Mari

I have found several simple sleep aids which I use. Peppermint tea is very soothing and calms down the intestinal tract - add the mint to boiling water and let steep for 5 or more minutes. The amino acid ornithine also helps people sleep, available in capsules. The spice turmeric - which I used for years - find instrunctions online. When I was younger I used a product called SleepEase. Sometimes I eat 1/2 grapefruit before preparing for bed (Canned grapefruit or juice probably won't work).

The light colored stools indicates that you have a partly blocked gall bladder and some of your other symptoms may be a result of this condition and a build-up of toxins in your liver and body. If you look at the Liver Flush Support forum at Curezone you will see what others are doing about this.

Saccharomyces is a yeast found in beer but it also is part of the normal flora of parasitic tapeworms so they can be carried into you by those parasites and overgrow. That you have eosinophils is an indication that you most likely are carrying some intestinal parasites - and this is a more common problem than some Drs think it is. You can go the medical route and take meds after id of the parasites - Metametrix Labs offers a panel which will identify the organisms in your gut and can be ordered by your DR. Many people choose to treat a more broad spectrum of parasites, yeasts and intestinal bacterial overgrowth with herbs and various supplements. If you are interested in this go to Curezone and look at the forums for Parasites, Candida and Liver Flush Support. I regularly use a progran which includes parasite herbs, kidney support, liver support and gall bladder cleanses. I also use the Specific Carbohydrate diet as do some others on this forum.

Glad you are back. I have one comment - I read that Fosamax, which I think is similar to the suppplement you are taking, is contraindicated for Celiacs. There was a thread on this and some people wrote that they got very sick when they took it. Vit D and calcium are the recommended supplements for Celiacs. Your blood tests may be negative since you have been off gluten but there are fecal tests which are more sensitive offered by Enterolab.com - you can contact them for advice.

A diet which can be used for an elimination diet and is nutritious is the gluten-free Specific Carbohydrate Diet. I and others on this forum have found this diet very helpful.

Hi, I don't tolerate iron therapy so you might want to stop the iron for a while and see if the exhaustion decreases. Did your Dr do any tests to see if you have Celiac Disease? If you have been gluten free for a while the blood tests may be negative but there are fecal tests at Enterolab.com which are more sensitive than the blood tests. Sometimes people have both an allergy to wheat and the autoimmune antibodies of celiac disease. I think I read that iron therapy is not recommended for Celiacs - you can check that out. Another condition which causes people to be anemic is Hemachromatosis and iron is definately not good for these people as they have way too much iron in their bodies despite the anemia. Your Dr can test your ferritin level or the Total Iron Binding Capacity and can also order a genetic test.

THANKS EVERYBODY. I think that I will just use the New Comments - couldn't find where to check my email.

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Treating Depression

If the pharmaceutical industry had its way, wed all be popping an anti-depressant at the first sign of a dark cloud on the horizon. This is not to say that anti-depressants are not good and necessary for those with biologically induced depression (only about 10 percent of all sufferers). Unfortunately, although anti-depressants may give us a sense of control over our symptoms, they do not cure depression. Instead they mask the underlying emotions rather than resolve them.

Diet is Important

Its important to realize that there are other approaches to the treatment of depression. One of these is food. If you suffer from depression you will benefit if you eat whole foods with a low GI and GL diet. Fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, lean meat and chicken, fish and eggs. Switch from white bread, white rice and white pasta to whole grain varieties.

Avoid Caffeine

Avoid or reduce caffeine intake. Caffeine can increase anxiety and anxiety can lead to depression. Instead, enjoy herbal teas, such as chamomile and peppermint. Lavender tea has a wonderful aromatic scent and is used as a calming tea to relieve stress. Passionflower has long been used as a folk remedy to treat anxiety. Studies confirm that passionflower extracts have anti-anxiety properties. Ashwagandha tea can be taken to relieve nervous exhaustion and stress and is a good tea for calming.

Avoid or Reduce Alcohol Intake

While often used as an emotional crutch, alcohol can severely exacerbate depression and anxiety and can delete important nutrients, including B vitamins, that are vital in maintaining a sense of wellbeing. An occasional glass of wine with meals or with friends is fine, but keep it to a minimum. The last thing you need if you are depressed is a hangover.

Reduce Saturated Fats

Avoid deep fried food and fast food. Turn instead to home cooked lean meats and vegetables. Snack on seeds and nuts rather than fast-food treats.

Specific Nutrients

Finally, here are some specific nutrients that are recommended for alleviating anxiety and depression. B vitamins take a good multiple B vitamin Inositol effective in combating panic attacks. Fish oil high in omega-3 fatty acids. Sam-e particularly good for post natal depression. St. Johns Wort natural anti-depressant and tonic for the nervous system. Oats long used to combat nervous exhaustion, debility and depression. Valerian induces calming sleep and doesnt leave you feeling groggy in the morning. Zizyphus eases anxiety naturally. In Chinese medicine, zizyphus is thought to nourish the heart and calm the spirit.

