
Flightrisk
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Hello, and welcome to the board.
With your endurance racing you would have been placing many more demands on your body for nutrients than your average celiac so you maybe were diagnosed a lot sooner than a lot of us-- well, many of us have never been diagnosed
I can see that all this has probably thrown you into quite a tizzy, but it sounds like you are heading in the right direction. Most of the experienced celiacs on the board recommend that you avoid as much as possible at first the gluten free substitute foods. Some of these have starches our bodies are unfamiliar with and not used to digesting; in fact, some of them are hard to digest. Try to stick with the naturally gluten free foods as much as possible. To meat, fruit and veggies, you can add nuts and seeds, rice, and maybe some rice pasta. Most of us have trouble with any lactose-containing foods - milk, cream, ice cream. Some can handle other dairy such as yogurt and hard cheese, some cannot. You will have to trial this for yourself. Your dietitian will hopefully help you with this. Have you had your Vits. D, B12, folate, A, E and K checked? Also potassium, zinc and calcium? These are often depleted in celiacs along with the iron/ferritin, and also thyroid.
Good luck on your gluten free journey and feel free to ask any question you can't find an answer to.
No, I have not had my vits checked but will ask about it. My doctor did note a low iron back in 06 when I had another physical but it was not substantial enough to cause concern without other symptoms. So basically this diagnosis might not have been as quick as we think, they said I had pretty good damage to my SI, so it had been there for a while. It is a roller coaster I didn't want to ride but it is what it is and I will continue living my life to the fullest. I don't like having conditions or issues, I just want to be average, problem free :-)
Thanks for the pointers.
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I'm not sure what really needs to be said as far as introductions go but I'll tell you my short story....I'm an endurance athlete who started having stomach/GI issues a few months back and was coincidentally getting ready for a routine physical for my racing. Stomach and GI issues are not uncommon for us because we place such a high demand on our bodies and deplete nutrients. During the physical all my blood work came back totally wacked. We did a retest two months later and I went on Prilosec. My iron was very low and my ferritin was dangerously low. I went on iron pills and stopped racing and training. Fast forward a couple more months I started pushing (my Dr who thought I was just not eating enough green leafy vegetables) and I got the scope and a call from two doctors saying I was very much a Celiac after taking a biopsy. The doctors said to stop eating gluten, check all my soaps and shampoo's and be careful of cross contamination. This was a few days ago and I have been referred to a dietitian. I'm still dizzy with the diagnosis but trying to be proactive and have started to adjust my diet to be gluten free. I
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Thanks everyone for the warm welcome to your community.
I have already found the information on this site to be very helpful. I think some of this will be somewhat easier for me to adjust to than others, as I have regularly adjusted my diet for races and training schedules. I typically only ate out at a fast-food joint once a month and only ate out at restaurants a few times a month, so those adjustments won't be hard. I was never known to snack much, either. I have always seen food as fuel not an emotional or pleasurable experience, I eat out of necessity. I have played with my diet while training, things like removing dairy, eggs, all meats going vegetarian and then to vegan and back again to find out what gave me more strength and recovery. Funny though through all of that I was poisoning myself and was not even aware of it! I did find the hardest part being the several trips to the specialty store. I will try to adjust this and shop filling up a cart versus only trying this or that, this is permanent not something I'm just trying. Educating my other half will be a bit of a challenge (although she is super supportive) and as I was using the butter I noticed bread crumbs in the tub and mentioned it to her, she was surprised and didn't think she did that, (it was cute).
So I'm trying the best I can to avoid gluten and have noticed little differences. I have switched to red wine and been eating a lot more meats. I have started to notice many foods in my market place saying gluten free and thank the sky's above that I live in a large city which is somewhat healthy. I feel for the person who lives in a small town far from a large metropolitan area with the conveniences I have. I have not noticed anything while training but, am hopeful I will see some positive results in the near future.
Thanks again, Carl~