So with that being said, a brief history of me! Last June I read an article about gluten and how it can cause joint pain. I was waking up with achy knees every morning and feeling that, at 30, I shouldn't feel this old. So a few days later I woke up and thought, hey, let's experiment and remove gluten from my diet for a week.
A week later I was like hey! There is something to this! It wasn't terribly hard to give up gluten, other than sourdough toast dripping in butter. Sigh. Still miss that. I learned random things that had gluten, like meatballs from the store :( Instant pain. But for the most part it was a pretty easy transition.
However, after two months, my body started hurting again. For me, joint pain in my knees has been around most of my life...so I didn't necessarily correlate that with gluten. But my hands and feet would craaaaamp like no other. It felt like a burning, throbbing, dull and constant strong ache that started in the tips of my fingers and toes and then would work its way through my body. At one point it felt like my entire body had the aches that you get with the flu. It was miserable. I remember sitting at work thinking, I'd like to be curled up at home, not moving because this is so incredibly painful.
So I went to the doctor and she told me I had a candida infection. She gave me meds and put me on this candida diet. Which has to be one of the worst diets known to man because there is NOTHING that you can eat. I mean, no gluten, no sugar, no oil and vinegar, no coffee, no dairy, and I can't remember what else but Mom happened to come out at that time and helped me look for things that I could eat. I remember looking for almond milk and nearly crying because even almond milk had added oil! I think after the candida diet, any diet is "easy" in comparision. Til now. ha!
Anyways, after a month I didn't see a difference so I went back to the doctor. They were clueless. Sadly I have a hard time respecting doctors now because they don't know what's going on! I've been to 20 doctors in 3 years for a pinched sciatica and no one seems to know how to fix that. On top of that, trying to get them to figure out food allergies is ridiculous. Therefore, I have self-titled me my own doctor!
Anyways, God gave us such a rich gift when He gave us moms. So insteps Mom and she orders me a gluten DNA test to see if that is what is really going in with me, or if I should succumb to my irrational fears of whatever disease of the day I decide must be causing this pain. Turns out, sure enough, I have 3 of the 4 genetic markers for a true allergy to gluten! I'm so happy to know this, I go out and celebrate by buying a bag of chocolate covered gluten free pretzels...and promptly eat the whole bag...and promptly start to hurt really badly :( I call Mom, discouraged... She tells me that a lot of people who are allergic to gluten are also allergic to corn...lo and behold, the #1 ingredient in the gluten free pretzels was corn! So now I avoid corn and gluten like the plague.
Apparently I can't make this story short :)
Anyways, so I start to feel better having removed these things from my diet, but was still getting occasional flareups and pain and just getting super annoyed. Why can't I feel healthy? I eat healthy and am a healthy person so what the heck?!
One of my coworkers mentions that her friend has Leaky Gut Syndrome and maybe I should talk to her. The more I listen, the more I start to think hm...there might be something to this. So my elementary understanding is that something happened to cause my stomach to start leaking (ie, stress...which I think is the culprit in my case; over usage of aspirin; excessive alcohol; etc). So then my body doesn't break down the food particles as it should, and when they escape whole into my blood stream, my body attacks these "foreign" objects. My body will continue to attack them until they quit escaping. Supposedly if my body attacks them for 5 months, it develops a permanent memory and then it becomes a permanent allergy. Clearly I don't need/want any more permanent allergies. Gluten and corn is hard enough and makes me seem enough like a high-maintenance person that is contrary to my typical behavior!
This constant attacking inflames the mucosal lining of my body - so from nose down through intestines, it's the same mucosal lining. It gets inflamed. Certain foods continue to inflame it (specific ones my body is sensitive to, as well as sugar and dairy and other inflammatory items in our daily diet).
So if I get my leaky gut repaired, I should be able to start re-introducing bad foods back into my system and my body won't attack it and will stop being inflamed. So says the logic. So, in order to find out what foods were inflaming my body, I had to take a test.
There is the MRT/LEAP test that several of my friends have done. It tests about 120 items and costs around $600-$700 (no, insurance doesn't usually cover this stuff ... ). The ALCAT test covers 325 items and costs $1100... I figure, heck, I need to know everything I'm sensitive to so might as well bite the bullet and get it figured out.
Came back with this random list of things my body has a reaction to:
Gluten (Barley, rye, malt, spelt, oat, wheat), cow's milk, goat's milk, asparagus, beef, bell peppers, cayenne pepper, coconut, cranberry, licorice, olive, pinto bean, psyllium, rice, safflower, scallions, soybean, swordfish, turmeric, apple, apricot, avocado, banana, basil, black pepper, brewer's yeast, broccoli, butternut squash, codfish, cucumber, fava bean, fructose, hops, kiwi, lima bean, lobster, maple sugar, mussel, oyster, paprika, parsley, parsnip, romaine lettuce, snapper, string bean, watermelon, white potato, hawthorn berry.
Insert major tears. What else is there to eat?! That list has some of my favorite foods. Add to this what we're taught is healthy (fruits and veggies!) but told to restrict that, and then I try to stay away from strawberries b/c they're the most pesticide-d fruit around. I try to stay away from asparagus b/c I work in the shipping industry and know how heavily fumigated they are. So there are additional restrictions on my food...which I'm going to have to just suck up and deal with because let's face it, I have to eat! And hunger brings instant crankiness :-/
To bring this all to a point... yesterday I saw Dr Daenell, who came highly recommended. She is a naturopathic doctor and supposedly one of the best in her field. So, after my consultation with her, she is putting me on a regime of vitamins and supplements that are to give my body a healthy dosage (i.e. the right amount of D for one example) and repair the leaky gut. She said it can take 6-24 months to get repaired...I'm praying for 6, because these supplements are not cheap!! But I know i have to get this taken care of. I can't just remove the food from my diet and hope it's good - my body will find new food to attack as it leaks into the system because the flood gate is still open.
I'm excited because I think not only will it help the food allergies, but it will help other things that I didn't realize might be related...a constantly stuffy or dripping nose, achy joints, and probably other things I can't think of right now.
So I'm in the process of swallowing my - eh hem 35 pills a day - that are properly dosaged out for me between breakfast lunch and dinner.
Well, as the 'mom' in the story, I am excited to see your journey to fix leaky gut unfold, and we certainly hope and pray that this is the answer. Loved your descriptions - certainly others will relate! Hang in there!
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