Healing From Gluten Intolerance

[jjchenoa]

I recently went gluten free after a cascade of symptoms in the last year. Wheat has never really made my stomach feel great but it got worse recently. I went to see an ayurvedic doctor for another reason and mentioned my GI to her. It is her opinion (and that of her ayurvedic teacher, a prominent dr from India) that our guts suffer assault from shots and antibiotics and various other chemicals and substances that we eat that aren't really supposed to be eaten, and our natural flora disappears. When this happens, dairy and gluten, she says, are the first to cause problems to us because they are the most difficult to digest. She says that through her therapies and an excellent probiotic (she says most are dead and useless) that I will most likely eat gluten again without problem. My son has a dairy allergy and she is working with him toward the same end. He also has pretty severe oak allergies and has had no symptoms yet this fall, when he's usually tortured constantly by them.

This theory made a lot of sense to me, given the fact that food allergies seem to be on the rise in so many people I know alone. And given the fact that mine flared up in the most unhealthy, stressful time in my life when I know my body just can't handle one more thing. After being on her treatments for a while I tried eating gluten. It did not bother my stomach or ears (which is my sign) but I found that I still get "low" and out of it when I eat it so it is bothering me on some level. I've only been under her care for a month.

I just thought I'd mention her opinion here for some to whom it may ring true, that perhaps their guts are not operating optimally and so gluten is just too much for them at this time. She says that just going off the offending food and not healing the gut simply leads to more and more intolerances down the road so she has us stop the food for now until we can eat it again. She tells me that something like 98% of the people who come to her need a strong probiotic to rebalance their systems and I think it's only a month or two thing. Obviously I don't know what else is involved in her treatments to that end, I'm probably simplifying it but just the "unhealthy gut--food intolerance" thing makes sense to me.

(By the way, she said if I have celiac, she would not be able to turn that around. But I'm sure she'd work toward building health in the gut regardless.)