I am updating my
website this weekend - hopefully. Under Health Tips I wrote a short
article on Gluten.
As I was writing it, from my own
experience in the last few months, I thought, wait - I should post this on my
blog and maybe get a conversation going.
I'm sure that some of you out
there are having problems tolerating gluten or maybe you haven't realized that
was what might be causing some of your problems.
Or if you are having a challenge
with Gluten, how are you coping? What do you eat that works for you?
This is a bit of the repeat from
my website. Up until a month or two ago I didn’t worry about gluten. I've
had very few allergies or food challenges in my life. I had cut back on bread
because of the carbs and I didn’t eat a lot of wheat products normally. Then I
had one of those urges and I pigged out and had three slices of multigrain
bread. I got severe abdominal pains, like sharp knives stabbing my abdomen. I
felt ill, worse than any fly. The pain eased slightly day by day, but the
episode last for ten days.
I decided I must have a gluten
allergy. I also read an article that said we were exposed to more and more
wheat/gluten in our diet. It’s added as filler in soups, sauces, tomato sauce
and I don’t remember what else, but they are hidden. We don’t even know about
them. They aren’t actually listed on the ingredients section. So we are being
exposed to more and more of it, which is probably why we have more people
developing problems with digesting gluten.
So I am now trying to avoid wheat
and gluten, apparently this includes barley and rye, and avoid any repeat of my previous episode.
I am staying away from anything
with wheat. I am avoiding canned foods because they sneak in all sorts of
stuff. I am reading labels and eating more rice products. So far it’s working.
With GMO, and hidden ingredients, eating is becoming more difficult, especially
as you get older. I think your body has a harder time coping with over
exposures of some foods.
I got gluten free bread for when
I get a real craving for bread. I get a few tummy rumbles if I eat things with
gluten but nothing like that one episode.
I'm posting a recipe for gluten
free pancakes I got from Livestrong on my website when it's updated. www.beverleybateman.com .
I'd love to here from any of you that have had any experience with this. I'm interested in learning more about it. Please share your information.
I know many people who are going this route. I've not had issues but know that it is a challenge to find food and especially when going out to eat. I wish you much success!
ReplyDeleteI know folks who said they lost weight and felt better when they went gluten-free. Don't know if they stuck with it, though.
ReplyDeleteI have to follow it for the same reasons you do. I also though have an intolerance to fructose which explains why every diet I ever went on caused to to become sick. It is a challenge especially eating out because gluten is hidden everywhere.
ReplyDeleteThanks Melissa. I've never had food issues before. I used to joke about how I could eat anything. You never know whe a challenge might show up.
ReplyDeleteI'm not losing weight but I'm substituting so I'm not cutting back calories. I probably should. :)
ReplyDeleteHi Debby, yikes fructose too - and that's in a lot of foods. I'm finding trying to eat gluten free is difficult enough. And I totally agree about eating. One of our restaurants listed the nutritional content of menu items and I was shocked about how many items contained sugar (? Fructose) - salads; rice bowls.
ReplyDeleteWe have a gluten free house. My son wasn't growing last year and was diagnosed with celiacs disease. Wheat allergies are very serious and it's really hard to stay away from wheat. I read all labels and google certain products to determine if they are gluten free. Good luck!
ReplyDeleteTwo comments, Beverley.
ReplyDeleteFirst, the experience you described does not prove that you are gluten intolerant. For that you need a "single-person experiment," as would be done by a nutritionist. You go 3 weeks without gluten, and monitor symptoms. Then have what used to be your usual dose, and the symptoms should rebound. But even this doesn't allow for the placebo effect: if you believe gluten is harmful, the symptoms are likely to return anyway. So, you need to repeat this experiment a few times, with the "return to gluten" sometimes using ordinary bread, sometimes gluten-free bread that appears the same in every way, with someone else organizing which it is.
Second, there is such an explosion of gluten intolerance that it is likely due not to gluten, but something relatively new. I have heard a health expert say that it's either genetically modified food components or pesticides associated with growing the food or both. Gluten has been with humans for maybe 100,000 years or more -- why should it develop such an impact now?
:)
Bob
Thanks Bob. I agree, my symptoms do not prove I am gluten intolerant, but since I've attempted to remove gluten from my diet I haven't had those symptoms again. I also agree that I should follow the tests as you set up, but if the symptoms don't return I think I'll just eliminate or cut back on gluten. My normal diet is mostly fresh fruit and veges, free-range, hormone and antibiotic free poultry and fish. I seldom eat red meat. And I have never had a food reaction before. Gluten has been around for many years, but in many cases I don't believe it's in the same form as of today. It, and so many other things today are GMO, have pesticides, plus I believe, the pollution in the air attacks the body and the body today is on overdrive trying to find so many things that are not a normal part of our diet and out life. So now we have more problems with our health. Life and eating isn't as easy as it used to be.
DeleteGluten has occurred naturally, and very few people had or have an intolerance to naturally-occurring gluten. But since the 1950's, wheat has been genetically modified to contain more and more gluten, and since then, obesity has increased and food intolerances have increased. Gluten may not be the only culprit, but it's not true that people are eating the same wheat and other foods that we ate even 75 years ago. Gluten may be a problem now because we're eating it in unprecedented amounts--the human body may be designed to handle a bit of natural gluten, but that's not what we're getting.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good discussion, because there are still so many in the medical establishment who insist that gluten is perfectly fine, and what we need is more pills. My own NP, who is otherwise brilliant, has a blind-spot in the area of nutritionally-based symptoms--we just can't get her to admit that some problems, such as allergies and stomach pains, may have to do with the food we eat. But the fact is, when we cut back on gluten and dairy, and we eat natural foods grown close to home, we feel better.
Thanks Katherine. Your comments on the change in wheat and the fact it's being genetically modified and as I said it's used as a filler in so many things (soy sauce), is an excellent point. Wheat, bread, soups, etc. are not the same goods my grandparents ate. That is part of the reason for the increased obesity, especially in children. (Maybe I'll do a blog on that.)
DeleteAs for medical professional, up until recently they never received any nutritional information. And I so agree - fresh fruit and veges (not GMO), meat and poultry - free-range and without hormones and natural grains is so much better for anyone.
Thanks Katherine - great information. I just had an mini-episode and thought maybe it was because of sodium. I had used soy sauce on my brown rice at lunch. When I went back to read the label on Low-Sodium Kikkoman Less Sodium Sauce and the second ingredient was wheat. Wheat - in soy sauce? Who knew?
ReplyDeleteMy website is updated. you can get the pancake recipe there, now, if you're interested.
ReplyDelete