Yes, today's Day 20 of my pre-Christmas challenge. I've been doing better this week with the smoothies, have kept up the exercises, did skip the yoga Tuesday night (bad move! was very stiff yesterday) and yesterday, even managed to have a grain-free day*! Life is crazy right now so that's quite an accomplishment! lol
And this brings me to the "Mix of Things" portion of this post. My 15yo has shown signs of potential wheat/gluten issues for years. She is still very small, rather undeveloped (looks like a beginning-to-develop 11yo, to be honest), but my mother was the same, so I never thought too much of it, other than my daughter would have stomach issues here and there after eating things like a Subway sandwich or certain pizzas.
Last week, her stomach started permanently bothering her and got bloated. She calls it "puffy." Just where the stomach is (rather than the whole abdomen) actually sticks out. She finally decided she was going to go for it and try gluten-free. For most of the day yesterday, she was feeling much better. But after supper... Stomach hurt worse than it's hurt all week. :(
I looked things up and apparently, it does happen that symptoms can get worse when you start a gluten-free diet. One theory is that there is a toxin build up and when you stop the gluten, the toxins start releasing and make things worse. Kind of like people who go from a horrific diet to a 100% raw food diet overnight and have detox symptoms, I suppose. A friend recommended, even before we started the gluten-free, to get some activated charcoal. Looking things up, it seems activated charcoal is a common remedy for those on gluten-free diets for when they have slipped up or inadvertently consumed some gluten. I will be getting her some as soon as I can, possibly tonight or at the very latest tomorrow.
Now I have a crazy day ahead of me, complete with intensive cleaning this morning, teaching a 2-hour class this morning and another one this afternoon and all kinds of other things to get done. Time to get cracking!
(*What I ate for the grain-free day: Green smoothie during the morning, a sausage smokie--I know, horrible for me--for lunch, with ketchup, a Larabar as a snack, chicken, potatoes, broccoli and salad for supper and a banana with some peanut butter for an after-supper snack/dessert!)
I hope your daughter sticks with the whole gluten-free thing. I eat gluten-free almost all the time, because I am sensitive to it, although I've never been tested. When I do come in contact with it, I take digestive enzymes (I use Rainbow Light brand). They help.
ReplyDeleteI keep waffling about whether to get her tested or not. She is definitely at least wheat-sensitive. She was feeling great and then had some wheat and the next day, a bit of stomach bloating returned. If she is celiac, we really ought to be more cautious with a whole ton of things, it seems. I'm mostly leaning toward getting her tested just so we know for sure if it's that serious or not.
DeleteAnd we did get some digestive enzymes, although they say they are for adults (she's 15, 4'10.5", about 80 lbs--not at all adult development!), so she's been taking half the dose. I'll have to remember to have her take one over the next few days when she does eat gluten.
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