musings of a gluten free runner

Archive for the ‘Digestion & Colon’ Category

OK- so I’ve had a terrible stomach all week. It’s been debilitating. I’ve been rushing to the bathroom 4-5 X’s per day and I swear more is coming out then going in. ugh, too much information, I know (but not if you’re a runner, or if you’ve ever spent much time around me). I’ve been in limbo alternating between feeling completely bloated and totally depleted. Sitting here on my big blue ball, I just want to go and lie down. The worst is that today I’m really light-headed. At least I already did most of mileage this morning- (with only 1 emergency bathroom break en route)…

So what does this have to do with candy corn? It’s pretty much the only thing that I can pinpoint that I’ve eaten differently. (Well, I did have a glass of port and three little chocolates at Pix for Ian’s birthday on Tuesday…)

There is an EVIL bowel of candy corn that appeared out of no where this week right outside my office. Candy corn, plus those adorable little pumpkins, were my sweet-fix in college. The whole candy addiction thing was a new thing for me upon starting college cross country. I didn’t realize that people post-elementary school still had such strong connections with non-chocolate candy. Candy corn was the only thing I could get behind… I loved that honey-flavored sugar spike immediately after races. Their borderline obscurity plus the fact that I only see them for three weeks out of the year has continued to up their allure.

My parents didn’t make regular appearances at races in college (though they flew to Illinois last minute for Cross nationals my senior year), but someone else’s parents always brought me a bag of candy corn.

So- to get back to the subject- I’ve been researching whether candy corn could somehow contain gluten… and yes, I know about the cross-contamination issues (I just don’t know what exactly would be contaminating it? twizzlers? those fake-yogurt-covered pretzels? mystery to me)…

In my internet search I came across a blog post that I thought I would link to. The author discusses candy corn’s ingredients (basically different kinds of sugar & wax), as well as the harmful effects of High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS).

Check it out:
http://www.glutenfreeforgood.com/blog/?p=468

I think my gut needs a candy corn detox.

OK- so my biggest weakness is really the coffee. To be perfectly honest, it is not the caffeine that is addiction for me. It is the aroma, the comforting flavor, the way it makes me feel all warm and satisfied inside. It makes me full and over the last 10 years I have come to crave it more than food. Yes, that’s right. Sick, I know. I am an addict- I absolutely LOVE good coffee.

My Ayurvedic dosha is Vata, and these types of people tend to be hyper-sensitive to coffee’s stimulation and run a high risk of adrenal exhaustion. As one Ayurvedic text puts it:

“…getting energy from coffee is exactly like getting money from a credit card. Coffee pulls on the reserve energy of the kidneys and adrenals, putting the body deeper into biological debt. The more exhausted the client becomes, the more desperately they turn to coffee as a stimulant.”

I know all the risks & downsides: acid forming, digestive irritant, adrenal stimulant, pesticide use, etc. So I drink organic and mostly decaf. I know, I should KNOW better, but it is just so satisfying. The funny thing is that as much as I love it, Ian can’t stand it. He has an innate disdain for bitter. He hates IPA. And, while he does enjoy the aroma of the beans, he won’t go near anything with even a hint of coffee flavor.

Before bed a few nights ago, I my nice espresso machine and burr grinder off the counter, cleaned them and stowed them on a shelf in the garage. In their place, I set up the juicer. I figured it was a good trade. A healthy one. I hope it lasts- I just know it will get harder and harder once the weather turns more.

My plan is to limit myself to a cup of decaf french press when I visit the organic coffee shop near my house… which is probably 3-4 days per week. This place is the BEST! It’s called Ladybug. The owners are beyond cool. They use unsweetened soy milk and even keep agave on the bar! I just work so well here. I find it is much easier to concentrate than at home. And, OK, I just had a cup of decaf.

Yikes….. hold on a second….

Talk about a digestive irritant. I am laughing to myself about the irony of the situation…. I just had to literally get up and RUN to the restroom… hmmm. Maybe I will be drinking even less than I planned. Feeling pretty queasy now.

