This is the one post that may seem a bit like too much information, but it has been a long journey and it needs to be explained.
As a kid, I constantly had upset stomachs, and by stomach, I mean I had constipation or diarrhea (stomach is a nicer way to say it, though not an accurate description, so that is what I shall use from this point on) and they always interfered with my daily activities. It was very painful to the point that sometimes I was curled up on the floor of my hallway in pain. My house had only one bathroom, so this made matters so much worse. Doctors never had a good answer for what I going through, simply saying it was something I ate. The most common diagnosis I got back then (the early 80's) was that I was eating the wrong things.
These problems continued throughout high school with still no decent diagnosis. At one point they started to say that I may be lactose intolerant. It did seem that whenever I ate anything that had whole milk in it I would get an upset stomach, so my family stopped buying whole milk and went down to 2%. Nothing changed.
Now after high school, things were still the same, but now it was starting to interfere with work. I was working for Acme Markets. I had to call out of work because of this still unknown issue. I lost hours while at work because of it as well. Then, in 1994, I was dating someone that got me to cut my milk down to skim and to be more careful of what I ate when I was eating out. I had given up on going to the doctors to find out what the problem was as they had no answers, even after 20 years. Little did I know that it was going to get worse, well, the doctors and their guessing games were going to get worse. The condition was the same.
Flash forward to 1998 and a slight psychotic break (not really, but I had just come home from work and the TV was off when the following happened) resulted in my joining the US Air Force. Got through my medical evaluations just fine. They didn't even seem to concerned with my long history of gastrointestinal problems. At my duty station, I finally decided to go to the doctor and see what was wrong with me once and for all. I figured that the military doctors would know what was wrong with me and, since it was all free care, this was a rare opportunity for me to get every possible test done and get the right diagnosis once and for all.
Nope, wrong again. The idiot Captain told me I was lactose intolerant even though I had told her that I couldn't eat Breyer's Ice Cream at one point as it would upset my stomach but the very next day it didn't bother me at all.. She said that it can be temperamental for some people and the condition could fluctuate. News to me as I knew some people now that were lactose intolerant and it NEVER fluctuated.
So I was back to where I had been my entire life...getting diagnosed wrong, though this time I had a doctor making things up as she went on. I actually went for a second opinion, after all, it was free. I finally got a new diagnosis, and though it wasn't the right one, it was a lot closer to what I was dealing with. A new doctor had joined the team at the Pope Clinic and unlike the other doctors, he constantly read about new discoveries. He told me I suffered with IBS Type-A, one of the hardest types to manage. There were three types: D, C, and A. Considering what I substitute stomach for, you can figure out for yourself what D and C stand for and how to counteract them. Type A was both of them combined with no rhyme or reason as to what triggered them. So now I "know" what is wrong with me and it has a real name.
After I got out of the service, the problem continued to get worse and it was starting to change other things, like my mood and it was affecting my jobs even more. It caused delays at one job and my most recent job actually wrote me up for "abusing their leniency when it came to using the restroom". This was getting out of hand and very depressing. Then my wife and I met someone at the Central NJ Pagan Pride Day.
Her name was Dawn Hunt and she was allergic to gluten, among other things. I had heard of gluten but had no idea that some people needed to eat gluten free for their health. Maryann began to do research into what an allergy to gluten caused. At this point, the pain that I felt in my stomach has changed. It had gotten worse and more unique than ever before. Now instead of it being all over constant pain, it became a sharp pain in my lower left front side of my stomach. I was also starting to have issue with Low Testosterone. There were treatments for Low-T but none of them seemed safe to me. Dawn had suggested to me going gluten free just last year. There were tests I could have gotten done to check this out, but at this point, I was started to look into things myself.
I stopped eating gluten for the most part last September. I learned over time that the few exceptions I had made for myself were, in the end, stopping things from changing in me completely. It took me quite some time to cut it all out. It was hard at first but now it seems second nature to eat this way. Most of my problems have gone away. They all, I believe would be gone if it wasn't for the fact that I love sushi, especially any with tempura shrimp. I plan on learning to make sushi so I am make sure it is always GF food.
When people ask me what is wrong, I tell them I have Celiac Disease. Technically I am lying to them as I was never diagnosed by a doctor and now I can't as I have no gluten in my system to make the test function properly, but the alternative is to eat gluten again to take the test and deal with all the pain all over again.
I meant to post this yesterday for all to see, but we got caught up with shopping at a Pathmark going out of business. Why do I mention this? Because now I have lots of GF foods to taste and see if they are any good. All of their GF foods were 50-80% off. I plan on going back tomorrow to get some more.
Today I will post reviews of a couple foods and finally start filling those lists below.
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