Wednesday, March 3, 2010

86 the gluten and then some!

I have heard that once you cut gluten out of your diet you may then encounter other food intolerances. Silly me thought that it would never to me, I can eat anything. But then I never thought I had a problem with gluten either, until I had a blood test and biopsy tell me so.

I remember reading some people will have issues with dairy in the beginning, because our intestines are finally absorbing stuff they haven't been able to absorb properly in so long. And I remember those first few weeks where I felt worse than ever, and yep....ice cream and milk did not do me good. Thankfully, after those first few weeks, I was good to go and dairy seems to be my friend now (knock on wood).

However, oddly I have noticed I can no longer eat raw bananas, celery, quinoa and sometimes eggs. Those things seem so innocent yet cause so much pain. I used to eat a banana a day, it is such a great snack to carry in your purse, but now it will actually make me feel worse than if I had gluten and it lasts for hours. I can eat them cooked in banana bread just fine, but raw...keep them away from me! I made my daughter a banana smoothie this morning and wouldn't even use the blender to make one for me afterward until it was thoroughly cleaned, I am so paranoid of raw banana pain. Such a shame...I miss you raw banana!!

The same with celery...in soups or other cooked items, no problem, but raw...ouch! It took me several months to figure this one out, but finally I am sure. I would always put celery in tuna salad or another other salad sandwich, and afterwards...stomach ache...I would think..maybe it is the tuna...maybe there was gluten in it, maybe the crackers I ate with it...but finally it would still happen no matter what cracker, bread or tuna I used. So, finally I made it without celery and viola...no stomach ache. 3 times in a row and felt great. I definitely miss the crunch celery added, but not the pain. Bye bye raw celery.

Another one is quinoa. I used to love it! Pre-gluten-free, I made it all the time, and craved it. I added it to soups as a thickener and loved it in salads or a rice replacement. And I am always extremely careful in washing it thoroughly before cooking. The last few times, it is about as painful as bananas, just horrible that goes on for hours. I tried testing it one last time, and made myself just a 1/4-cup plain....and ouch...horrible. This is really unfortunate, because it is such a great grain, especially since I am limited to what whole grains I can eat, and this is a no-go for me. I am terrified to test it again. I am actually surprised I do ok with (gluten-free) oats.

Lastly, one that gets me sometimes with no rhyme or reason is eggs. In baked goods, never an issue - thankfully, but any egg breakfast dish, I never know. And this one is sneaky....the pain from eggs won't hit me until like 3 hours after the meal, where the other ones will effect me within 10 minutes. I try to limit how much eggs I have for breakfast, but it is 50/50..I wish I knew how to make sure it didn't happen at all.

I hope this is the end of it and I don't discover more.

Anyone else have issues with these foods or others?

5 comments:

  1. I have this issue with onions & seeds (poppy and sesame, mainly).

    About the eggs- have you tried just the whites? I feel kind of blah if I eat whole eggs, but if I just do the whites, I am fine.

    Kim

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  2. I can totally commiserate on the banana thing except I switched to organic after hearing about how regular ones carry enough pesticides in the bottom half to make people sick so you shouldn't eat the whole thing. I do fine on whole organic ones though.
    I think Celery is high on the pesticide content list too - you might check in to that & see if organic would be ok for you.
    I'm not gung-ho on organics but I figure I'll try whatever works.

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  3. Cocoa, thanks. I actually always buy organic celery, and have tried it with organic bananas, organic very ripe bananas, and always the same if they are raw :(

    Kim - Interesting about the onions and seeds. Can you have flax? I have tried egg whites and had the same off and on response. Today, I made eggs for breakfast and was fine...it is very random if I feel effects or not, so strange.

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  4. I have issues with eggs too, and it only started about 10+ years after being gf, about 3 years ago. Like you said, I can eat them okay in most baked goods but not a straight up egg dish. Although I did try making a fritatta, heavy on the potatoes, a couple weeks ago, and I seemed to be okay with that. I seem to need to eat a lot of something else with them.

    What are your symptoms? I get a horrible pain right under my rib cage, above my belly button. Hits me about 30 min after I eat them. Sometimes I get gastro complaints (the big D), but usually just the never ending pain. Sometimes a couple of Tums will help dull the pain but generally I just want to lay down and go to sleep until it works it's way through. Usually takes 3-4 hours for the pain to go away.

    It makes it harder to eat breakfast out now! Not many options when you can't have an omelet. Ironically too, we have three laying hens...

    I wish I knew more about why it does it to me. Years ago, eggs came up on my allergy tests but this was a long time before I started having any symptoms.

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  5. Yup-right there with ya...
    NO dairy
    NO casein
    NO eggs
    NO gluten
    NO quinoa :(
    sometimes corn bothers me.....might be the cross contamination issue though.
    Yeah, I've got a couple posts on my blog about how once you figure out one issue, you're likely to discover at least one more.
    My first was dairy and the rest subsequently followed, gluten being the most recent-about a year ago.
    Right there with ya, Girlie! ;)

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