Thursday, October 21, 2010

Welcome to my gluten free blog!

Welcome to my new blog!  I've written this blog to help me and maybe other people with eating gluten free!  

My gluten story:

I am a 51 year old middle-aged mom of two young adult children and I'll be a grandma come January!  Exciting stuff!

I've suffered from allergies, anxiety, stomach issues, fibromyalgia and various other complaints over the years for as long as I can remember. Lately, though, maybe the last eight years or so, I have had more stomach problems than usual.  OK not exactly STOMACH problems but diarrhea and then constipation, back and forth.  Yuck!  I take a lot of supplements and vitamins, eat a fairly healthy diet with a LOT of fruit and veggies and plenty of fiber.  STILL had these problems back and forth!  My doctor suggested IBS as the most likely cause but to me IBS was not so much an answer as a set of symptoms that gets lumped together in the category of, "hell if I know what's causing it, we'll call it IBS!" I know that there are good medicines out there for IBS but it just seems to me that this is putting a band aid on a potentially larger problem.  Or maybe the right word would be a "systemic" problem.

A few weeks ago I started in with the "back and forth" without the "forth" and was really sick.  Nothing stayed in me at all!  I decided to do the BRAT diet and added yogurt as well to make a BRATY diet.  All was well for a while until I had a piece of toast, the T in the BRAT diet.  After maybe an hour all hell broke loose!  Aha!  Seems I may have found my answer!  That was the last bit of gluten I've eaten.

Almost right away I felt really good!  More energy, no more "back and forth" problems.  After a week or so I started getting tired and the muscles in my legs were sore.  Seems I may have a little gluten withdrawal going on now.  Other than that, though, I feel great!

Why didn't I go to the doctor to get tested?  Well first of all, I had been really sick and was off of gluten for a few days.  The blood test won't work if there's no gluten in your system.  Great.  Did I want to add it back in after going through all that?  NO way!  The second reason is the other test for celiac.  An intestinal biopsy.  Hmm, no thanks.  I figured I could go gluten free and save my $35 co-pay for the specialist only for him to tell me to try the gluten free diet.  Uh huh, sure.  That $35 can buy me a lot of gluten free products!

So, welcome again to the blog!  My plan is to review products, recipes and other items relating to eating gluten free.  I also will post any recipes that I've come up with.  Please feel free to comment and say "HI," set me straight, add more information or whatever!! 

4 comments:

  1. Perhaps if you have a colonoscopy some time, you can get them to do "one stop shopping" for official confirmation? Just a thought.

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  2. I'm the 2nd person to comment, but I'm your first follower on the new blog! Hope it works out for you!

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  3. Love it! Can't wait to see the recipes you post. I'll be commenting along the way :)

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  4. Yay for you! Have I mentioned how happy I am you figured out what's been bothering you? :)

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