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Sometimes rocks need to be pampered as well -- don't be too hard on yourself -- you'll be a much better rock when you're feeling healthy and relaxed!

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Also, for anyone interested, if a product bears an Orthodox Union marking or is otherwise marked as kosher, you can bet that cleaning and HACCP procedures are taken quite seriously. Companies putting these marks on their products are subject to regular and frequent inspection by a Rabbi (in our case, someone sent by the OU). Those guys mean business.

Perhaps we need to start a major religion just for Celiacs!

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I've had some success with meditation and Qi Gong exercises (as well as regular exercise) -- however, you really need to keep them up as a regular practice to get the full effects.

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I agree that you'll probably want to go with what your body tells you in the long run -- I spent a long time trying to think my way through whether I "believed" things or not, but I practically developed an anxiety disorder doing so. Now I'm certain I did the right thing because I honestly feel better than I ever have for most of my adult life -- and the marked contrast with my last known glutening sealed the deal for me.

I was afraid the DHL guy would see the Enterolab address and just know what was in the box.....

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Erica, just in case, Can you please tell me who you saw in Gainesville ? Did you like him / her ?

I saw Enrique Molina, who's with Digestive Disease Associates in Gainesville. I can't really say whether I'd recommend him or not since, after my blood tests came back negative, he basically recommended that I try the diet and that was it. He didn't seem to be one of those "I only accept the Gold Standard" doctors, but I can't say for sure. Since I'm a student on a really limited health plan right now, I decided I was lucky not to have to deal with/pay for an endoscopy -- although I did end up ordering Enterolab tests when the diet started to have dramatic good/bad effects on my body and I needed more reassurance that I was doing the right thing.

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Illotibial band -- right? I've had on-off issues with mine after running, but nothing like what either of you describe. I have a pretty regular yoga practice, however, and I find that -- regardless of whether I stretch after a run or not (I know, bad), I never have IT issues when I've been keeping up with the yoga.

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This reminds me of some of the issues with diabetes and the very large health disparities between diabetics with more education and resources and those with less. When it comes to managing an illness that requires constant monitoring of what you're consuming, it helps to be kind of an OCD egghead.

Yes -- the moodiness is something many of us have experienced -- I wish I'd known that at the time since my withdrawal-based moodiness had something to do with the utter implosion of my relationship after my diagnosis. It will pass, however, so just hang in there and remember that you may be overreacting to things for a while.

For anyone who's been wondering, by the way, that relationship is definitively over -- which really has nothing to do with my illness, as I've recently discovered. I did my best to take responsibility for the ways in which my health might have complicated matters between us, but it turns out we needed more than one person giving it their best shot to make it work.

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I'm a 20th century culture scholar, so I have my own crackpot theory about part of why there's been so much more awareness of Celiac recently -- which I will share for your amusement, dissection, agreement or utter disbelief. My thinking is that the low-carb diet craze meant that enough people stopped eating wheat products for long enough to notice differences in their health -- and noticed that they became increasingly symptomatic when they went off the diet. I was never on a low-carb diet myself, but I had a history of hypoglycemic highs and lows and my father's a lifelong Type I diabetic -- so I'd been eating a diet for a couple of years that was pretty conscientious about glycemic index and such -- had cut most refined sugars and flours out and that just happened to include a lot of gluten-based foods.

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I wish I could help you -- Shands has an excellent reputation, but I don't know any of the GI doctors there -- I'm a student at UF, but I was referred out to someone in private practice by the infirmary here.

I quit smoking back in August and, after the initial couple of weeks, I was just fine and didn't really have what I would call cravings. Then, after my last glutening in October, I started to have the most intense cigarette cravings of my life. They subsided when the symptoms subsided, but it was unnerving. I should add that I've quit several times before and this was the first time I'd not needed to use a patch or something else to help me along.

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I felt terrible for about five months after going on the diet -- I was going through a really devastating breakup at the time and, on top of the emotional toll and the adjustment in my household, I was doing my best to continue exercising and working and meeting friends out. I tried to act like I wasn't ill because I just didn't want to feel isolated and I definitely didn't want my ex coming back because he pitied me -- that really backfired because I really wasn't quite aware of how stressed out my body was. Stress can delay the healing process -- what finally helped me get back on track was a course of acupuncture and a period where I just surrendered to being sick for a while.

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Sometimes the mold culture used to make them is grown on bread -- although it can often be grown on other mediums as well. However, I read somewhere that one of the really good british Bleu's -- Stilton? -- is produced with bread-grown mold culture, but that there's about 1 part of mold per million parts of the rest of the cheese -- and the mold doesn't necessarily contain _any_ of the medium it was grown on.

Take that for what it's worth -- I've had bleu cheese at least once and had no problem with it, but I can't remember what kind it was.

I think about this all the time these days since there are two artisanal bakeries which have recently opened up near me.....

