50 Shades of Gluten

This article is everything I could say but have no authority.  Interestingly enough, the Cyrex test recommended is the same test I had to determine my gluten sensitivities.  Just click on the picture or the link below to read the entire article.

50 Shades of Gluten

So Gradual I Didn't Even Realize It

I told you last week that I would post a current picture.  I took a picture over the weekend, modeling my cute Grey's Anatomy Intern t-shirt that my adorable sister and handsome brother-in-law sent me for Easter.

My sister wanted me to see the significance of the pictures so she did a couple of side-by-side comparisons.

The picture on the left was taken Memorial Day weekend 2012.

The picture on the left was taken in August 2012.

I showed these pictures to some dear friends over the weekend and they said the "before" pictures were taken at a bad angle and that I didn't really look that big.  But I did.  I've only lost 24 pounds so far but mostly, I've lost a whole lot of inflammation.  The difference is shocking.

For me, the knowledge that my system does not react kindly to grains, refined sugar and dairy has made the difference.  See the difference between what I looked like eating that kind of diet and now is enough to keep me going.  Well, that and the fact that I'm down TWO pant sizes and I plan on wearing a dress this weekend to my Aunt's wedding that I haven't worn in almost two years.

I'm so grateful that I'm on the road to health.  The road is definitely long and has ups and downs and I'm really not even half-way to my final destination of complete health AND wellness.  

Now, if I could just get the fatigue under control...

The Sunshine Vitamin

Sunshine.  That was one of the terms of endearment my Dad used when talking to me.  It was also part of my CB (remember CB radios?) moniker - "California Sunshine Girl".  Over the years, the sunshine part just stuck.  I'm not exactly sure how that name came about...I believe it came from a "groovy" t-shirt I had when I was seven or eight years old and it said "California Sunshine Girl" on it with a rainbow, an outline of the State of California, flowers and a VW bus.  I think.  Either way, now that my Dad died, no one really calls me that anymore.  Even if someone did, it wouldn't be the same.

Anyway, I want to talk today about Vitamin D.  Commonly known as the "Sunshine Vitamin", Vitamin D is important for our overall good health and keeps our bones strong and healthy.  What most people don't realize is that Vitamin D is also important in making sure our heart, lungs and brain function properly and helps fight infection. 

We are unique in that our bodies can create our own Vitamin D just from exposure to sunlight.  Unfortunately, most of us don't produce adequate amounts of it and Vitamin D deficiency is a growing epidemic in the United States.  

At my yearly physical in 2009, my doctor and I were discussing at great length, my symptoms of fatigue, feelings of depression, heart palpitations and weight gain.  She had read a recent study regarding the correlation between Vitamin D deficiency and the symptoms I described.  She ordered a blood test to measure my levels - the acceptable level of Vitamin D in the blood varies depending on which report you read (between 30 and 70 is ideal) but my doctor wanted to see mine over 50 nanograms per milliliter.  When the test results came back, my level was 17.  

I started on a prescription-strength dose of Vitamin D and took 50,000 IUs a week.  The recommended daily dose is 400 IUs/day.  I took that prescription for more than a year.  The highest my levels ever reached was 26 and that was back in 2010.  When my level was tested back in January, I was at 23.

My sister and I share many of the same symptoms - fatigue, feelings of depression, being overweight.  When I found out that low levels of Vitamin D could be the cause for this, I immediately told her to get her level checked.  She was at a 13.  I told my doctor and she said that was the lowest she'd ever heard of. 

I also found out that my Mom had really low levels of Vitamin D and was taking a weekly supplement.  Hi.  Why didn't I know this? 

If you are feeling symptoms of fatigue, depression, hazy thoughts - basically the same symptoms as Seasonal Affective Disorder, you could be Vitamin D deficient.  It can be fixed with as little as 10 minutes a day of exposure to sunlight and a supplement.  400 IUs a day is really all you need and you will feel better.  Unless you have extreme symptoms of deficiency - then you should talk to your doctor.

Now, for me, Vitamin D is more important than ever.  There is evidence to support the important role Vitamin D plays in promoting - both directly and indirectly - regulatory and suppressor T-cell populations.  Controlling these is essential in managing autoimmune diseases like Hashimoto's Disease.