I'm not receiving emails to tell me when somebody have answered a message. How can I correct this?

It is important to have a bowel movement within 1 hour of eating especially people with intestinal problems. If I don't feel like going I may eat a grapefruit or start taking betaine HCl to acidify my stomach - strong acids trigger the iliac valve to release food from the small intestine into the bowel. It may be a relief to going back to one bm a day but food may still be going thu your intestine too slowly and you may have an impaction again.

I had a problen with my neck vertabrae being slightly out of line and after seeing a chiropractor learned to re-align the vertabrae and when I did that my sinuses would drain. From another chiro. - he said that whenever we are exposed to something we react to that our head instinctively jerks back and this may cause a misalingment. I also feel better, not so fog headed and the ringing in my ears is much less, I think it restores good circulation to the brain.

One reason for leg cramps and stiff muscles is that your body may be too acid rather than the normal slightly alkaline. You can get pH strips and test the saliva first thing in the morning before brushing teeth or putting anything in your mouth and if it is acid you can correct it. I read up on this and I find if I eat more vegetables than carbs amd high protein foods such as meat it's unusual for me to have leg cramps and still muscles. Search for 'acid forming foods'. I always try to add enough alkaline forming food anytime I eat acid forming foods. 3 muffins with nothing to balance them would give me cramps.

You didn't say if you were gluten free but if you aren't you can have the blood test done. Somebody wrote that a person only need a small amount of gluten to keep the antibody levels up - maybe it was one peice of wheat toast daily. I've seen links to several simple elimination diets in another post so maybe you can find them by searching the internet. The Specific Carbohydrate Diet starts with food which are not very allergenic and works well for most Celiacs and people with IBS. People vary greatly in their reaction to gluten and you don't know yet how sensitive you are. So keep working to eliminate gluten from your foods then you may want to tackle the business of changing your cookware and other kitchen tools and begin getting gluten-free body products. Look at the Enterolab.com site as they have some more sensitive tests for antibodies and do the genetic tests also. Their FAQ sheet may give you some information on what you can do. If you haven't looked at the articles on this forum - especially the one of diagnosis see what they advise. You'll work this out and feel less overwhelmed as you go along. Don't forget to fill out your personal page and give us some information about your background regarding gluten and your possible problems - it will help us answer your posts.

Do a search for 'nausea reflex', there are lots of hits. I sometimes curl the back of my tongue up to the roof of my mouth. It may be that the food you ate is backed up in the small intestine so pull down with your fingers from your breastbone - this will probably release some gas and then sit up straight. Try taking digestive enzymes and betaine HCl with meals. Although you feel burning with the acid reflux the stomach is not acid enough to start the digestion of food. Sit up straight when you eat and when you feel nauseous as the food will pass more easily down to the intestine. If you are interested look at the Curezone Liver Flush Forum, cleaning the gall stones out of your liver and bile ducts often works marvelously. If your stool is light colored, not dark brown you may have this problem and if it contains undigested food the pancreas is often blocked when the common bile duct is blocked.

Celiac Disease is a multi genetic problem and the scientists have found out how these genes work together with environmental factors leaving a person with the autoimmune antibodies. Look at Enterolab.com, Dr. Fine makes some comments of the situation with people who don't have the main Celiac genes and do have celiac disease. There are also sevral posters at the Gluten Free and Beyond Forum who are like you.

What may be happening is that you have had an allergy or intolerance to cow's milk before you went gluten-free but since the gluten is gone you are noticing the reaction more. Also it may be that as long as we were eating gluten our bodies tried to minimize the reaction and damage and it also minimized the reaction to allergies. In allergy to cow's milk can be tested for by blood test or fecal tests (Enterolab.com). The blood test may be negative if you have been not eating the allergin for too long a time. I showed a positive even tho I'd avoided cow's milk for years. I use goat's milk products.

No reputable scientist would ever contend that there is no cure or will never be a cure for celiac disease. Studies have shown that so far nobody who has developed the autoimmune reaction had been cured but it is not known if this will be possible in the future or has already happened but the people who were cured were not included in the studies. Science is not static, it is a progression of findings which are intrepreted by usually the scientists who preformed the study and other reliable evidence. It is very hopeful that some people claim to be cured and an eventual understanding of why they were cured lies in the future when some bright scientist begins to put together seeming unrelated information from a variety of sources. From what I have read there is no clear understanding of the trigger(s) or even an understanding of the pathology of celiac disease and other autoimmune diseases.

