The Culprit

So, for years now, I have struggled with a variety of digestive issues (stomach pain after eating, gurgling noises, loose bm's, bloating, nausea, etc) that would generally come and go. I typically chalked it up to my known lactose intolerance, which I have apparently had since I was born. I also typically ignored the fact that these symptoms would appear even after meals that didn't include dairy of any sort - I'm not sure why I ignored something so blatantly obvious as that, but most likely, it probably had something to do with the fact that I really didn't want (or need) another food allergy.

Lactose intolerance is, after all, hard enough to live with all by itself (I absolutely love dairy) - worsened by the fact that up until recently, I was a vegetarian. And if you've ever been a vegetarian, you know that a good 1/3 of your diet consists of dairy. The other 1/3 of veggies, and the last 1/3 of carbs. And while there are various products on the market to help individuals like myself deal with lactose intolerance, in my honest opinion, they don't really work. More often than not, I end up just dealing with it - I might go out for some ice cream (and as a precautionary measure, take some lactaid pills beforehand, just in case), but always with complete knowledge that I will simply suffer for it later.

This past winter, however, for reasons I still have yet to discover, my symptoms grew far worse than ever before. No longer did they manifest merely every now and then, and they were definitely not simply tied to only meals including dairy - they were increasingly consistent in both frequency and severity. Pretty much every meal I ate caused my stomach to ache painfully afterward, and I felt fatigued and bloated all the time. My bm's were clearly abnormal - up to as many as eight times a day and always loose and discolored. My stomach and digestive system would make strange noises, and there were many days I could do nothing but lie on the couch in agony. I tried avoiding all things dairy, but even such a sacrifice as that proved ultimately unhelpful. The symptoms persisted relentlessly, and I was left wondering what on Earth had gone wrong with me.

What confused me the most about the onset of all of these health problems was the fact that I was (and still am) a relatively healthy individual (or at the very least I most certainly strive to be one). As mentioned, I was a vegetarian (for 9 years) so I ate a great deal of vegetables and whole grains. I rarely eat anything made from refined flour - no white bread, no white rice - we're talking all whole wheat, whole grain breads, pastas, brown rice, and so on. I exercise regularly, drink plenty of water, am an avid green tea connoisseur, and consider one of my top 5 favorite foods to be strawberries. I actively try to do all of the "healthy" things so often promoted as being part of a "healthy lifestyle".

So WHY was I having so many health issues???

I decided to take the next logical course of action (that is, after several months of concerned insistence from Kevin, his parents, my father, and most of my friends) and go see my doctor about my many health problems. It made sense - he's a medical practitioner, he'll be able to diagnose and thusly treat my condition. I assumed that within a few months' time, I would be back to a normal, healthy individual.

Unfortunately, my doctor was not as helpful as I had initially hoped.

Knowing my history for severe allergies, he first prescribed me another oral allergy medicine, thinking it might clear up my symptoms. No such luck. At the next visit, he recommended I begin taking fiber supplements and tentatively diagnosed me with IBS. I did as prescribed, but still saw very little change in my condition. He ordered a stool sample and some blood tests, but again, still found nothing. My ob/gyn suggested I start taking probiotics. I did, and along with the fiber supplements, noticed a very slight improvement but still nothing worth noting. My doctor then referred me to both an Allergist and a Gastroenterologist, but unfortunately, with nothing but catastrophic health insurance coverage, and Kevin having suffered a recent job loss, and each visit costing potentially $800 or more, these were avenues I could not pursue. It seemed as though nothing would help. I began to wonder if I was doomed to forever suffer discomfort after every meal I ate, and if my digestive tract would ever be normal again.

I began doing my own research via the interwebs. I started with the symptom checker tool at webmd, and explored the various possible diagnoses contained therein. One possible explanation that came up often in my research was food allergies and intolerances. Again, while deep down inside really hoping this was not the case, I decided it was time to start giving the thought some merit. After all, I do suffer from some pretty severe allergies along with one already-diagnosed food intolerance - lactose. The likelihood of my possibly suffering from another intolerance was that much greater.

