I'm Really Frustrated!

[drewsant]

I've been doing really well this last month, and staying away from gluten to the best of my knowlege. I've been eating garden salads, and gluten-free dressing, with a plain grilled chicken breast. I've been eating dark chocolate for snacks. I even checked my hand soap and shampoo, even though I thought it was going a little overboard with paranoia since I don't ingest the soap or shampoo, but they are both fine, and gluten-free, and I don't wear makeup. So I'm at a loss as to why I've had diarrhea in the last 3 days.

I had to leave work a 1/2 hour into my shift on Thursday. Made it through Friday-still had diarrhea, just not as bad. Then today, I was in the grocery store, and it just hit me again. I had to leave everything there, and just leave. I haven't even had any dairy, which never bothers me anyway, but I'm getting to the point where I'm getting paranoid about eating anything again, just like I did when I first started this diet.

The whole point to this post I guess is to ask--has any one gone on an elimination diet, where you only eat one food for like a week, then another food for a week, etc, to see if it makes you sick? Is this something I should try?

Or could it be because I started taking prenatal vitamins (gluten-free) about a week and a half ago? But I would think I would have gotten sick before now if it were the vitamins.

I'm just really frustrated and don't know what to do. I don't want to live on salad for the rest of my life. Maybe I should have further testing, maybe it isn't Celiac, but another food allergy.

[tarnalberry]

Yep, I've done an elimination diet. At a dozen foods (pork, rice, olive oil, rice, and eight others) for two weeks and then tried one of each of the common allergens every few days... Or at least, that was the plan. The mental/emotional effort of doing that diet did me in. It was far too restrictive and drove me crazy. But I did a variation to learn that I was casein intolerant.

It can be a valuable test to perform, but do plan out how you're going to go about doing it, and make sure to follow the basic rules of eliminating whole food families for at least two weeks before introducing, and not crossing something off the list (thinking it causes no problems) without having put it back in your diet - daily - for at least a week. Use Google to get a bunch of helpful sites to help you design an elimination diet for yourself if you decide to do one.

But I would also ask what other medical tests have been done to rule out a pathogenic or other organic cause?

[drewsant]

After about a month of having very severe diarrhea--I mean eating or drinking anything would set me off, and Immodium wouldn't help, I went to the Dr, and he had me tested for different things, because I had recently been on about 3 different antibiotics for a kidney infection until they found one tht worked. He thought maybe it caused another secondary infection in my intestinal tract. Testing ruled that out, and several other things. Every time I get tested, which is usually once a year, they don't find anything, which is why they have always just called it Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

That's why I was wondering if it may be another food I'm allergic or intolerant to, because it seems like an awful lot of people have other intolerances other than just gluten. My doctor wants me to go to an allergist to be tested for several different things, because even he mentioned I could have other allergies going on. I've just been doing really well though, except for the 2 times where I ate gluten and knew it, and got over those episodes within about 3 or 4 days.

[Guest BellyTimber]

Drewsant, I noticed you mentioned antibiotics, they don't affect everyone equally severely but you may be a person who needs probiotics.

Get a brand that has over 4 billion organisms per capsule. Your bowels will show you what is an adequate and not excessive dose.

Also some live yoghurts have a better dose in them than others - in the UK Rachels and Yeo Valley were reputed to be the strongest when I last read about them some years ago, I don't know which brands you get where you live. If live yoghurt has sugar or sweetener in, that will tend to negate the probiotic element in it.

Also I found that the migraines that I have had since at least 17 years ago when I had a serious infectious illness and which are possibly largely triggered by stress, have probably been causing lots of my upsets because a symptom of migraine is often a digestive shutdown.

Also don't forget to drink water like I've been doing!

HTH

[drewsant]

Drewsant, I noticed you mentioned antibiotics, they don't affect everyone equally severely but you may be a person who needs probiotics.

Get a brand that has over 4 billion organisms per capsule.  Your bowels will show you what is an adequate and not excessive dose.

Also some live yoghurts have a better dose in them than others - in the UK Rachels and Yeo Valley were reputed to be the strongest when I last read about them some years ago, I don't know which brands you get where you live.  If live yoghurt has sugar or sweetener in, that will tend to negate the probiotic element in it.

Also I found that the migraines that I have had since at least 17 years ago when I had a serious infectious illness and which are possibly largely triggered by stress,  have probably been causing lots of my upsets because a symptom of migraine is often a digestive shutdown.

Also don't forget to drink water like I've been doing!

HTH

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Thanks for the suggestion. At this point, I don't think I can eat dairy without it making me worse, so don't know if yogurt would help. I've tried it before, religiously, and it never made any difference. Once I get over the diarrhea, I'm fine with dairy.

I drink tons of water, because I'm high risk for getting kidney infections due to my disability, so already got that covered!

It's funny, I've only had migraines since I started the gluten-free diet. The Dr. thought it was probably due to the drastic change in diet so quickly.

[bluefin]

well

i have not been on a diet so far

but i have heard a lot about atkins diet

search on google and you will find a lot on atkins diet

thanks

[drewsant]

Don't think the Atkins Diet would help my situation, but thanks for the suggestion.

[PrincessLEah]

maybe you should try allergy testing. I have tons of stuff that make me sick f I eat too much of it.