Sometimes it seems like I spend an inordinate amount of time and energy food shopping and reading ingredient lists and nutrition facts. Not that this is anything particularly new- I was raised to be a label reader, but since discovering the gluten intolerance, I’ve developed an even stricter criteria for what qualifies as cleanliness. When I stop to think about the hours I spend searching for clean ingredients, it does make me wonder how my time could be better put to use. Do you ever jump for joy when you find the words “gluten free” ACTUALLY printed on the container? I do! Not that this is a sure fire fix, but it does make it much easier.

The fact is that wheat products, soy, or dairy derivatives are added to everything now.
Basically these are the criteria that I use:

1. Gluten Free
2. Egg Free
3. Dairy Free
4. Soy Free
5. No Transfat (hydrogenated oils)
6. No HFC (high-fructose corn syrup)

It definitely helps to have stores like Trader Joes and Whole Foods who, at least, don’t carry products with HFC or transfat. I’ll stop venting now. I’m sure that it will only get better in the future as demand fuels the market.

Peace.

Last night while getting into bed, I had an overwhelming wish that I could snap my fingers and make my iron count sky-rocket. It is hard not to wonder what it would be like to have a ferritin of over 100.

Part of the frustration is that I have had a stomach ache that will be approaching two months next week. Not only that, but I stopped taking any iron about 5 days ago to see if I could get it to go away and it hasn’t. So… I took 2 of the gentle iron capsules last night (50mg) and I can’t say that I feel any worse this morning.

My hypothesis is that the iron “binge” that I’ve been on has further destroyed my intestinal villae and I’m having trouble digesting things again. I’m not sure what to do to make it go away right now.

This last month I’ve done a lot of reading about the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, and while it looks really interesting…. I have two main problems with applying it:
1) I don’t eat meat.
2) I run a lot.

I also think it is very strange that it allows some hard cheeses. They seem like they would be very hard on the system. At least I know that cheese is very hard on mine and can only be tolerated in small doses. It also seems like soluble fiber would be a good thing, like it is for most people with IBS. But the SCD people want to limit many of those sources including potatoes and sweet potatoes. Perhaps they are going for a lower glycemic index, but I haven’t read that.

I am thinking another food elimination diet might be in order, perhaps I’m being triggered by something else.

So how does a compulsive baker with a running addiction and a holy reverence for the perfect banana bread find herself giving up gluten? For the health of it, of course.

I always feel like this is a little AAish, but here goes… I’ve been gluten free for a little over 6 months now. [insert smiles and nods of congratulations here]. To say that it has been a rough half year would be lying. In actuality, I only really miss my oatmeal addiction*, soy sauce at sushi restaurants, and not being able to eat the bread basket at restaurants when they have a wonderfully fragrant olive oil. For the most part, though, I’ve been OK with it. If someone tried to take tortilla chips or cashews away from me, however, there would be a fight to the death.

The funny thing is that I had tried to give up wheat a couple of times in the past on the suggestion of docs, naturopaths, accupuncturists, and a chiropractor- but I never stuck to it more than two weeks because I didn’t see any results. The difference was wheat vs gluten though… I still ate spelt and bulgur and oats and am not sure if I read labels carefully enough. Needless to say, it did nothing for me back then.

The tipping point for me was my digestion. It has always been terrible- maybe my whole life. And, of course, they say it is Irritable Bowel. Let’s just say I tend heavily toward the D side of things.

I come a family of chronic stomach aches. My mother’s was so bad that when she was a teenager, they opened her up (like a c-section) and took out some “needless” stuff like an appendix and a spleen and maybe even her pancreas. Nothing solved her aching though, until at the age of 28, she had me. Since then she still has a sensitive stomach and eats very carefully, but the pain isn’t what it used to be. A pretty good case for pregnancy in my book!

So…. at one particularly terrible point last spring the pain was becoming unbearable. Not only was my stomach distended and painful, the eczema on my hands had returned with a vengeance and was keeping me up at night with the burning. So… I decided to sign up for a cleanse through a naturopath in town. (More on cleansing later). This time I really did give up GLUTEN for two weeks and I noticed a difference immediately, both in my stomach and my skin.

The most striking and obvious affect was that by the end of the two weeks, the eczema that was covering my hands had completely disappeared. Instead of the bright red scaly skin with sores, I had my hands back! The skin was actually soft and normal- it seemed like a miracle.

And so it began…..