For over a year, I’ve been suffering stomach-pain and fatigue - the latter symptom I put down to my job as a carer. I’ve had two colonoscopies, ostensibly looking for signs of cancer (none detected, thankfully).
Then last Saturday evening, I heated up a quiche for my Dad and I to have with salad for dinner. The following day my stomach was once again playing me up.
I’ve suspected bread and pastry to be at blame for a while now, so I stopped eating them.
After three days of a gluten-free diet (not even a beer, sob), I felt great.
By Wednesday evening I couldn’t believe how good I felt - pain-free and no fatigue whatsoever.
I honestly felt a decade younger.
So I’m now dedicated to a gluten-free future.
I know relatively little about this journey, only what I have gleaned from searches.
So, anybody else got any stories of the Gluten-Free Life?
Recipes? Recommended Brands? Other advice?
Let us know here.
I’m glad you figured out what was bothering your tum! I have no insights into gluten-free stuff, but am looking forward to see what others have to suggest!
Just one related thought, that may or may not apply…
My sister had really bad headaches for years, also neck pain. She used painkillers, physical therapy, counseling for work-related stress, I don’t know what else. Finally she saw a specialist and followed a strict elimination diet to see if she had food allergies/sensitivities. It turned out that the culprit was something specific that’s in wheat—but not gluten. So, she can eat other grains that have gluten (rye, barley)—just not wheat. But if she buys “gluten-free” foodstuffs, she knows that she won’t be getting wheat, which is handy.
Anyway, my thought is just that if you have the opportunity or resources to do an elimination diet with a medical practitioner, you might possibly narrow things down for yourself, or at least find out for sure. On the other hand, though, if your own experiments have satisfied you and you’re able to manage your diet and feel better, then great! I myself have discovered over the years—just from my own observations and casual experimenting—that there are certain foods or types of foods that reliably cause me physical distress, and my health is much better if I simply avoid them.
I’m glad that you’re feeling better! Good luck! Happy learning and happy eating!
Get it formally diagnosed (especially as you live in a civilized country with nationalized medical care);
Take it even more seriously than you already are, because even when you don’t feel sick you’re still causing permanent damage to the lining of your GI tract (and no one wants a colostomy bag if they can help it);
Understand that there is gluten in so many things most people never think of, like soy sauce (switch to tamari sauce instead).
From what I’ve read, I may have a problem doing that.
If I were still eating gluten, it would apparently be reasonably easy to diagnose whether that is the problem. However, if I’m a week-free of it, then it’s already left my body and so makes it harder to diagnose, again, apparently.
But I’m not putting myself through any more pain just to get a diagnosis when I’m feeling so much better, and dog knows how long it’d take to get diagnosed in this country anyway. It’s been a year of second-guessing by the docs as it is. (I’m not dissing them - they’re under enough pressure).
Oh, I’m all in on this now.
For the first time in forever, I’m taking my reading glasses to the supermarket.
We’ve certainly all read enough to know the NHS is only a shadow of its former self, which is terrible in so many ways.
But, if the damage is already there; you don’t have to go back on a gluten diet to prove the issue. The correct way to diagnose this is to get an endoscopy to get tissue sample(s) from your intestinal lining.
An endoscopy is top-down, so the prep is simply fasting for a bit first, not the whole colonoscopy rigamarole.
Can you get an appointment with a gastroenterologist rather than a general doctor? That’s the way to go.
You’ll want to be careful with chips/fries. If the restaurant uses a fryer for both breaded items and the chips, then the chips can have cross contamination
There is a blood test (SED rate?) that (I guess?) looks for that immune response. So, yeah, if you’ve already cut back on the gluten, then you don’t already have the baseline from when you were eating it.
That said: according to our celiac specialist, this blood test is considered sufficient to doctors in the EU, i.e. if it tests high before & then drops after cutting the gluten, then that means the patient has celiac, & why put them thru an endoscopy (& anesthesia etc.)? As far as this dr. was concerned, the blood test sufficed. (I don’t have celiac, but one of us does, according to those results.)
The other thing is that the inflammation of the villi due to celiac means that the person is effectively lactose intolerant (whilebthe inflammation is occurring), because the part of the villi that absorbs/processes milk is buried beneath the inflammation (& the small intestine there is more of a smooth tube inside instead of being villious[?]). Once the inflammation subsides & the villi are restored, then that improves.
Presumably I’m missing some other important aspect of why soy sauce should have wheat in it, but if not, just how cheap does a company have to be that they’re cutting the soy with wheat?!
Good info, thanks.
I figure if there’s no obvious downside to going gluten-free (health-wise), then I might as well stick to it.
If I’ve got twenty years left, I’ll be happy, and I’m not gonna miss white bread.
The one who has celiac dealt with it pretty dang well, considering the relatively young age at diagnosis. Mostly misses pastries (but still really enjoys baking). I think I would miss pasta - regular shapes like lasagna, penne & spaghetti are easy enough to come by, but more specialized shapes like (right-sized) rigatoni are rare (& more expensive), while I’ve never seen cavatappi (for example). (Also the corn/rice flour pastas are easier on the digestion then legume-based pastas.)
It gets easier & easier to find good things to eat at restaurants, where we live, & around large population centers in general
I feel you. I’m uninsured in the US too. If anyone in the US wants to know I learned from watching my mom. First do not mention gluten or health concerns at the doctors at any point before the procedure, eat lots of it, let the colonoscopy find it by “accident” so that they don’t charge extra or use the diagnostic code for the procedure to deny coverage.
I’m waiting to do one a few more years TBH because after a decade I kinda don’t care anymore.
Also: xanthan gum is magic.
and bread freezes really well for those hard to keep and expensive gf occasional sundries.
I am never in my life suffering that again.
The first time I went I had to go through it without sedation as there was no-one to drive me home.
It was anyway a failure as the 'scope proved too large (apparently I’m a tight-ass ).
The second time they sent me to be attacked with a smaller 'scope (yes, my thoughts exactly - why didn’t you use the smaller 'scope in the first place, instead of the Jumbotron!) and I had sedation.
Said sedation did not work.
SIL drove me home, bless her, although I was of clear enough head to do it myself.
Anyway, no thanks to that again.
