The Gluten Struggle Bus

I have had thyroid and chronic fatigue issues since I was 23 years old. I tried a lot of things including medication, sleep schedules, a regular exercise routine, stress management, etc with little improvement. 

When I turned 31 and was literally rolling myself out of bed in the morning, I decided to try something new. I saw a Functional Nutritionist who checked my blood, salvia, and urine, as well as analyzed my symptoms and current diet. From all of this information she made a very detailed meal plan for me to follow.

And I jumped in and followed it…. for about 8 – 10 months. But it was VERY restrictive and hard to stick to. It also limited what I could cook for my family and was just not realistic for a working mom. I started adding some of the foods back in and monitoring my symptoms. I found that everytime I added gluten back, my adult acne, GI symptoms and fatigue worsened. I tested this theory multiple times because I LOVE GLUTEN. But the longer I went without gluten, the better I felt and the more violently my body reacted if I ingested gluten. 

At first my doctors didn’t believe that my diet would affect my thyroid numbers but my thyroid needed a lot less medicine when I controlled what foods I ate. The more I added back in, the more my thyroid numbers rebelled. After a while, the pattern was evident. I have been tested for Celiac multiple times and only recently, after NOT having gluten for a while, did those numbers come back positive. 

This has definitely been an ongoing adventure. In my head I’m an energetic person. I have a million things I want to and need to do. I tend to use all the energy in my tank earlier in the day and then something as simple as a short evening work out, staying up past 9 pm and running to Target to pick up something feels like a Herculean task. 

I finally found a GI doctor who took my concerns seriously. She asked me to do a Gluten Challenge and I totally accepted. I did all the things to my body that I haven’t for years. I made a Gluten Bucket List full of chicken wings, sub sandwich bread, pizza, paninis, pasta, deep fried goodness and all the Chinese food. After doing this for a month, I underwent an endoscopy for a biopsy of my upper digestive tract. After these results were analyzed I met with my doctor.

The test showed that I had a mild hiatal hernia, stomach inflammation, and stomach polyp, all of which was determined to be age appropriate and normal. The biopsy showed nothing crazy. My doctor suspects I have gluten intolerance which just means my body doesn’t love it, but is not having a strong enough reaction to say it is a true allergy or Celiac Disease.

What does this mean? Gluten may or may not affect my GI, skin and fatigue issues, but the GI route has concluded gluten is not killing my insides.