Several weeks ago my hubby and I were having a conversation about gluten and it ended with me saying "there is no way in hell I could/would go gluten-free. I mean unless it was medically necessary or something I just can't give up my bread." And there you have it. The damage was done...sure enough within 3 days there was a medical reason that presented itself and I may benefit from removing gluten from my diet. Damn it. The long story short is I have an elevated thyroid antibody that could be indicative of future thyroid disease that we have been watching. Over the past two years things haven't been moving in the right direction and after extensive homework, I may be able to circumvent this by removing gluten from my diet because gluten and the thyroid don't really like each other. So here we are...I am making a conscious effort to create a gluten-free home and "upgrade" all my standard foods in my arsenal to ones that don't encompass gluten (queue sad face here). I am not committing to 100% but a good 90%* of my diet will not contain gluten. This is significant progress considering I pretty much had gluten with every.single.meal every.single.day. I have already dove into several blogs, cookbooks, etc. to learn how to survive and over time I am confident I will be able to get creative with dishes on my own that are gluten free. Oh, did I mention I JUST bought a Philips Pasta Machine THREE FREAKING WEEKS AGO? There you have it, here's to a gluten-free 2016, almost.
Sidenote:
There are many other symptoms that could be indicative of gluten intolerance. I highly recommend removing gluten for a minimum of three weeks to see if any of the following symptoms are lessened or subside:
- Fatigue or brain fog after consuming a meal with gluten.
- Chronic fatigue (I confuse this with raising a child)
- Migraines.
- Inflammation, swelling or joint pain.
- PMS, PCOS or unexplained infertility.
- Dizziness or feeling off balance.
- Keratosis Pilaris (aka "chicken skin" on the back of your arms)
- Gas, bloating, diarrhea or constipation.
- Anxiety, depression, mood swings, ADD.
*Gluten is a large protein and to rid the system completely it could take a substantial amount of time. Gluten is also one of those things where if you are suffering, the 80/20 rule doesn't cut it. As I mentioned above, out of the gate I am going 90/10 but I hope to achieve 100% over time...baby steps.
