eleep

Now I know that some of us discussed this possibility in the past year -- well -- it's being done and he's got a blog!

Open Original Shared Link

I wish he'd post about what he's eating, but I imagine he really doesn't have a lot of time.

I can't believe how much awareness about celiac I've seen develop over the past year.

I've been on the lookout for a really useful lunch kit since I've morphed into a person who carries massive quantities of food with her wherever she goes. I think I may have fallen in love with the Zojirushi Mr. Bento -- which is about $40 -- but gets rave reviews:

Open Original Shared Link

Does anyone else have a useful lunch kit suggestion?

Honestly, what helps me stop obsessing is having learned a lot about nutrition and what makes my body react badly -- that's more a matter of having learned to listen to my body now that I know what I need to avoid. One of the things that's helped with this has been learning to cook from whole ingredients instead of relying on pre-processed stuff -- so, perhaps the obsessiveness has transferred because now I'm a huge foodie!

When I got glutened in October, it took three weeks for the emotional, flu-ish, brainfoggy and digestive issues to subside. Since then, I've finished up a course of acupuncture treatment and I just got glutened last week -- it took about six days for all that stuff to fade away, so I think the acupuncture has helped my body rally to the cause better.

Just a hug!

My father's a chemist and he used to joke that xanthan gum is basically bacteria-poop.

I'm not certain that it necessarily has to cause issues for people with corn intolerances -- since the bacteria are consuming sugars from the corn -- and those go through a transformation when they're digested -- the resulting product might not have the components (protein usually, right?) that make corn an issue.

However, this is just a hypothesis.

It's tough for me to say exactly why my depression and anxiety stopped when they did (there were a lot of really stressful, awful things going on in my life for a while), but I definitely felt like a completely different person at around 10 months.

No -- unless you have an issue with soy, you should be fine. My label specifically says it contains gluten -- since this is a blackcurrant flavored dark chocolate, I imagine there's barley malt or something in the flavoring.

Really, this was just a case of my own sloppiness in reading labels.

La Choy has a gluten-free soy sauce (I believe it's La Choy Lite). San-J also has a wheat-free tamari, which I use instead of soy sauce. It's a little stronger, but I like it better.

It's a New Tree "Renew" dark chocolate bar (that's the blackcurrant flavor). The other flavors I'd tried (with nearly identical packaging) were all gluten free and I think I just assumed it was like the others (and I used to love this kind of chocolate and was excited to find it in Gainesville). It clearly says "Contains soy lecithin and gluten" on the label, damnit -- that was stupid.

So -- I've nibbled on 1/2 of this thing over about a week so far and mostly I'm just fluish and stressy feeling on and off -- a small amount of D., but I attributed that to eating too much cheese or something. I actually thought I _did_ have the flu, so my glutening reactions have changed significantly since October.

Really, too many new things in my life, no matter how good they are, are making me stupid.

Wow -- I just figured out that I've been munching on a chocolate bar with gluten for the past week or so -- so, no, the reactions aren't as bad as they used to be! I've just been kind of rundown and flu-ey. How could I have gotten so sloppy as to not check this label?

Thanks -- I hope so too, I've been so remarkably healthy lately -- it's like I never was healthy before (much to the confusion of people around me who thought I was just fine). Hopefully, this will be a minor reaction. My stepmom is already on the phone telling me not to stress out too much.

The new boyfriend is eight years younger than I am (count them....he's 29, I'm 37). This is a whole new reality to comprehend. I'd rather not have him see me sick.

Okay -- back to work -- I do need to fill people in at some point -- the Ph.D. is on hold temporarily because I need money and my department is in total chaos.

I just started a new job working as a fulltime editor at the University -- I've also got a new boyfriend -- things have been good and busy so I haven't had time to be on the forum as much (I do plan to write a news message at some point!).

However, I think I just screwed up -- haven't been glutened since I ate a piece of eel sushi in October -- and it took me three weeks to get over that. Somewhere around the holidays, my health got significantly better and everything has been great -- except....

One of the faculty members here has a communal coffeepot outside my office and pointed it out to me -- she's really nice and from Latin America and I could tell that this was a hospitality thing.

