trents

It certainly would not hurt to try a gluten-free diet. We are still learning about the impact of gluten sensitivity and Celiac disease on the body and are finding out it has many more spin offs than anyone ever expected, even 20 years ago. But you would need to educate yourself on how gluten is used (and disguised) in many different food products, especially processed and ready made food products if you are to test this effectively. It is included in many things you would never expect to find wheat in, e.g. soy sauce. Gluten can also be included in medications.

"Vinos"? What is that?

Did you consume any wine, especially red wine?

Do you have Celiac disease? You say you are "wheat sensitive" but you don't say you are a celiac.

You are doing the right thing in getting a checkup and blood work done. Sometimes we can make assumptions about what is causing our problems that turn out to be incorrect. Exams and testing can often turn up the real cause which may be something we never suspected. People with gluten issues can make the mistake of believing all their health problems are tied to that.

Since you mention that you have been more irritable with others lately, obviously there is still a social component to your life. Having said that, adopting a gluten free lifestyle can be very socially restricting since it renders eating out at restaurants or accepting dinner invitations at others' homes a potentially unsafe activity. So my question for you is, has your effort to eat gluten free taken away some significant social component to your life - a loss - that might be contributing to depression?

And have their been other changes? Menopause? Vocational changes? Relational changes? Financial setbacks?

Amen!

The key word as far as I'm concerned:

"Scientists have discovered how lectins, a family of proteins believed to be a natural insecticide that is abundant in undercooked legumes and grains, can make you feel temporarily miserable."

This is true for me with regard to many seeds and other foods such as raw vegetables. When they aren't washed and/or cooked well they can upset my tummy mucho! I am very sensitive to the natural defense chemicals found in may plant foods. I could never be a "raw foodest."

Great resource! Thanks, CL.

I would caution you about going low fat. Fat is very important to health and metabolism. Focus on the kind of fat you take in rather than reducing it. Substituting vegetable oils for some animal fats is going to be better than trying to drastically reduce fat intake altogether. Avocados and chia seeds are an example of some things you need to look at in that regard. Nuts is another.

Oatmeal and oat bran cereal are good for reducing cholesterol. Bob's Red Mill sells both in gluten-free form.

I was on a statin for several years but it was causing restless leg syndrome, which I was also given meds for. My cholesterol was marginally high. Mostly the LDL/HDL ratio was not what the doctor wanted to see. As near as I could tell, I wasn't having any of the side effects you read about that statins can produce but since there is such a controversy surrounding them and my total cholesterol was not that high, I decided to go off them. Low and behold, the restless leg syndrome immediately disappeared. RLS is not one of the typical statin-related side effects you read about I did find some mention of it in internet searches.

For people with very high cholesterol who can't make a major impact on it with diet and lifestyle changes, statins may still be necessary IMO.

I'm sure many of you are in the situation where a celiac is living (and eating) in the same house with non-celiacs. 

Last night I was reminded of how important it is in these situations to extra care in packaging/labeling foods in such a way that celiacs don't accidentally consume gluten containing foods that may look very much like their gluten free counterparts.

My wife made a batch of biscuits using wheat flour for herself this week and also made a batch of gluten free biscuits for me. They looked almost exactly the same after coming out of the oven! She put each batch in a zip lock bag but wrote her name with a sharpie on her bag. She also told me where she was storing hers and where she was storing mine to keep them physically separate. However, I was only half listening. I'm sure that never happens in your home!

So about 9:30 PM I got the hungries and a saw this ziplock bag of biscuits on the kitchen counter and I just had to have them. In my haste to satisfy my hunger I failed to notice that my wife's name was written on the baggy. I took a couple out and spread some jam on the top. Down the hatch. They were delicious! I thought to myself, "Boy! These gluten-free flour mixes are getting better and better. 

About 20 minutes later my wife noted that her biscuit baggy was somewhat depleted and then it dawned on both of us that I had been glutened and not just a little bit. We went to bed but about three hours later my body began to purge itself of the gluten invasion from both ends. 

The lesson from this experience is that extra pains need to be taken with visual clues to distinguish gluten containing foods from non gluten containing foods in the fridge and cupboards, especially if they look alike. I have asked my wife to put food coloring in my biscuits from now on.

I think kareng probably hit the nail on the head. You are absorbing nutrients better.

And to pick up with what cyclinglady added, for years the medical community villainized fat and we were told to eliminate as much fat from our diets (especially animal sources and tropical oils) as possible. That whole approach is now being called into question and we now know the big driver in our first world obesity and diabetes problem is not really fat but instead, too many calories consumed via carbs. Carbs create a spike in blood sugar followed by quick drop in the same. It is this drop in blood sugar that makes us ravenously hungry. Persistent hunger will win out over time in a culture where food is plentiful and is why the vast majority of people eventually fall off the diet/weight loss bandwagon. 

Fat on the other hand, is metabolized more slowly and does not cause these wild swings in blood sugar levels. Fat satisfies and has more staying power against the "hungries." This is why the so called "keto" diet works so well. 

There is also some evidence that the keto diet has a beneficial effect on HDL cholesterol levels but more longitudinal study needs to be done on that issue: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326320.php. It's beginning to look like that fat in the diet isn't the culprit with regard to cholesterol issues. The real problem seems to be obesity and however we can successfully address that will likely cause correctives in many dimensions of health.

