skore

Hi there! I have a hard time with all alcohol now too, the next morning I feel like someone filled my veins with lead. I also feel the effects immediately, where before I had to have one or more drinks before I felt buzzed. Randomly I have also found that I have a harder time with red wine than white, it will often make me feel completely sick to my stomach. I still drink once in a while, I'm too stubborn to give it up, I just make sure that I have nothing to do the next day. As you are still in the early stages of healing I would reccommend going lite (maybe one small glass of wine - 1/2 full - instead of a couple glasses) so you can really see how you react to it, how much is too much, just right, etc. And maybe switch to white for a bit. Also, I would drink match, ie: MINIMUM of same amount of water as alcoholic drinks - better if you drink even more water. Also good if you drink at least one big glass of water before you think you will have a drink, and especially when you get home. Oftentimes you can be even a little dehydrated and it makes all the difference to how hard the alcohol hits you and how bad you feel afterward. I would also recommend taking something like an Emergen-C or a multi vitamin either before or after your night out, it will give you a good boost of vitimins (especially B's) that your body needs to replenish after the alcohol. I'm not trying to advocate drinking here, I have just found that these things generally make a big difference in how I feel after I've had a drink. Good luck!

Hi everyone! I'm new, and have already found this forum to be a huge help in soo many ways, but I am so overwhelmed. I have so many fragmented questions I'm not sure where to start but here goes - what tests do I have done? I KNOW I have a wheat problem, so do I even bother to get tested for the gluten intolerance? I also have a whole host of other issues, and i want to know what is going on with me darn it (!) so what else do I have done? These are some of what I can think of to test for, but what tests do I ask for? And what other tests might be good to have done? Food: soy, corn, legumes, dairy, eggs, all grains, lectins, general allergy panel (skin prick). How do you find out if you are allergic to green beans? citrus? what about food intolerances? can you test for those. I tend to go for weeks before presenting problems to a food (3 mos before I had a noticable reaction to spelt bread!), so the elimination diet can be a little difficult for me. Also, is there a way to test for intollerances vs. allergies? Body: thyroid (which ones?), adrenal fatigue, osteoperosis, anemia, cholesterol - what else? I really want to know where I stand - I have had too many years of ambiguity, and I just want to get a really good idea of where I am, and what I have to work with and against. Also, out of curiosity, does anyone else here use muscle testing to monitor allergies/sensitivities? If so what has been your experience with it's reliability? Thanks ahead of time for all your help. S.

