Hi everyone,
I am going to write a introductory post on the main forum, but have just started my gluten free, dairy free, soy free (sorta, messing up on this a lot I think) and egg free diet. I have been doing this for about 2 weeks. I was finally starting to feel better, but then yesterday must have ate something that bothered me today...I got several bouts of D today, back pain, and leg aching. I had gluten free oats in the morning (anyone still react to that?) and made a indian curry for dinner..maybe too much curry powder, or coconut milk...or maybe the whole brown rice was problem..I am frustrated I have cut out so much and was proud of myself for making a good meal, and now I am hurting today. How do you find out exactly what food bothers you, or can you still flare even though you are eating the right things??
new and trying to figure this out
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rachdemots
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new and trying to figure this out
NewdiagnosedinSD
Hi again,
I forgot to mention in my response to your other post on the Main Message Board that gluten sensitivity is also a common cause of arthritis symptoms and especially lower back pains. That used to practically eat me alive before I changed my diet.
IMO, the experts who claim that it's safe to eat certified gluten-free oats on a GF diet are just plain wrong. They reached that mistaken conclusion by using trials that were way too short to allow the problems to surface. I personally did a challange using gluten-free oats several years ago, and it took 6 weeks for the D to begin, but after it began, it took another 6 weeks to stop (even though I stopped eating the oats immediately when the reaction began). I verified my results by 2 single exposures a couple of weeks apart after I was back in remission, and yep, they both cleaned me out a few hours after the exposure, so I am definitely sensitive to avenin (the prolamin protein in oats that's equivalent to gluten in wheat). After comparing notes, it appears that most of us here are also sensitive to avenin, so oats is out for most of us. There are a few members however, who seem to be able to tolerate it.
Most of us cannot handle much brown rice, because of the fiber. Fiber is contraindicated for this disease, at least until the gut heals. Therefore if we eat rice, we choose white rice.
Many of us order stool tests from EnteroLab. That lab offers the only tests for food sensitivities that are accurate and reliable.
But early on, as you surmise, it's possible to occasionally react for no obvious reason, simply because the body does not stop producing antibodies immediately, and some of them are persistent. The half-life of most food antibodies (such as casein, soy, egg albumen, etc.) is only about 6 days, but anti-gliadin antibodies have a half-life of 120 days. That means that if our anti-gliadin antibody level is high when we begin the diet, it can still take a year (or 2 or 3) before the level declines to below the threshold where it will produce a positive test result for the EnteroLab stool tests. Their tests are so accurate that they can usually still detect anti-gliadin antibodies up to 2 years after the diet is adopted, and they can reliably detect them for at least a year after the diet is adopted.
By comparison, the blood tests used by mainstream medicine to screen for celiac disease will rarely show a positive result after a patient has been on a gluten-free diet for a month or 2. They are pathetically insensitive. A celiac must have accumulated at least a Marsh 3 level of villus damage before the blood tests will reliably yield a positive result. In most cases, that much damage takes years to accrue. That's why the average length of time from the onset of symptoms to an official diagnosis of celiac disease takes an average of 9.7 years in this country. It's also the main reason why only approximately 5 % of celiacs are ever diagnosed.
Here's a link to EnteroLab, if you are interested:
https://www.enterolab.com/default.aspx
Of course, some of us (including me, because I wasn't even aware of the lab back when I was still reacting) used/use an elimination diet to figure out our food sensitivities. The elimination diet is much cheaper, but it's also much slower and more frustrating.
Tex
I forgot to mention in my response to your other post on the Main Message Board that gluten sensitivity is also a common cause of arthritis symptoms and especially lower back pains. That used to practically eat me alive before I changed my diet.
IMO, the experts who claim that it's safe to eat certified gluten-free oats on a GF diet are just plain wrong. They reached that mistaken conclusion by using trials that were way too short to allow the problems to surface. I personally did a challange using gluten-free oats several years ago, and it took 6 weeks for the D to begin, but after it began, it took another 6 weeks to stop (even though I stopped eating the oats immediately when the reaction began). I verified my results by 2 single exposures a couple of weeks apart after I was back in remission, and yep, they both cleaned me out a few hours after the exposure, so I am definitely sensitive to avenin (the prolamin protein in oats that's equivalent to gluten in wheat). After comparing notes, it appears that most of us here are also sensitive to avenin, so oats is out for most of us. There are a few members however, who seem to be able to tolerate it.
Most of us cannot handle much brown rice, because of the fiber. Fiber is contraindicated for this disease, at least until the gut heals. Therefore if we eat rice, we choose white rice.
Many of us order stool tests from EnteroLab. That lab offers the only tests for food sensitivities that are accurate and reliable.
But early on, as you surmise, it's possible to occasionally react for no obvious reason, simply because the body does not stop producing antibodies immediately, and some of them are persistent. The half-life of most food antibodies (such as casein, soy, egg albumen, etc.) is only about 6 days, but anti-gliadin antibodies have a half-life of 120 days. That means that if our anti-gliadin antibody level is high when we begin the diet, it can still take a year (or 2 or 3) before the level declines to below the threshold where it will produce a positive test result for the EnteroLab stool tests. Their tests are so accurate that they can usually still detect anti-gliadin antibodies up to 2 years after the diet is adopted, and they can reliably detect them for at least a year after the diet is adopted.
By comparison, the blood tests used by mainstream medicine to screen for celiac disease will rarely show a positive result after a patient has been on a gluten-free diet for a month or 2. They are pathetically insensitive. A celiac must have accumulated at least a Marsh 3 level of villus damage before the blood tests will reliably yield a positive result. In most cases, that much damage takes years to accrue. That's why the average length of time from the onset of symptoms to an official diagnosis of celiac disease takes an average of 9.7 years in this country. It's also the main reason why only approximately 5 % of celiacs are ever diagnosed.
Here's a link to EnteroLab, if you are interested:
https://www.enterolab.com/default.aspx
Of course, some of us (including me, because I wasn't even aware of the lab back when I was still reacting) used/use an elimination diet to figure out our food sensitivities. The elimination diet is much cheaper, but it's also much slower and more frustrating.
Tex
It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.