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eleep

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  • murfsgirl

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  • Interests
    Backpacking, Yoga, Cello-playing and -- right now, my dissertation
  • Location
    Gainesville, FL

eleep's Achievements

  1. This may be premature, but I've got a bunch of important deadlines and events coming up in the next few days and really cannot afford to be glutened -- if this is what I fear, I need to down some activated charcoal and delve deep into my glutening emergency kit right away.

    I picked up a big bag of cherries at Publix and just ate a bunch of them with lunch (homemade tuna salad on rice-pecan bread -- already tested out and fine). I'm starting to feel a funny rumbling in my stomach -- which could be nothing special at all, but it's making me nervous.

    Is it possible that fresh cherries could have some kind of gluten-containing preservative spray or something on them? Has anyone else encountered this?

  2. I find that I react pretty immediately, but the reaction involves a series of bodily events that wipe me out for about four days and then finally disappear about one and a half to two weeks later. The onset of my reaction involves intense anxiety, tension and insomnia -- however, if I'm already under a lot of stress (as has been the case on and off recently), I don't always pick it up right away. The GI stuff starts to show up one to two days later.

    The insomnia, I've now figured out, is actually a pretty good clue -- I've realized that, no matter how stressed I am, I can always pretty much fall asleep regardless of what's going on in my life. Not the case when I'm having a reaction.

    eleep

  3. There used to be a Gainesville celiac group, but it is apparently defunct. I'm a UF graduate student, so I'm thinking about starting one through UF (if there are a bunch of students) or just in Gainesville itself.

    Let me know if anyone's interested -- I want to get a sense of how many people there might be before I take this on (otherwise, it's not a productive procrastination tool for me as I should be writing my dissertation).

  4. Your symptoms and feelings do sound very much like Celiac -- I had the crazy mood swings as well -- and the two positive markers are definitely more indication than I got at that stage in the diagnosis (I had to get genetic testing for total confirmation). It helped me a lot to focus on the fact that I would eventually feel better, that my moods were more about my body than anything going on in my life and that they would subside once I went gluten-free and got through the process of withdrawing from gluten. One of the distractions I used even before I took the step of eliminating it (still waiting to see if I was going to have an endoscopy) was to read up as much as I could on this board and to start thinking about my strategy for dealing with this stuff once I eliminated it -- looked at what my personal care products and stuff were that contained gluten, put together a collection of recipes and such that I would use, stocked up on Immodium (does help the moods too -- has to do with blocking endorphin receptors -- there's something about it on the board).

    Other people may have some more concrete suggestions about managing the symptoms.

  5. I feel like I should clairfy my post becasue I didn't explain it very well. If an unhealthy person is perfectly happy, I have absolutely no "attitude problem" toward that person. But....if the person is extremely negative and unhappy and attempts to bring me down with them, that's when I have a problem. I don't know if that makes sense....

    That makes sense to me. I'm thinking of my ex-boyfriend's partying habits -- which became a huge bone of contention between us last year. I love partying -- in moderation -- I hated that I was the becoming the "heavy" in the relationship who kept insisting that the 4-5 night a week bar and party schedule wasn't a good thing -- it made me come across as much more of a puritan than I really am.

    The real issue was that I was increasingly feeling like his partying was more and more of a way to avoid spending time with me and working on the healthier aspects of our relationship (we were in counseling to work on the relationship and figure out whether we could go the distance and leave town together engaged once his degree was done -- I'm not ordinarily one of those women who insists upon "working on" a relationship all the time -- although we were in counseling long enough that I certainly seemed like it! LOL). I was also starting to work pretty intensively on my health (my anxiety issues were something he'd requested that I work on for him to feel more comfortable making a long-term commitment -- I think, if it hadn't been for him, I wouldn't have started to be able to really see those issues for what they were and get the diagnosis), and I felt like I was at cross-purposes if the only way I could spend quality time with him was to go out drinking and staying up late.

