Lets Talk GLUTEN
I’ve been “gluten free” since Friday evening, and it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster ride so far. I woke up on Saturday morning feeling a bit disappointed that I didn’t miraculously feel better, but I told myself that I needed to give it a week before I would start to feel anything at all. Having this in the back of my mind has definitely helped. I’ve had chronic pain in my side for about a year or so now, and if the issue is what I think it is, it will take some time for my body to heal – definitely more than 12 hours, at least. Throughout the day I continued to feel pain in my side and back, and had a terrible headache creep in around dinner time. Throughout the evening my muscles ached (in particular my left arm), my stomach was upset, spots on my skin felt incredibly tender to touch, and by the time I decided to go to bed early to try and sleep it off (I think I was in bed by 8pm), my teeth were aching. The only thing that made me feel better about this (and not like I was possibly dying), was reading other people’s stories of gluten withdrawal online. This gave me some comfort that it was possibly a withdrawal causing these symptoms, and that it would pass. Thankfully, I woke up on Sunday morning with significant less pain in my side, and slight residual pain from a bad headache. As silly as it may sound, it feels like I am healing.
Moving forward, I am going to speak to my doctor about my concerns. I believe I’ve been tested for celiac before, but I want to confirm this fact. I think if I was initially told that I was negative for celiac I wouldn’t have worried about it too much, but I now know you can be sensitive or intolerant to gluten without being celiac. If that’s the case, I want to look into other avenues for testing for allergies or intolerance to wheat. If I can confirm that this is the case, I think I may also see a nutritionist to get a little bit of guidance as to what my diet should look like, if it does indeed need to continue as gluten free. I’d love to hear from any of you that live a gluten free life, or have lived with the same issues I’ve been having lately. And if anyone has a good gluten free recipe for chocolate chip cookies, I’d love to hear it.