gluten free

[darkoshi]

I ate gluten-free for 2 to 3 weeks. (During the first week I still ate some things which I later realized had gluten in them).

It didn't improve my hand & finger issues.

But I did notice an improvement in my digestion.

To begin with, I have regular bowel movements (usually every morning), and rarely suffer from constipation or diarrhea. But my stools are often soft, and sometimes I have a lot of gas and bloating.

During the weeks of eating gluten-free, my stools were less soft and more well-formed. My butt required less wiping (really!). The stools were lighter in color. I was less likely to have an additional soft & gaseous BM during the day.

Last week, I ate gluten again, as I wanted any tests the doctor did to be based on my normal diet. My BM's went back to how they were before.


Also, I lost about 5 pounds, which I can't explain. It returned me to my previously-normal weight, before I slowly gained these 5 pounds over the last several years. I wasn't hungry and I don't think I ate less than normal. I'm not even sure this was a result of the GF diet, or when exactly the weight was lost. I step on the scale every once in a while, so it happened fairly recently. When I had fasted for that partial day in mid-May, my weight fluctuated less than a pound. So it happened between then and now.

Update: I re-checked my notes; I noticed the weight loss already after the first week of going gluten free. So it happened within one month of the partial day of fasting. Maybe the fasting had more to do with it than the gluten-free, even though it wasn't immediately noticeable after the fast. It's weird, still inexplicable.

..

So maybe I am somewhat sensitive to gluten. Maybe that could somehow be related to my joint issues; maybe I just need to avoid it for a longer period of time.

It wasn't hard to eat gluten-free. There are so many GF products available in the supermarket; I hadn't realized til now how many items are even marked as certified GF. I didn't feel very limited overall.

The biggest problem was that my kitchen and freezer are still stocked with mostly non-GF foods. I hadn't realized how many vegan meat analogs contain wheat gluten. Even the soy-based ones tend to also include wheat gluten.

Now I'm curious to see if I'm sensitive to any other foods. I may try avoiding both soy and gluten for a while, though that would be hard. Or maybe corn.

.

I read a page which explained leaky gut well, and another page on food sensitivities to gluten/gliaden vs FODMAPs. But can't find the page now. Here are some similar ones.

https://www.mygenefood.com/zonulin-leaky-gut/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3384703/
https://draxe.com/7-signs-symptoms-you-have-leaky-gut/
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/12/09/459061317/a-protein-in-the-gut-may-explain-why-some-cant-stomach-gluten
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/05/22/314287321/sensitive-to-gluten-a-carb-in-wheat-may-be-the-real-culprit

Sudden thought: If it's only a FODMAP issue for me, and I'm only sensitive to the carbs in wheat, then maybe I'd only have to avoid wheat flour, but could still eat all those gluten-based meat analogs!

Comments

[darkoshi]

I just noticed something about the cans of food in my cupboard. A lot of them say "Non-BPA lining" on the labels. One has it written in ink on the top of the can, along with the expiration date. All of the cans with organic beans/tomatoes say that; the cans of non-organic food don't.
So that's a bit of a relief, although I can't be sure that whatever they are using instead of the BPA lining, is really safer.

I opened a can of coconut milk earlier today, which had an expiration date of 2016. (I don't know how that happens! Can it really have been 2 years since I cooked with coconut milk or bought any? But I guess so; time flies and I don't cook as much as I used to, since Q moved to his own place.) The contents smelled a little weird, so I threw it away.

[marahmarie]

Coconut milk is a strange substance to begin with: we had a six pack in here not too long ago (Goya, if I recall correctly) as an experiment because we'd never tried it before. So I tried it in my coffee: blech. Then we mixed it into our home made tapioca pudding (which, when made with whole milk, is one of my favorite foods on Earth): yuck (ruined it; made the texture quite mealy, too). Used it in one of my curries: ick (I like yogurt or even sour cream better, with yogurt being by far the best).

Also, it's hard to pour, with about 40% of it clumped up at the bottom of every can while the rest was very runny. I mostly found it quite odd to deal with, though not too bad-tasting by itself.

I haven't checked any of our cans for any such label, though, since this is the first I knew they had such labels! That's good to know (and I'll check, asap). We're having a bit of a food kerfuffle lately because I won't eat anything (besides the coconut milk) but tomato products (for my homemade sauces) out of cans and we have enough canned foods at this point to really add up, beans included, also many vegetables and a good deal of fruit.

I also won't eat beans anymore (and we have bags and bags of beans) because of the side effects, so my diet's changing from OP's quite a bit (Is it edible? He will eat it. I will not, unless it seems safe and is preferably sort of nutritious) and while I'm not sure how happy to feel about it (I miss beans a lot, mostly - canned or dried) it seems silly to turn back on these changes just to make him happy.

Re: expiration dates, that's kinda up to you. Canned foods are said to be perfectly good for years past their dates: if you really want to hang onto one past it's date, I'd open and smell and swish it around and check over what's in it quite carefully before using, is all. (Medicines can last way beyond their expiration dates, too, as long as they've been stored properly, which usually just means "in a cool, dry place").