I just read this and I'm on it -- just sent a PM.

I can't necessarily help you with restaurants because I'm still figuring that one out myself -- I use a Triumph dining card and I tend to stick to sushi places right now (and I had bad luck with one of those a few months back).

I also don't know anything about getting tax discounts or anything on food here -- maybe someone else knows more about this?

Edit: I just reread your post and I think my suggestion is off-track!

My reactions are decidedly noticeable, but not crippling. When they do become overwhelming, it usually has to do with something else that's going on in my life -- some external stressor that I'm not in healthy enough shape to handle. And then I'm even talking about really big stuff -- a death in the family, being the one in charge of the funeral while my siblings are squabbling about it, my written qualifying exam, etc... The psychological "I can't deal" is worse for me than the physical feeling -- generally reactions are times when I really need things to be calm and stable around me.

On top of what you're already doing, drinking lots of water and getting exercise are good ways to speed up any withdrawal process. As for how long it will take, I may not be the best example because my withdrawal symptoms lasted at least three months -- possibly more. This was, in part, because it took me that long to fully eliminate all the gluten from my life -- I balked for a while because it took the Enterolab results for me to fully realize that this was serious and real -- and I didn't get those until May despite having stopped eating gluten intentionally in February.

So, I think I went through progressive stages of withdrawal -- I would recommend being scupulous about checking all your vitamins, medications and personal toiletries and such as soon as possible. This isn't what I did and I definitely suffered quite a bit because my vitamins were clearly labeled as having gluten and I kept taking them through mid-May. I also realized, somewhat later, that I had panic attacks after getting my shampoo in my mouth.

Again -- I knew all this stuff could be an issue, but I was going through some pretty intense personal stuff at the time and had a lot of trouble distinguishing between what was illness and what was genuine emotional reactiveness -- I also had no idea that there was a withdrawal process involved.

On the positive side -- you do get through it and things feel a whole lot better once you have!

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That sounds a lot like the symptoms of withdrawal. I also had this weird angry energy for a while despite the fact that I felt so lousy.

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I can relate to the "can't control the mood swings" aspect of starting this whole diet -- I had a terrible time with it for a number of months, although I was going through some pretty intense personal stuff at the time as well.

I have had luck in the past with Wellbutrin -- which is gluten free, but I haven't taken it since the diagnosis. I did have a couple of weeks of restless sleep when I started it, but that disappeared once my body adjusted.

My therapist actually didn't want to put me on meds after the diagnosis, but instead referred me to an amazing acupuncturist after I finally begged him to -- which has had an amazing effect on both my overall mood state and my ability to control moods. I wouldn't want to recommend it instead of meds since you're the best judge of what you can/want to deal with, but I could definitely see it as a good adjunct to meds.

At the moment, I'm only really feeling the need for meds when I've been glutened and then it's a short-term anti-anxiety type thing.

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A sabbatical is an excellent idea -- and not something everyone gets the chance to do. It took me many months to start to feel right again and I definitely felt worse a month after I stopped eating gluten than I did before. I went through about six weeks where I really couldn't do much of anything -- the advantage I had was that I'm in graduate school and was supposed to be getting some writing done -- I actually had to toss a lot of that work recently because it was so bad -- the brain fog had really made things terrible for me.

In any case -- you will get better and giving yourself permission to rest is a very good idea. I'm not so good at enforced "rest" myself -- but I finally saw things turn around dramatically after I did a whole course of acupuncture.

If someone had given me the opportunity to go to Mexico, I would have jumped at the chance -- as it was, I didn't have a whole lot of travel options open to me!

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My mood, anxiety and ADD-type symptoms were much more obvious to me than the GI symptoms -- now that I've been on the diet for a while, I'm a lot more aware of the GI stuff now -- which is useful because it can warn me to steel myself for the mood-related stuff that will follow!

Yup -- I've got about a two-day lag on reaction symptoms, although those two days might feel more stressy than usual. Then the other stuff hits kind of hard.

My acupuncturist and other medical practicioners have all suggested that my glutenings will decrease in intensity and such once my body has fully healed. I'm not working with anyone with a great deal of knowledge and experience with celiacs, so I was wondering whether this is something people have found to be true in their own experience.

I've been diagnosed at 36 and my last two glutenings were in June and then about a month ago -- as best as I can tell from the most recent experience, it's taking me three weeks to feel like my health is back up to par. I've undergone a pretty intense acupuncture treatment which I can tell has speeded up the healing process and that last glutening was noticeably less severe -- but still pretty bad. I know that it's technically supposed to actually take 6-8 weeks for the body to fully recover.

What about those of you who've been gluten free for several or many years? How old were you when you were diagnosed? Do you find that the recovery time improves? Has something about the nature of your glutenings changed.

I had mono my sophomore year in college and never quite got over the exhaustion and fatigue -- I know now that was the onset of my celiac symptoms.

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