Sunday, October 24, 2010

To Gluten Or Not To Gluten

That is the question.

I've been seriously considering this for the past few days, because within those past few days...ok, ok it's more like the past few weeks, my stomach has been hurting.

Am I just combining food badly?

A few days ago, when my stomach was reeeeally aching, I asked my hubby if his stomach was sore and he said "no." So now I knew, it must be me!

I'm not sure if blaming gluten is the right place to start, but I figured it's probably the most likely answer and have tried to cut back (minus, making and eating better banana bread).

This cut included first and foremost with bread; I switched to a vegan bread for when I do decide to eat the stuff. And last night we made pizza using a spelt flour pizza crust that I got from the Farmer's Market yesterday...which was soooo good!

I think the more I monitor, the better chance I have of reducing the stomach soreness.

Sore stomach = not-so-happy Char.

I'm seriously considering starting a food journal as well, so if my stomach does start to hurt, I can look back and see what I ate earlier. And make the change!

The joys of having a fussy stomach!

Are there any foods that upset your stomach?
For others who have problems with gluten, are there any resources on the internet that you look to? Or have any suggestions? =)

Now, it's off to do some chem (goal #7) and also, today's the day to introduce the new food challenge item. It's...

endive!!


I'll hopefully have a (successful) post here by Saturday. And, if anyone has tips for working with endive, I'd greatly appreciate that as well. I'll try and do my homework better this week, than I did last week with molasses (which totally stared me down in the grocery store yesterday!)

Happy Sunday!

7 comments:

  1. hey I just read your blog and just thought I would send a long my story.
    I live with a crappy stomach everyday of my life and it suck.
    I am allergic to dairy and Wheat. I live on a gluten/wheat free diet and it makes life that much better. I have to do it... but when I look at all the stuff I can't eat because of it I am cutting out a lot of bad stuff. I highly recommend a G-Free diet
    Erika

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  2. I actually have a similar story! I got super sick 2 years ago and it got so bad that they thought I had Crohn's! I experimented with my food intake and discovered wheat and gluten were the cause.

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  3. If you can eat vegan bread and spelt without your stomach hurting, then it might not be a gluten sensitivity. Starting a food journal is a great place to start. Wheat and Lactose are common food intolerances, and people are occasionally sensitive to Fructose. You can also do an elimination diet where you cut only one of these common intolerance foods out at a time (and continue to eat the others), for a week or so at a time, so you can distinguish which is giving you trouble. If you think you have Celiac's/gluten sensitivity you can just have your doctor test for it, and that'll answer a lot of questions for you.

    I don't know if your diet has changed much recently, but sometimes when people go from not eating much fiber to eating a lot of fibrous foods it can cause some digestive distress, since your gut isn't used to working so hard. But I don't know if that applies to you or not.

    http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/food-allergy/AN01109

    Good luck!

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  4. So happened to me before! I just tryyyy not to eat bagels and such but I noticed anything with seeds or grains in it really hurts!

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  5. It might be a good idea to do an elimination diet for 3 weeks which cuts out foods that generally people are intolerant of. 3 weeks is the span of time required to completely rid them from your system. After that you re-introduce items one at a time to determine which items are causing you problems.
    My naturopath put me on a diet similar to this one:
    http://www.elevenelevenwellness.com/resources/remove-diet

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  6. Thanks so much for all the advice! I think I might try the elimination diet, because honestly I have no idea what exactly is it that I'm eating that causes the stomach pain (especially when I was eating from all the different food groups).

    All your comments are greatly appreciated!

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  7. Gluten hates me - no joke!

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