My 30-Day Gluten-Free Experiment

Here's what happened when I gave up the
low-carb spaghetti and low-carb tortillas in 2009

I've been sitting back and looking at what has been different in my life lately.

I've had 2 major surgeries within the past 4 months, which have obviously put my body under a great deal of stress. Stress makes vertigo worse, but I've also been on maintenance levels of calories and carbs.

Partly, because of the operations I've had, and the need to heal, and partly, because of our current financial situation.

Hubby hasn't had any work for the past month and a half, so my ability to purchase what I need to keep losing weight has been very limited.

We have plenty of food in the house.

But what we have is closer to what I'd eat during maintenance, and not for the weight-loss phase. And it's pretty varied too. For example, I have lots of:

• Dreamsfield Pasta
• Carbolose baking mix
• Carbquick flour
• wheat protein isolate
• dried beans and rice
• vegetables that I canned myself
• some home-canned meats
• lots of tomato sauce

So we've not starving. We're pretty well fed. So well fed that I've just maintained lately.

Which is OKAY.

Because throughout all of my issues and dieting attempts over the past year, the searching, diet breaks, refeeds, and what have you, I've come to understand the key that will allow me to maintain what I have accomplished so far.

The key of understanding --

Understanding that I got into this condition in the first place by eating more fat than my body was able to use. And more carbs and sugars than I should have been eating for someone my age and size.

But I've also come to realize that maintenance isn't about returning to what you were before.

It isn't about trying to manipulate your food and food choices, so that your emotional hunger and longing for the carb-fests of the past can be appeased.

In a very real way, it's about what the OLD Weight Watcher exchange program taught me -- and what a lot of low carbers tend to fear these days.

It's about -- BALANCE

Not abstinence.

Considering Going Gluten Free

Not knowing where I wanted to go from here, I took a trip over to the Beyond Low Carb forum, which is no longer available, because they seemed to have their focus more in line with where I am at these days -- and I ran into a thread about gluten.

Gluten isn't a new topic for me.

I've studied it a bit in the past as it was a big concern of Dr. Atkins back in his day. I've even blogged about it here a time or two.

But that's about as far as it went.

However, this time something felt different.

This time I was really interested in the topic. Not just out of curiosity. Not just because it would be interesting to research. And not just because it would make a good blog post.

But because I was honest-to-goodness interested.

The idea suggested in the threads over there, which no longer exist by the way, was the possibility that gluten intolerance and/or problems digesting wheat (with Celiac Disease being the worst case scenario), could actually be the cause of not only un-diagnosed health issues, but fat loss stalls as well.

I was struck with this crazy idea:

Since my vertigo had been worse lately, almost to the point of having to spend most of my waking hours in bed, and since I've been eating an awful lot of wheat products, such as:

• Dreamsfield Pasta
• low-carb tortillas
• Carbquick baking mix
• and Carbolose flour

I thought that maybe, just maybe, they were on to something that I didn't know about myself.

So I typed "Meniere's Disease + gluten intolerance" into a search engine -- and was shocked at what I found out.

Here's What I Discovered about Gluten Sensitivity

Could my vertigo be because of gluten?
I went gluten free to find out!

There is a very strong connection between vertigo, off-balance issues, and gluten intolerance.

In fact, I even ran into a poster over at one of the gluten-intolerance forums who was testifying to the rest of the group that abstaining from gluten, and later on from dairy products, totally put her vertigo condition into remission!!!

Well, it's like this:

Vertigo is so disruptive of life that those who are challenged with this are quite likely to do some pretty crazy things in our search for a cure.

Most of us who suffer with Meniere's initially went to our physicians in good faith. We went with hope of a cure. Hope that there was something driving all the inflammation.

We went through all the rigors of testing, got passed around from one specialist to another -- only to be told that there was nothing anyone could do.

"Go home, and learn to live with it!"

Such is our path.

But it's usually a path that few of us accept.

