Relapse Or Normal?

[troykm]

Hey guys

I'm at the end of my third week gluten free. the first week and a half was grea t and I had good symptom relief. But in the last few days I started becoming very lethargic and tired. I'm also starting to become irritable again. Is this a normal part of recovery?

I'm also becoming quite nauseas in the bowel area. Not like I'm going to vomit but just general sick feeling down there.

Did any of you experience this at the start?

Thanks

[veronika]

Perhaps other food intolerances are making themselves known? Once you take out the primary offender (gluten) sometimes secondary intolerances are more noticeable, at least that is what happened to me. Keeping a food journal (if you are not doing so already) would be helpful in connecting those feelings of nausea with what you are eating. The lethargy/tiredness/nausea may also be symptoms of withdrawal, which I never believed could happen with gluten until I experienced it myself. It's hard to say what is going on, but I thought I could give you a couple of ideas anyway .

[eatmeat4good]

Another thing I'd like to mention is that once the gluten is out of your system, many people seem to become more sensitive to the traces of gluten. It's as if your body is so relieved that you stopped bombarding it with massive amounts of gluten that it rewards you with great healing and symptom relief and then it wants you to pay attention to cross contamination and traces of gluten so you can get rid of those too. That is just my way of describing it. But what you are describing happens to be very common. Miraculous healing followed by feeling lousy followed by eliminating all traces of gluten because now your body is much more aware of the gluten invasion. That is what happened to me and that is how we find out what cross contamination is and where it really is. Examine all your products again. Sounds like cross contamination could be there. If you are eating dairy it might be necessary to give it up for a while. It could also be other secondary intolerances like Soy, Nightshades, Corn, Salicylates....etc. This is the point at which I decided they were right and I really should have replaced the toaster, collander, wooden spoons, cutting board, and gotten myself all new condiments. It is a learning process the first few months you try to be gluten free. If you have already done all of those things, it may be time to look for where you could be getting CC.

It takes a while to heal and it could be that you will feel lousy off and on for a few more weeks as your body heals and it may not be secondary intolerances at all. Only you can figure it out with time, trial and error. I hope it gets better soon.

[nvsmom]

I'm about 3 weeks in too and I had a lot of fatigue that just started to lift a few days ago. I was joking with my hubby that re-opening my eyes after blinking felt like a huge effort.

And the irritability? My children are lucky they made it through my withdrawl alive. LOL