Ok, I haven't done this in a while because I got so tired of reading through my list to doctors,etc. But, I think maybe I need a little reminder about why I am here...So here goes: I have been depressed since I can remember - litterally having the conscious knowledge that I WAS depressed when I was around 5. Throughout childhood I would often miss school because I felt bad and my stomach hurt. I was always getting rashes. And yeast infections - can you imagine having a yeast infection when you are 5! I had migranes. I have always had essential tremor. I would get "mysterious illnesses" that the doctors could never diagnose, and I would get things like chicken pox and scarlett fever that presented with only a tiny rash on my arms. I would have chronic bouts of strep throat and bronchitis - one time it became pneumonia but all i had was a cough. My first year of college I got this thing where every time I ate, as soon as I ate I the stomach and intestinal problems would start. After every meal I would end up on the floor of my very public dorm bathroom sick to my stomach with D and cramping to the point that I would be curled in a ball shaking uncontrolably. After every damn meal!!!! When I went to the dr's about it their response was "We see this a lot in young women. It will go away eventually" I kid you not, and I got that response for subsequent visits for other things as well. Aaarrr - it makes me angry just to think about it. That summer I stayed in Isla Vista - at UCSB, a notorious party college - and proceeded to do just that - 5-6 nights a week, what can I say - I come from good russian stock. Oh, I was also vegetarian and eating mostly wheat and soy at this point, along with the beer and hard alcohol....well, you can guess the pain I caused myself, I just thought that soy made you that gassy That October I was diagnosed with Mono - severe- immediately I knew who I got it from, I guy I had been dating in june/july. I had mono for 4 months before it presented enough symptoms for me to know something was actually wrong - i thought I was tired from all the partying!!! 4 months!!! Ugh. The Mono continued full force for another 2, resulting in 6 months of active mono, and 2 years worth of chronic tonsilitis and throat infections and the consant doses of antibiotics that they treated me with that subsequently stripped my intestines of any good bacteria. (I still have my tonsils because I refused to let the doctors remove them - they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me, and at the time my tonsils were the only thing that was telling me something was not right. Somewhere in my mind I didn't want to erase that gauge of health.) Anyhow, THAT right there was my BIG trigger. But it gets grosser, IV is a beach town, and beach means wet and often moldy. The apt. I lived in the next year had a toxic mold infestation. My little beaten up immune system did not have the defenses to keep the mold at bay and it infected my body, as did the yeast I was already sensitive to and could no longer fend off either. Over the next two years it went like this: chronic cold and flu like state, the chronic fatigue, recurrent throat infections, horrible stomach/intestinal problems that went from baaaad gas to me popping 4 pepto pills with every meal just so my meals would stay in my body for a couple of extra hours. I became more depressed, developed ADD, 'brain fog', reading disabilities, horrible anxiety issues, OCD, panic attacks that lasted for hours, agoraphobia, asthma, horrible painful itchiness that moved from area to area on my body, random constant rashes. I NEVER had allergies my whole life and suddenly I became allergic to everything, and what was worse was that my allergies rotated, one week it was this, next week it was something else. Except the Eucalyptus trees, which I became permanently allergic too, and which blanket UCSB's campus. Grr... Oh, let's not forget the still chronic 'yeast' infections which in hindsight I now know were actually MOLD infections - my gyno at the time even said "I don't understand, I see some sort of spore, it must be a very rare resistant tropical strain of yeast", No not yeast - mold! in my nibly bits!!! I developed this random bursitis on my ankle for NO reason, which I had to have wrapped and which caused excruciating pain. That magically disappeared one day after a year or so - thank God. But then I began to get the achy joints, which progressed into full on arthritis - it was so bad I would collapse int bed after work or school and pass out till the next morning. Then I developed these "12 hr. bugs" that I would get every few weeks. First I would get a headache, then my body would get very tender (especially over my kidneys...) then the shakes would start, uncontrollable. Then the D/V. Then suddenly I would loose my vision, my muscles would go limp, and I would collapse. The worst of those happened on a street corner near my house in the ghetto in the middle of the night. I was clinging to a lamp post praying to God I wouldn't lose consciousness because if I did I knew for sure I wouldn't be in the same spot when I came to. Luckily I didn't and I managed to crawl back to my house. I was so lucky. I don't want to forget the horrible problems I had with my period. I had HORRIBLE pain and PMS. At 14/15 I was on prescription pain medication for the cramping which lasted for a week (my period was generally 9-12 days). Eventually my periods stopped and i went through an "early menopause" (though I did reverse that), which was saddly a welcome respite from the pain. When they returned I was popping 8-12 aleve a day for a week just to CUT the pain (have you read what aleve can do to your body- no good). It eventually got so bad my body would literally go into shock with uncontrollable shaking, C/D/V, nausea. It would just flatten me. I felt like I was carrying a watermelon in my belly, it actually hurt to walk or sit. One day i had sex and it hurt so much my body went inot schock and I was sick for two days. Needless to say my sex life and sex drive dried up - no fun if it causes excruciating pain. I don't want to forget this because several times I asked if it could be endometriosis that was causing so much pain, and every time I was told no "you just have an imature uterus, it will resolve itself". Finally I found a wonderful gyno who said, "why don't we take a look?" and did a sonogram right there. Lo and behold, i had two huge endometrial cysts on my ovaries. I just had surgery in sept. to remove them. It was such a relief to know I wasn't crazy, and that there was a reason for so much pain. This is important because there is a HUGE link between endometriosis (which falls under the auto-immune category) and WHEAT allergies and things like leaky gut. I have noticed that several people have mentioned symptoms like this on this board, and really want people to know they should get it checked out. But I digress. When I went home after college things got worse. I gained weight. My chronic fatigue became debilitating. I had uncontrollable rage problems, memory and vocabulary problems, my depression worsened to the point that I no longer wanted to live, I checked out. I knew my body was giving out, and I was just waiting for it to finally happen. I was 22. It still makes me cry to think of it. By divine intervention, that week my Mom begged me to see one last person, a chiropracter with specialties in nutrition and neuro-something or other. That man saved my life. Sadly, after 6 mos of great recovery, I went through some big life changes, and while eating grain lite, never really stuck to my grain free diet. Just recently I recalled coming across something called celiac years ago and decided to look into it. I'm 28 now and kicking myself now for not looking into this 5 years ago, but at least I am here now. This board has been a godsend and a trove of information. Thank you all for all your knowledge and compassion. I know I don't have it nearly so bad as some people, and for that I am very grateful, but this was a good exercise in why it is time to make myself healthy. Thanks! (Whew! That was really long!)

Hi Marco, At this point my comment is a bit redundant, but no, you're not alone. Gluten/wheat can play horrible mind games. Most of my symptoms were neurological. I am eating gluten right now because I want to get tested. A couple of weeks ago I had a sandwich (fri) pancakes (sun) and a donut (mon morning) - about an our after the donut I crashed - uncontrollable crying, HORRIBLY depressed, "why am I alive, i will never succeed, I will always be alone, I should run away and hide in a hole until..." type thoughts for 3 days! it upset my system so much I've barely been able to eat, insomnia, depressing and anxiety ridden dreams when i do sleep. I also get anxiety/ocd issues from the gluten. It is so frustrating! Luckily the evening of that crash I realized - wait, this is from the gluten... I kind of deal with it this way, I call it 'bouncing my thoughts', basically I have this dialogue with myself - "self, calm down. this isn't genuine emotion/depression. this is gluten in your body." If that makes any sense. I always likened it to the gluten as a little devil - If I could stop and make myself realize that it was the "gluten devil" making me feel that way, bending my thoughts, then I could regain my head. Or at least give myself enough steadiness and clarity to make it through the glutening. Like I said, the last one was 3 days - that was rough.

Hi Nikki, I'm new to this forum too. I agree with Ursula that there might be healthier alternatives to what you are eating, but I just figured I would chime in and let you know I had a similar experience. I ate SO much more (I just metabolized the healthier foods faster I figured - I ended up eating about twice what I used to, and that was already a lot -5 big meals a day instead of 3.). As I detoxed off the harmful foods in my diet I craved salty and expecially crunchy things like a fiend. At the time the only "junk" food I could have was potato chips. I ate them until my mouth blistered from the salt and I had to stop, which luckily didn't take many bags. Detoxing was a crazy - litterally- experience, it was like (in my opinion is the same as) coming off a drug, my body had all the same withdrawls, reactions, fiendings, and cravings, I swear to God there were even frantic 'voices' from the yeast as it died off in my body(I had a systemic yeast and mold infection at the time). It was incredibly intense. S.