I realize this is anecdotal, but my son and his wife who are in their mid 30's have been doing keto for several years. They both have lost a significant amount of weight and look very healthy. They will intentionally go off of keto for brief periods on purpose to balance out some potential nutritional deficits that may develop since the keto diet eliminates a lot fruits and vegetables (they are high in carbs).

Having said all that, there are those people who have dangerously high cholesterol levels due to genetic factors. These are the people who probably should be on a statin, even though statins have their own set of risks.

I am not a doctor and this input, as Posterboy is fond of saying, should not be construed as medical advice. However, perhaps it will stimulate you to do more research into these issues. And you might do well to seek medical counsel on these matters from a variety of healthcare perspectives. Second (and third) opinions are always wise.

I have found, and I think a lot of other Celiacs would agree, that we cannot do a good job of eliminating gluten from our diets when eating out, even when being conscience food detectives.

I was just using ataxia as an example of a non-celiac gluten-related neurological disorder.

Yes, you would need to go back on gluten to get a valid blood test screen and if you have been off of gluten for a significant period of time so as to allow for healing of the small bowel mucosa then an endoscopy would not be definitive either.

Have you totally eliminated gluten from your diet or just cut way down? Have you educated yourself about cross contamination and how gluten is disguised via terminology in prepared foods and how it can even be included in some meds as a filler? My concern here is that people who are self-diagnosed often aren't convinced enough that they have celiac disease in order to be scrupulous about avoiding it. The result of just cutting down but not totally eliminating gluten can be improvements with regard to gross symptoms but continued damage to intestinal villi resulting in longer term medical problems such as osteoporosis and other diseases caused by poor absorption of vitamins and minerals. When there is an actual clinical diagnosis of celiac disease people tend to take it more seriously.

Zach,

There are also gluten-related neurological problems (such as ataxia) that are not caused by Celiac Disease. Not all people negatively affected by gluten have Celiac Disease. If you have not done so, you need to get tested to find out if you actually have celiac disease. The first step is a blood test which if positive, needs to be followed up by an endoscopy which is the gold standard for diagnosis of celiac disease. In Celiac Disease the mucosa of he small bowel is damaged by an autoimmune reaction to gluten and that separates it from simple gluten intolerance or other gluten caused problems. In the end, the anecdote is the same - eliminating gluten from the diet - but you need to know what you are dealing with. The person with non celiac disease gluten-related health issues may need to be less scrupulous in avoiding gluten. That is to say, they may be able to consume foods that don't have gluten as an intentional ingredient but have small amounts of gluten because of cross contamination. The person with celiac disease must be much more diligent to avoid even trace amounts of gluten which find there way into products during manufacture or preparation in facilities that also produce or cook products that contain wheat, barley or rye. 

It's not unusual for me to go for months without a migraine. When I get them, they come in clusters. Too early to draw any conclusions yet.

Gut health is turning out to be related to more and more medical issues as time goes on. It is a biome that is very complex, however, and we are not even sure at this point what constitutes a healthy balance of microbiota. We have been able to identify some things that apparently can upset that balance such as overuse of antibiotics and long term PPI use and we can sometimes sort of successfully treat (usually with antibiotics) conditions that are the result of microbiota imbalances, albeit this can create other imbalances. I think the lynch pin to all of this is getting a better understanding of what constitutes a healthy balance of microbiota in the gut. Until we have that piece in place we are taking shots in the dark and hoping to hit the target.

CL, thanks for the clarification. I was asking liv if the h1 she was taking was making her drowsy and assuming she was using one of the first generation antihistamines. But I was confused about the h2 not being a second generation antihistamine. 

CL, are you responding to what I asked in quoting my post. I think you are saying what I said or what my question to live implied.

Live, does the h1 make you sleepy? Why not some of the newer antihistamines (like Zyrtec) that aren't so sedative? Do they not have the same beneficial effect for the the symptoms you are treating?

I have recently begun a three day rotation of breakfast foods and supper variation takes care of itself. I sometimes get in a rut with lunches (Kirkland protein bars and I ate all the oatmeal ones and now on the dark chocolate ones, unfortunately). Doing in a turkey cheese sandwich for lunch every two to four days. Haven't had a migraine of late.

I'm still not seeing it in those links. The connection between tryamines and histamines, I mean. Are you equating them?

Posterboy, sorry if there was confusion about what I said regarding Imitrex. To be clear, for me, Imitrex is an effective antidote for migraines. Works best if I take it at the first signs of headache coming on but if I wait longer it still works well but takes about 45 minutes to begin working.

Posterboy, I did not see in this link you provided any mention of a connection between tryamine and histamine storms.

"But my bet is on Tyramine ....it is connected to a histamine storm.

Here is a nice Webmd article on it.

https://www.webmd.com/migraines-headaches/tyramine-and-migraines#1"

Did I miss something?

"The reason the Imitrex triggers your histamine storm is MAO/DAO shares the same pathway."

Huh? Imitrex seems to counteract the effects of histamine storms I'm thinking. It takes away a migraine which can be triggered by high histamine levels.

Imitrex is a vasoconstrictor. Most medical people feel migraines are brought on by dilation of the blood vessels supplying blood flow to the brain.

My head is spinning!