Well, I brought my own coffee in in a thermos yesterday morning -- and she offered me coffee nearly as soon as I got it unscrewed at my desk -- I felt bad, so today I came in sans coffee hoping to make up for it by drinking hers.

Well -- I poured myself a styrofoam cup, took one sip and realized that it's flavored -- I checked the coffee in the drawer -- it's Seattle's Best -- hazelnut cream -- not gluten free.

So, now, I'm worried that I'm going to be sick for another three weeks like back in October. I hate this.

Can one sip really hurt me? What can I do to ameliorate the reaction -- anything? How do I bring this up with my new colleagues -- especially since I may be about to be very grumpy and ill around them for a while.

And -- &**%$ -- this weekend my new boy and I were supposed to spend some time together -- we've both been too busy to hang out!

Just for general anti-inflammatory stuff: Fish oil and turmeric are good regular supplements to add (fish oil for the high EPA/DHA omega-3's). Also, Acupuncture is great for dealing with inflammatory reactions -- it helps your body's normal healing processes rebalance, so you may not see immediate results, but it will get significantly better over the long term.

I have noticed that I have less of an issue with dark circles since I've gone gluten-free.

I know a lot of people who've had really big problems with Depo. However, I've recently gone off the pill myself and didn't seem to have many side effects -- whatever mood swings and such I might have had were a walk in the park compared to a glutening.

Wow -- yup -- that used to happen to me a whole lot. I think I had some kind of low-level issues with candida, but it was almost never enough to qualify as a full blown yeast infection. Actually, I never went on one of those candida elimination diets, but I know several people who have (and who have had great success with them). I did start paying a whole lot more attention to my sugar intake, however, which cleared things up quite a bit.

From a purely gluttonous perspective, I can recommend DaVinci's for the danish (and I never really thought I was into danish before -- this was indistinguishable from non-gluten-free danish from a decent bakery). Impromptu is totally worth it, but it's a pricier restaurant with a wine bar, so isn't such a great place for kids.

Isn't most sake distilled? If they don't add the mash back in afterwards, it should be safe.

Hey -- this makes a great "what did you eat today" running thread since I sometimes need inspiration for menus. I just got back from the market and I've been doing a lot of travelling with little in the house, so menus are on my mind. I've actually been eating frozen leftovers for the past few weeks, however:

Breakfast: 2 boiled eggs/avocado chunks/hot sauce; Oatmeal with strawberries and honey

Lunch: Carrot sticks and hummus; almond butter and apricot jam sandwich on rice/almond bread

Snack: Chickpea/feta salad; pears and yogurt

Dinner: Chebe pizza crust with salami, tomato sauce, mushrooms, olives and artichoke hearts; spinach salad

I hope I was a bit clearer... I'm used to being able to wave my hands and wildly gesture as I talk, and I sure want to do that for this one.

I've now officially seen her do this, so I can second this one.

What I'm still wondering is:

1) Does the reaction to prolamines as well as gluten have something to do with similar molecular structures -- i.e. -- is one's body mistaking one for the other because they're shaped like the same lego even if they have different colors?

2) Is this just a similar reaction and not an autoimmune response, or is there an actual autoimmune response happening?

3) Why does this affect some of us and not others -- does it have something to do with genetics, or does it have to do with the kind of damage already done to one's body or something else?

I had the same problem for a few months early on -- went along with a shorter temper and more anxiety -- I've kind of attributed it to the "gluten withdrawal" and "healing crisis" type theories. What helped me finally was getting acupuncture -- which seems to have helped my body calm down a lot.

Does the sweat just help to spread some kind of evil rash-related ooze around?

My understanding is that some of us are sensitive to prolamines in that way and not others -- I don't test positive for casein intolerance, but I do have an autoimmune response to gluten. So I think your doctor's information might be too sweeping.

Does anyone know more of the hard science behind why of us seem to react to all prolamines and others don't?

I think it's important not to rule out the possibility that these can be withdrawal-type symptoms -- gluten is an opiate and the racing heart and stomach stuff can be part of withdrawal as well. I went through something much like this for a few months when I went gluten-free.

I also quit smoking recently myself and the one time I've been glutened since then is when I've had cigarette cravings like never before.