So while removing gluten from the diet isn't all that crazy of an idea, this time around, there's no way of knowing the truth of that posters claim.

There is no way to know if it's just another false rainbow, or not, until I put it to the test for myself.

So I removed as many forms of gluten from my diet as I could just to see what would happen.

What Happened?

It's been a month today since I went gluten-free, and the experience has been well worth it.

I am now staying away from wheat, barley, and rye.

It's been a bit of a bumpy ride, however, with a major setback about 10 days in. I got this impulsive need to clean out my sister-in-law's deep fryer, so I could haul it down to the basement.

That little stunt made me quite sick.

But overall, I've learned a lot.

Mostly, about myself. I've been reading everything I could at celiac disease forums, websites, and egroups.

Not only is there a real connection between all of my past and present health issues, such as:

• loosing over 50% of my hair
• gall bladder disease
• neuropathy
• extremely high CRP marker
• rhumatoid arthritis
• asthma
• fibromyalgia
• stomach bloating
• indigestion
• depression
• anxiety
• alternating diarrhea and constipation

But I've also learned that cutting gluten out of your life is far more difficult and complex than just avoiding wheat products.

I now understand why low carb wasn't the cure-all for me that it often is for others. Celiac disease is also probably why my body doesn't do well on a high-fat diet.

Low-Carb Gluten-Free Cheat Sheet

I've had to make myself up a cheat sheet that lists all of the various brands that are safe for those with celiac disease to eat.

While low-carb tortillas, Dreamsfield pasta, and low-carb bread are no-brainer items to stay away from, there are also brands that won't confirm the gluten status of their products.

Natural flavorings is too general a term to outright trust because that flavoring can be from a wide variety of things.

When you see natural flavorings on the label, or even just flavorings, you have to call up the company and ask them what that ingredient actually is. While corn is the usual grain in the U.S., it isn't always.

However, some companies are keeping that ingredient hidden, and will tell you that their ingredients are a trade secret.

Masterpiece Low Calorie BBQ Sauce is one of those products.

They won't reveal what their natural flavorings are made from. Since I don't know if it's safe or not, I have to treat that product as if the ingredient was barley.

Some products are flavored with barley malt, and it's just not worth the chance of getting sick again.

Creating a Gluten-Free Kitchen

I've also been thoroughly scrubbing my glass and metal bake wear. I decided just to toss out some of my pots and pans that would be too difficult to get clean well enough and at least half, or more, of my kitchen utensils.

Gluten gets into cracks and crevices, scratches, and seams, making it difficult to completely get rid of it. I didn't know that, so I've been living with a lot of gluten contamination.

Since it's impossible to clean up a lot of those things, I can now see, and understand, why a great number of folks, when diagnosed with celiac disease or non-celiac gluten sensitivity, choose to throw everything out and just start over.

It has taken me hours to do this and has made me deathly ill doing it that way.

For additional information on what's involved in avoiding cross contamination with gluten, see our post on: Think You are Gluten Free Just Because You Went Keto?

Thank Goodness for Low Carb

What I have on my side is low carb.

We were already used to eating lots of salads and vegetables when we did this.

I did have to toss out my old bread maker, since I had made a few loaves of high-gluten low-carb bread dough in it. It is impossible to clean all of the nooks and crannies after you've done that, the same as the deep fryer.

The good news was that I've never tried to grind wheat in my wheat grinder before. I have only ground:

• soybeans
• pinto beans
• and dried corn

So my wheat grinder was still safe.

We have been dragging our feet a bit about buying me a stand-mixer, due to not knowing how much I would actually use it on low carb.

With just a gluten-free diet, I'd use it a lot.

However, I do want to learn how to bake gluten-free for hubby and in-laws. It would cut down on the amount of gluten contamination when the in-laws come home next time.

One tiny spec of gluten can make me sick, just a single breadcrumb, so a whole lot of gluten in the air from baking with all-purpose flour would make me a lot sicker.

