The Gluten Issue

First off, a little bit of good news, we have a quote for asbestos removal that's about half what the previous quotes have been! It's all booked in for the end of the month and I have a new credit card with 0% on purchases for 10 months to pay for it all with. There are a few other things we're going to do on the house in the meantime but they will get their own post.

The rest of this post isn't house related, it's just a chance for me to complain about my current state of health. 

I have long suspected that I have intolerances to gluten and lactose. I was put on soy milk formula as a baby and sandwiches always made me feel yucky. Just the thought of bread is enough to churn my insides. Last year my sister was diagnosed with coeliac disease and I finally decided to go and get tested. I had attempted it years ago, only to be told I'd need to eat a 'normal' diet of at least 2 pieces of bread a day, I wasn't interested in doing that as I knew it would make me sick, instead I've had a self diagnosed gluten intolerance for years and eaten a low gluten diet.

I would have been happy to continue like that, eating gluten only when it suited me and dealing with the consequences but my reactions had become worse of late and with my sister being diagnosed with CD and my understanding of the damage it really does to your body and the long term issues it can cause (Infertility and gastrointestinal cancer anyone?) spurred me into action.

I had a positive blood test and have an endoscopy booked in a month's time, in the meantime, I'm not back on a 'normal' gluten diet to ensure there is damage to my intestine when the endoscopy occurs. I also had a test for lactose intolerance, the good news there is that I'm in the clear, my reactions to milk over the years is likely to be a bi product of coeliac disease.

Eating gluten hasn't been/isn't much fun. SJ hates that I'm doing it and considers me to be poisoning myself, it's also affecting my immune system and I can't shake my current cold. I've put on weight, which may just be all the extra carbs and the fact that I've given up on any exercise as I'm just too tired to bother a lot of the time. It's also hard to concentrate and focus. My mum wants me to get a rush on my endoscopy so I don't have to keep it up with the gluten filled diet, but I'm a little concerned still that I won't get a positive result if I don't tough it out for long enough. That said, I'm hating my body and the way I am feeling right now, I think even if I am not diagnosed with coeliac disease I will be following a gluten free (or mostly) diet for the rest of my life.

I've had some people sympathise that I won't be able to eat a lot of foods ever again, but to be honest, I don't care in the least. Being GF now is a lot easier than it would have been 20 years ago and rice has always been my favourite carb anyway.

For interest, and for information if anyone out there thinks they may have CD, I find this infographic (sourced from the Gluten Dude) to be quite interesting. I can 'sympathise' with around 40 of the symptoms mentioned, though some may very well be from other causes, it will be interesting to see how I feel after I have been completely gluten free for a while.