I'm taking a super emulsified Vitamin D supplement in liquid form - 10,000 IUs daily. Despite it's bright yellow color, it tastes like fish oil.  When I take it, I tell myself it's like drinking sunshine.

Maybe I am the Sunshine Girl after all.

2nd Runner Up

The 2nd most asked question is not really a question but more of a statement, "You must be feeling so much better!" (the exclamation point included).

To which I reply as if it was a question, "Not yet." (no exclamation point included)

That is the short answer.  No.  I'm not feeling "so much better".  In fact, some days, I feel worse than ever.

Right now I'm going through a hyper-thyroid phase and it's wreaking havoc on my system.  Heart palpitations, extreme cold and intermittent sleep patterns.

The long answer is that there are a lot of positive changes happening and the program I'm on is working.

For instance:

1. I'm losing weight.  This is a HUGE change.  If you haven't seen me in person for awhile, the difference is quite noticeable.  Maybe I'll post a recent picture.  You can really tell in my face.  When I look back at pictures from the last few months and years, my face is puffy.  Not just puffy as in the natural puffiness that occurs with a weight gain but puffy like the Stay-Puff marshmallow guy.  Looking back, you can see the effects inflammation had all over my body.
2. There are more days between headaches.  As I've mentioned before, I'd gone years with some form of a headache every day.  The last time I remember having a headache was Monday.  Today is Thursday.  That is a big deal.
3. There's really no delicate way of putting this...I don't poop as much as I did before.  I was under the impression that the more frequently you have a bowel movement, the healthier your system is.  Negative.  A healthy digestive system should eliminate waste 1 or 2 times every 24 hours.  I'll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that my system was not healthy.  It's getting there.
4. My appetite is controlled.  I don't feel hunger and I rarely have cravings.  I learned this morning though that when I do, it's not my mind playing tricks on me.  It's a physiological reaction.  Yesterday I had the worst craving for a Diet Coke and some Cheez-it crackers.  I didn't give in to the craving and instead, ate a good serving of snap peas and drank some water.  I told Dr. Stadler about it and for that, I got a high-five.  I recognized that my blood sugar was low - my brain was actually producing a request for endorphins (I was a little stressed at work yesterday) and I replied with a hefty dose of protein and fiber.  I did exactly what I supposed to do.  Yay me!  Three months ago, I would have tried to feed that request with gluten and sugar laden foods and, as a result, was causing more damage than good.
5. I feel stronger emotionally about the choices I'm making with regard to my health.  I'm getting excellent care and education about how to treat my body.  This makes all the difference.

Just as he does every week, my doctor makes it all better.  Dr. Stadler is extremely qualified in his practice but more than that, he helps me realize all of the good things that are happening.  He is a doctor, cheerleader, counselor and guru all rolled into one.  I'm grateful every day for him and Red River Health and Wellness.

I still have at least four months left on my program with him.  I really can't wait to see what happens.

I Get That Question a Lot

The number one question I get is, "What CAN you eat?".

I like to call myself a poultry and fish eating vegan.  There is no official classification for this - maybe I should make up my own name for it.  Popescaterian?  Fishpoultarian?  Fishtrytarian? No?  Those don't work for you?  I can't really call myself a semi-vegan because I eat poultry or fish with every main meal.  I need the protein.

What I eat in a typical day looks like this:

Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner
I'm combining the list of foods here because I pretty much eat the same types of food for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

• Grilled turkey burgers (I buy the pre-made patties from Costco) with black bean & mango salsa
• Hummus (made with white beans and garbanzo beans and no tahini) with cut veggies
• Salmon - usually pan fried in olive oil but sometimes broiled with balsamic vinegar
• Canned Tuna packed in olive oil
• Chicken 
• Snap Peas - these are very high in protein and make a great entree fresh out of the bag
• Green salad - made with a spring lettuce/spinach mix, radish, orange, red or yellow pepper, cucumber, celery, carrot and avocado.  I make my own salad dressing.  Usually an herb or lemon vinaigrette
• Oven roasted sweet potato, drizzled with olive oil
• Black Bean Soup
• Chicken and White Bean Stew
• Oven Roasted Cauliflower
• Avocado drizzled with fresh lemon and olive oil or balsamic vinegar

Snacks
I eat a snack mid-morning, mid-afternoon and before bed.