    One of the unfortunate things with the timing of all of this is that, when I first started to go gluten-free I had all this new and growing energy which came out in anger and frustration (still healing, still dealing with residual anxiety) -- I'd been repressing a lot of that over time as I dealt with my stuff. I started to be really direct in my communication to him about the partying just at the time when he most needed me to lay off (before his dissertation defense). I was trying to tell him that I was feeling pulled down by his habits -- and that was my main issue.

  6. My understanding is that washing rice produces a different texture in the final, cooked product. I generally wash rice if I'm making something like sushi or another asian-type dish where the desired outcome is sticky rice. I think I've washed rice before when I made paella, but it's been a while and I can't remember.

    Now that I think about it, however, there might be 101 reasons for me to wash rice regardless if I got it from the bulk food section.

  7. Okay --

    It finally hit home for me over the last two weeks that I cannot eat almost all dairy right now _at all_, even if I take Lactaid. My Enterolab casein test was negative, and I am still using Lactaid milk in my coffee with no problem -- so I really think this is lactose intolerance. However, I was expecting the lactose reaction symptoms to be mostly GI-related and milder than the gluten. That hasn't been the case -- my lactose reactions of late have included levels of anxiety and insomnia and fatigue that just stress my body out waaaaaaaay too much.

    This must be that 4-5 month thing where intolerances start showing up.

    So, I've been working to put on weight and have been eating an avocado/cashew salad thing every day for the past three or four days as part of the project -- it occurs to me suddenly that I could be setting myself up for new intolerances -- which I just couldn't tolerate! Were I to lose avocados or cashews, I think I'd be really upset.

    How should I approach things so I don't overdo it with one food and develop a new intolerance? Is this a legitimate concern? I'm suddenly cooking for one right now, so it's been easier to eat one thing for a couple of days than it has been to have lots of stuff available in the freezer and stuff so that I can switch stuff out.

    Edit: I did a search on rotation diet -- I think I'm just finding something new to be paranoid about here. However, if anyone thinks I might have a valid concern, let me know!

  8. I think that people's movement towards radically different healthier habits probably takes a great deal of emotional and cognitive processing -- something along the lines of addiction recovery, for many.

    I've been thinking about this quite a bit because my ex -- although he was the one who inspired me to amp up my workouts from yoga and walking to yoga/walking/jogging/weight training (and my body is substantially different now because of it!), I was the one who was ready to have a stronger body and deal with my mysterious fatigue and anxiety symptoms (now I know where those came from) -- this was _before_ him and not because of him.

    Had I not been in that place already, I don't think that those habits would have shifted so radically -- no matter how much I loved him or thought he had a point.

  9. Um, I definitely -- in the early days of going gluten-free and being in shock from my sudden breakup -- was starting to think about things in terms of having a calling. It was a rather startlingly spiritual phase for me -- although I was raised Unitarian Universalist (which means no particular dogmatic belief), I even talked to my minister uncle about this whole issue of calling and what that might mean.

  10. I've been thinking about this stuff and I had a little daydream on my way to teaching class today (seems I can't keep my mind on the American Literature I'm supposed to be thinking about). Anyway -- we've got a lot of great writers on this board with a lot of really nuanced insight into the many aspects of dealing with celiac and the way it totally reconfigures one's life -- not just diet and body, but relationships and even philosophical and political perspectives on how to live in the world, eat in the world and be in the world.

    What if we were to put together a collection of essays, write up a book proposal and shop it around to publishers? The proceeds from the book could go to celiac research. I imagine that, since the NIH is about to launch this awareness campaign there's about to be a very big market for all things related to celiac, so it could be a very good way to raise money.

    I'm definitely thinking like a scholar here (wish I had this much confidence about publishing my own research) -- but I've got editing experience and such. There's got to be someone on this board with publishing connections outside the academic presses......

  11. If nothing else, I think I'm eventually going to start a celiac.com trekking group now that all the hikers are coming out of the woodwork.

    Is there something that could be sold? I'm remembering selling gummi bears in high school to pay for my exchange-student trip to Germany. Could we sell baskets filled with Larabars and Immodium?

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