplementation has helped.

ok, here is my update on the tests: b 12 went up to 865 and vitamin d to 35.9

[sb2178]

There is a lab test for yeast overgrowth. I personally happen to be very skeptical of this "untestable" level of Candida growth that some holistic practitioners seem to diagnose. You know, the kind that isn't curable with anti-fungals. You need to purchase their supplements and follow a rigorous diet for months/years to cure it....

Yes, indeed. However, I do believe that many people feel better on them because typically many of the restricted things are not so great for you. For example sugar, or caffiene, or refined grains, etc. Most of those lead to the high followed by the crash.

[T.H.]

Just a quick reply to the original question (oh, a few months late, eek.).

Usually, I'm completely grain free. Every once in a while I try a grain, and so far, it has bombed out every time.

Honestly, I am not certain if this is because the grains themselves are bad, or if the contamination of the grains is what is getting me.

Some grains I get gluten symptoms from (neurological symptoms), some I get some of my allergy responses to (like headaches, which I get with soy) along with the gluten reaction. I'm so crazy sensitive to gluten that it feels impossible to tell if the grains or the cc is the issue, so I'm doing some home testing, growing my own grains, and I'm going to test those out once I've harvested them this year.

Ha, take that, modern food industry!

I have become "allergic" to almost all foods - you name it, I can't eat it.

This SO resonated. This was me in a nutshell. I had less than 10 foods I could eat for nearly a year, and everything else I tried made me sick as a dog, no matter what it was. It was so freaking crazy!! The allergist couldn't figure it out, though, because I didn't test highly allergic to the foods (so perhaps not the same - i wasn't sure how you reacted?), but I still felt miserable.

For myself, while I do have a few food allergies, what really ended up being an issue was an extremely high level of sensitivity to gluten.

So, for example, strawberries from the market, which were grown with wheat or oat straw covering them (which they usually are) made me sick. Strawberries grown in my own garden? No problem at all.

Fruits with wax coatings (including organic ones)? Sick as a dog, with gluten symptoms. Fruits from farmers that didn't wash their produce with soap (that had gluten) and didn't use sprays or coatings (that often have grain derived ingredients) - fine.

Meat that I bought from areas that made sausages or other wheat containing varieties in the same facility? SO bad. Meat I purchased from facilities that didn't use wheat in the same facility? I was fine. This one, I even had a fine-then-death moment, where I was getting sicker and sicker on the food that had been perfectly safe before. Finally started calling around, and found out that my meat company had started making wheat containing sausage in the same facility. I dropped the meat, and started improving.

I have had gluten reactions to my salt (I have only one brand I have tried that I didn't react to), my oils (again, so far, just one brand), honey and other sweeteners, produce with the wrong coatings or compost or coverings used. It's been a real change of lifestyle to figure it out.

So right now, we have a farmer we go to who is safe for produce, a cattle ranch with 100% grass fed beef that works for us (trialing a salmon company, too), an oil, a salt, an iodine supplement and...that's it. We are trying a honey and a sorghum that seemed like they might be safe, but while they seemed okay at first, it seems like there may be a build up of symptoms lately, so grain and sweetener free all over again, sigh.

If you are really gluten sensitive, it might explain why you are reacting to everything, or it seems like it. At least, if your reactions are similar to your gluten reaction. If they are quite different, obviously it has nothing to do with them.

Oh! One thing that made a difference for me in figuring out a few issues for us, though, was tracking down produce from farms/companies that use different techniques. For example, many sweet potatoes are gassed to reduce sprouting. If they are, I get SO sick. If they aren't, I'm fine. We have that same issue with a couple of common pesticides on certain types or fruit/veggies.

So if one brand is okay, and another brand isn't, that's usually a good sign that it's contamination of some sort rather than the food itself, if that makes sense?

good luck - I hope your health is improving after these few months!