• Almonds
• Walnuts
• Fruit - cantaloupe, watermelon, honeydew, tangelo, orange segments or banana
• Honeycrisp apple slices or celery stalks with Almond Butter

I try to eat every 3 hours to maintain a stable blood sugar level but honestly, I'm not always hungry.  I end up eating something small to keep it stable.

Very rarely do I miss the foods that I used to eat.  When I do though, it's big time.  Today I'm missing the flavor of diet soda and crunchy crackers or pretzels.  I miss bread.  I miss cheese.  I miss Mexican food.   In case you didn't know this about me, I should have been born in Mexico.  At the tender age of five or six years old, I was begging my Mom to take us to Taco Bell.  Poor excuse for Mexican food, I know, but even then, I loved it.  When she said we didn't have the money, I said she should write a check because they had a little sign in the bell shaped walk-up window that said they took checks.  As far as I was concerned, she had checks - it was a no-brainer.

It seems like lately, Facebook has become a dumping ground for new recipes people want to try.  What's up with that?  If you post more than two recipes in a row on Facebook, I will hide you from my newsfeed.  It's just what I have to do to protect my sanity.  I've also un-followed all food related boards on Pinterest.  It was making me very sad.

I have created a Pinterest board called Anti-Inflammatory Diet.  I've been collecting recipes that fit the criteria that Red River Health and Wellness originally gave me for the Anti-Inflammatory diet.  Some of the recipes contain ingredients that I no longer include in my diet but I kept them on the board in case someone is out there looking.

Since overhauling my diet, it appears as though I have a ton of restrictions.  The reality is that I'm more free in my diet than I've ever been.  I eat when I'm hungry.  I don't count calories or points.  I'm very careful to eat just the things that I'm allowed and it's working for me.  Sure, I get cravings but I've learned that it's not really the actual food I'm craving.  I'm usually thirsty or in most cases, my brain reaches back in to the memory vault and tries to tell me that in the past, I've used food for reasons other than nourishment.  I'm trying to break that cycle and so far, so good.

So, when people ask me "What CAN you eat?", I simply say, "More than you think..".

My New Favorite

So, I continued to see Dr. Gage at Red River Health & Wellness on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  Each visit, we'd review the plan, I'd have a list of questions, he'd give me answers and never fail, at each appointment I'd ask if I could start exercising again.

The answer was always no.

Because my adrenal system is so compromised, any amount of exertion puts me at risk for a number of concerning things including increased fatigue (as if I could be any more tired than I already am?), a heart attack and extreme difficulty in actually healing my adrenal system.

On March 7th, I met with a doctor in the practice I hadn't met with before. Dr. Stadler. By this time, the results from the stool sample test came back. I had a leaky gut - officially called intestinal permeability. My system wasn't absorbing the necessary nutrients or calories from the food I was eating. Combined with a low level of Vitamin D and the number of food sensitivities I had, my cells just kind of went haywire and instead of using the energy of the food I was consuming and eliminating what I didn't need, everything I was eating was just turning into stored fat.

Dr. Stadler felt that given the fact that I had so many things to "fix", he needed to take a day or two to regroup, meet with the other Doctors to review my case and decide where to start first. That was a Thursday. He said he'd call Friday afternoon or Monday at the latest.

He called Monday with a plan. We were going to start with healing the intestinal permeability. If we didn't start there, any other treatment would be pointless. An impermeable gut is needed to ensure the adrenal system could rebalance and heal properly. Can't fix the one without fixing the other first.

Dr. Stadler also expressed concern that my headaches weren't lessening. He felt that it was exoskeletal as much as it was internal. So, from then on, at every appointment, he wanted me to have at the very least, a 30-minute massage (tough requirement, I know), a program assessment, a chiropractic adjustment and an 8-12 minute turn on the cervical decompression machine.

He promised that if we didn't have positive results, he would take me out of the program and give me my money back. He had confidence though that that wouldn't happen. Working together, we would see results and I would have more good days than bad days.

The next day was a Tuesday and he and I met. From then on, Dr. Stadler has been the only doctor treating me in the practice.

Any doctor requiring me to get massages on a a weekly basis was my new favorite.

Like a Really Bad Breakup

With great trepidation, I went to my regularly scheduled appointment with Dr. Gage on February 26th.  By this time, I was going twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  I had a feeling that the test results would be in by that appointment and I was hoping for good news.  GOOD GRAVY did I miss all of my beloved gluten-laden foods.  Especially chips - tortilla chips to be specific.