Welcome to the forum, that was a great post so I look forward to reading more from you and I may try what you wrote about. One suggestion I thought of is that you may want to sterilize the eggs before handling them. Those of us with intestinal problems are very succeptable to being infected with harmful bacteria from the outside of the eggs. Sterilize your hands also after handling them. A food wash with a disinfectant would be good or you can use diluted ethyl alcohol, vodka works fine.

I have been using a variety of commercial enzyme preparations for years. They need to have pancreatic enzymes and lipase which I usually get but have used several which contain plant enzymes from papaya, pineapple and others. One pill also had bile which if your stools are light colored might help more. One prep. I like has betaine-HCl which acidifies the stomach and probiotics to supplement our good intestinal flora - acidophilus and Bifidobacterium are both good for us.

I hope you take the time to fill out your profile and give some information about yourself - this often helps us to be better in answering your inquiries. I have strong cravings sometimes, it's usually for chocolate and almost anything sweet and filling. Sometimes I'm not strong enough to resist and pay the price as you do. So we are both human. But it's not all strength and resolve that we need - it's important to realize that this is a symptom - something we need to learn about so we can deal with it. I get these cravings when I feel that I need some quick energy even tho my mind is saying that it's not a good idea to do this. I found out that I had a problem with intestinal candida and that jolly little yeast actually produces something when it gets hungry that urges us to eat the foods it likes - sugars and carbohydrates. Other people, so I've read, have been vitamin deficient or have food allgeries or intolerances. One problem with allergies is that we can actually crave the foods and other things which set off the allergies. Look at the Specific Carbohydrate Diet - other posters here have found it as helpful as I have. I wouldn't think of what you describe as self inflicted pain, it's just a natural reaction to what your body is telling you what it needs.

For some reason I don't understand I can't tolerate kosher salt - I tried 2 brands then went back to sea salt which I sterilize 4 min. in the microwave and because of the contaminants would prefer to use pure salt but it's not available locally. Have you looked at the Allergies Forum at Curezone? There are a variety of methods people are using to clear up food and other allergies. Hope you are doing better. I also use the SCD.

I don't use any comercial skin products, shampoos or detergents. I have had itchy skin, lizard skin and other skin problems which slowly cleared up of the gluten-free/df diet. I was glutened last Nov. and the itchy lizard skin took a month to show up and it did not clear up until about Feb. and that's about the time when the antibodies finally were cleared from my body.

The general rule for eating foods is not to eat the same food twice in one day or for two days in a row as repeated eating raises the level of the antibodies. It's best to do an elimination diet and the Specific Carbohydrate Diet works very well as at first most of the highly allergenic foods are banned. One of the forums here has the SCD in the title for people like me who use that diet.

Well something sure happened - were you gluten free for a while and avoiding some other foods? When a person is gluten-free the lab tests may not be positive or in some people even if they eat gluten the tests may still not show elevated antibodies or tissue transglutaminase. Usually the DR has a person eating a small amount of gluten for a month or more before doing the tests. If you ask your Dr for your lab results we may be able to give you some advice.

So the tests were negative but if you had been gluten-free it takes a while and a constant challange of gluten to raise the level so you react noticealby or turn the blood tests positive. You had a small challenge when you ate the fish sticks then more and more gluten with the macoroni so your antibodys levels rose. It may have been the gluten but also consider the corn. Last time I tried I could eat corn occasionally but if I ate repeated doses I would react. One of my friends stopped eating corn and her chronic fatigue syndrome got much better and going gluten-free did not improve her problem.

or just the temperment of my digestive system made my bacteria all funky while traveling lots

Funky digestive system - I've had repeated problems with recurrent and new intestinal imbalances. I was able to clear most of them up using a program of healing with herbs and other altenative self treatments, see my personal page, but while I ate gluten they kept coming back and sometimes now that I'm gluten-free still do. Medical diagnosis and treatments have been much improved in the last few years and many people have been able to clear up specific problems but like you they often get back the same problem or a different one because of their funky digestive system. Problems after antibiotic treatment, contaminated water and food and reinfection all plague some of us and we have to figure out what is not working properly and learn to protect ourselves. The Liver Flush Support Forum can give you ways of dealing and healing your gut and even tho you choose medical treatments, will tell you how a healthy intestine functions and why you have these problems.

I had the test at Enterolab and have 2 DQ2 markers - 302 and 602. They did list the serologic equlivent but can't remember it. There was a note that said I had one main celiac gene and the second DQ2 made the disease worse. I had symptoms of low energy, food sensitivities by age 4, and slow growth, leg pains. I didn't begin to have intestinal problems until I had a Salmonella infection when I was 19. I developed endometriosis in my 20's and increasing problems with chemical sensitivities. I never felt well but Drs kept telling me I was OK, just get more rest. One brother developed Type 1 Diabetes in his 30's and all 4 of us sibs had food sensitivities as young children.