My findings all lead to the same inevitable conclusion: I would have to undergo an elimination diet in order to accurately diagnose whether or not I was suffering from any kind of food allergy or intolerance.

Using information gathered from my research about the top food allergens in the U.S. along with knowledge of which of those allergens my diet included, I embarked upon a 6-week-long food trial. I elected to completely cut out not just dairy (which I already knew irritated my digestive system) from my diet, but also wheat as well. Since, in my attempts to be a healthier individual, I ate so many products containing wheat (bread, pasta, etc) - and truthfully, a great portion of my diet consisted of this grain (we're talking breakfast, lunch, and dinner!) - I figured it was the first logical allergen to check.

Now, cutting out wheat is not nearly as easy as one might imagine. Wheat gluten, the specific allergen in wheat, is in practically everything! Not just is it in the obvious wheat pastas, breads, cereals, tortillas, breadcrumbs, and so on, but it's also hidden in everything else from almost all baked goods, most processed cheeses and lunch meats, soups, sauces, dressings, marinades, and even chocolate! Label reading would be a MUST if I had any hope of success.

I decided to go the all-or-nothing route, figuring it would be the surest path to success - I would go to my local natural, organic food stores, and I would stock up on everything I would need for the next month. Gluten-free pasta, sandwich bread, tortillas, cereal - you name it. If it was something I ate regularly, I got it, but in gluten-free form. All of my meals - breakfast, lunch, and dinner - would be entirely gluten-free. It would be somewhat pricey venture, as most gluten-free products are considerably more expensive than their wheat-containing counterparts. But, it could also be worth it. If, after 4-6 weeks, I failed to see any improvement in my condition, I would know for sure that I was not allergic to wheat gluten, and I'd be able to move on with my life.

After the very 1st week, I knew I was doomed. My symptoms disappeared almost entirely.

By the end of week 4, there was no room for doubt - eliminating wheat and all things gluten (along with any cow-milk dairy) from my diet made all of my symptoms completely disappear. I felt 100% better than I had felt in years. I felt like a normal human being again. I felt healthy.

After all of that - all of the doctors visits, the months and years of digestive discomfort, the confusion over what was wrong with me - I finally know. I can't say I'm entirely pleased with the discovery.

The fact that I am gluten-intolerant (along with being lactose-intolerant as well) is certainly making my life more difficult. Eating out is like navigating a minefield - it is near impossible. Buying gluten-free products at the store is unavoidably expensive, and requires that I shop at three different stores just to get the best prices. Some of my favorite pass-times have to now be re-evaluated - baking cookies, brownies, homemade bread - all of these activities have to now be altered with gluten-free baking flour (which is honestly quite the science experiment, since I'm never entirely sure how it'll turn out), and even something as simple as going over to Kevin's parents' house for dinner is now a stressful experience, as I have to worry about whether or not the dinner they're serving is safe for me to eat (and in most cases, it isn't) - in which case, I am faced with either not eating much of anything, or eating what they serve, and then suffering greatly for it later.

And perhaps the greatest difficulty that I'm finding so far with this ongoing war with gluten is the fact that unlike my lactose intolerance, on those occasions that I do have to slip up and eat something with gluten in it, the suffering is far worse and way more far-reaching than it ever was when I would just have a little ice cream now and then. Instead of suffering for a few hours, I end up suffering for a few days. Definitely doesn't feel worth it, that's for sure.

In any case, I am thankful for one thing. I am SO thankful that I'm no longer a vegetarian. If I were, there would literally be almost nothing I could eat. The fact that I now eat meat gives me a great many more gluten-free options than I would otherwise have.

So I suppose that's the silver lining in all of this.

It's funny, this blog started off being about my transition from vegetarianism to meat-eating. And now, it appears as though it has a new direction: my transition from eating like a normal human being, to eating gluten-free.

Expect more posts in the future about my trials and tribulations concerning gluten-free living. I'm almost guaranteed to have a plethora of new material, thanks to my new diet.