The testing I had done was by Cyrex Laboratories - the specific test was the Gluten-Associated Cross-Reactive Foods & Foods Sensitivity Test.  You can see from the results below, I had a sensitivity to every single thing tested.

Dr. Gage didn't want to give me the results.  In fact, he'd had them since the Friday before but waited to talk to me in person because the results were so shocking.  In short - dairy (including eggs), gluten and the widely used gluten substitutes were to be completely eliminated from my diet.  Even quinoa.  I had been careful  about not eating everything else on the list of foods to avoid but I had been eating quinoa practically every day.  When I didn't eat quinoa, I was eating hummus made with tahini.  In case you're not familiar with tahini, it's a sesame seed paste.  Yeah, also on the list.

I cried.

I asked him if these were typical results. 

His reply was very diplomatic and sympathetic.  "No.", he said.  "We typically see one or two sensitivities but it's very rare to have a reaction to every item on this list."

"Have any of your patients had results to this extent?", I asked.

"Well...no.  You are the only one.", was his reply.

I still cried.  I couldn't help it.  It was as if I was being dumped by a beloved.  With no explanation and very little hope for the future.

Dr. Gage tried to console me by saying that maybe, someday, after a complete detoxification and healing of my adrenal and intestinal systems, I may be able to introduce one or two of them back in to my diet.  But more than likely, it would be for a special occasion or one or two times a year.  It wasn't very likely that I could introduce all of these things back into my diet without serious consequence.

As I've modified my diet and thought about the way my body was reacting to these things, I'm not sure I ever do want to eat them again.

Several weeks later, I was in a local specialty grocery store and in my desperation to eat something bagged, crispy and salty, I found a bag of falafel chips which I believed to be made completely from beans.  In the aisle of the store I stood, analyzing every label and much to my surprise, I had found something that I could eat!  I rushed to the checkout, headed to the car and broke open the bag.   They tasted good!  They crunched like regular corn tortillas chips!  I even called my sister and made her listen to me crunch those chips.  Elation doesn't even describe the happiness I felt.

I got home, put the groceries away, all the while munching on the chips.  Since these chips were so "safe" for me to eat, I browsed the maker's website to see what other tasty items of goodness they must have.  I clicked on the chips and the list of ingredients came up.  First thing on the list?  ORGANIC, NON-GMO WHOLE CORN.

I was heartbroken.  How did I miss this?  I missed it because I wanted to, I guess.  I wanted something that seemed normal.  I wanted a comfort food. 

About two hours later, I started to feel nauseated.  So much, that I wanted to throw-up.  I had to go to bed to overcome the desire to vomit.  My head was killing me.  I had a headache (as I usually do) before eating the chips but by the time I went to bed, my head throbbed.  

If this was how my body was going to react to reintroduction of these foods, I decided it wasn't worth it.  I was good learning to live without it.

Now, I'm very careful about what I eat.  With the exception of nuts, I've pretty much eliminated everything that has a label.  I've spent a great deal of time looking at recipes using nut flours and egg substitutes.  I think I've actually tried one of them and it was awful.  Maybe if I didn't know the difference, I would accept the way they tasted.  But, since I know the goodness of a homemade flour tortilla or homemade yeast rolls slathered with butter and jam, there's no substitute on this planet that can taste that good.

I mourn the loss of these things from my diet just about as much as I have mourned the loss of my Dad.  I, in no way, want to trivialize the loss of my Dad by comparing it to food but the loss is just as significant.

Last year I met a gal that claimed to have an egg sensitivity.  She was also gluten intolerant.  I gave very little credit to her claim - I didn't know another single person (I have since met several) that was allergic to egg.  I admit that I even told others I thought she was crazy.  If I knew how to get in touch with her, I'd tell her how sorry I am for thinking that.

This has been one of the more difficult things that I've ever gone through.  Saturday will mark eight weeks since I've had a single slice of bread, eaten anything with milk, cheese or egg or had anything with sugar or chocolate.  Since February 26th - with the exception of that time I accidentally ate corn - I've been faithful to the list of allowed foods.

Coincidentally, since February 26th, I've lost nearly 25 pounds. 

I'd never lost weight after a breakup before.

Until now.