Flour can stay airborne for up to 3 days!

I learned that with the deep fryer and trying to scrub out the sink after getting all of the grease and dark spots off my bake wear. I see these habits at work, as I do things without thinking, like stooping over a pot of boiling pasta to stir it.

The comment someone left for me on going gluten free was extremely accurate. There really is a very steep learning curve with this stuff.

Why I am Self Diagnosing Myself with Celiac Disease

Emotionally, I'm okay with all of this.

Mostly, because I only seem to have blood sugar issues and problems when I accidentally eat gluten.

When I steer clear of gluten, the brown rice and corn that I sometimes eat when taking a Protein-Sparing Modified Fast (PSMF) Diet break or going on maintenance for awhile does not raise my blood sugar above normal.

Life isn't going to be as restrictive as I originally believed it was, so I really feel that I'm on the right tract by diagnosing myself with celiac disease.

FOR ME.

I know there are many folks who would insist that I need to go to the doctor and pay for the necessary blood tests and biopsy, but in Utah, that bill is about $8,000 for self-paying patients.

The cost is way beyond our means right now, especially since I know that gluten is a big problem for me. I don't need an expensive test to tell me that, so I have decided to go with the opinion voiced in the book that was recommended to me.

The author of that book, a celiac expert, feels about the same as I do. If going gluten-free can fix a lot of my health issues, then what do I need a diagnosis for?

I don't have a Meniere's Disease diagnosis, so I don't feel that I need one to go gluten-free, either.

[At this point in time, there was only celiac disease and dermatitis herpetiformis. Gluten sensitivity did not yet exist, so you either had celiac disease or you did not. There was no other form of gluten intolerance.]

The bottom line is that once you've come from the perspective of being bedridden and sick and dizzy whenever a storm is passing through to a normal life -- there's no looking back.

Yes, this is going to be hard.

I am currently reacting badly to dairy, which means I also have to give up those Low Carb bars, cheesecakes, and late night cheese snacks, as well as the tortillas and pasta. At least, for awhile.

But if that's the price for being normal again, then that's the price I'm willing to pay.

[For more details and a more in-depth account of why I diagnosed myself with celiac disease, see that post at our sister blog, The Super Sensitive Celiac.]

*UPDATE, October 2016:

I wrote this as two posts in March and April of 2009, but I am combining them here today.

Back then, I thought that going gluten free was going to be the end of all of my health problems. That was my hope. I didn't understand the degree of physical damage I had, due to going so long without a celiac diagnosis.

Going gluten free did not give me back my life.

I still have the Meniere's Disease:

• vertigo
• vestibular dysfunction
• tinnitis
• balance problems

I still have neuropathy and other conditions that I had then. I've even added Graves' Disease (hyperthyroidism) to the load because steering clear of every spec of gluten is freaking hard!

I had to quit my job as a culinary specialist in the boys home, due to the cross contamination problems there. I can't go out to eat, and I rarely attend family and social functions.

When I do, I do not eat.

I almost never eat food prepared by others. It's just not worth the risk. I react to most gluten-free products, so I eat mostly a whole foods diet.

However, giving up the gluten did stop the gastrointestinal issues, so I can at least leave the house without having to know where a bathroom is at all times.

It also opened the door for me to start writing online. I'm very grateful for that.

**UPDATE: January 9, 2019

Since moving to Texas, the vertigo has gone into remission. We think it's due to not living in a valley surrounded by mountains anymore.

I am still gluten free but can no longer do a very low-carb diet, due to an inability to keep my blood glucose within a safe margin. I need to eat a higher carb diet and spread those carbs out throughout the day, to keep the body storing enough insulin to take care of the carbs I eat.

What I've learned is that a low-carb diet does cause you to go insulin resistant, but that resistance is only temporary. When you return carbs to your diet, the body simply starts to store more insulin.

Today, I eat between 60 and 80 carbs per day and am doing well on a low-carb gluten-free diet.