Why Gluten Free?

photo source

 Following a gluten free diet was just one part of a long process to figure out how I need to eat to feel good and have energy.  I've had to learn a lot of tips and tricks that work for my body, but realizing I was gluten intolerant was probably one of the biggest steps and the catalyst for my healing.  I've had to learn a lot about my health to feel well, and even though I'm not a doctor, I'll share a bit of my personal journey in case it helps anyone else who may be struggling with similar issues.

 Symptoms

 I think I suspected I had a gluten problems for several years before I actually made the connection in a big way and did something about it.  I've always been a little obsessed with my health because a lot of health problems run in my family and I was sick all the time when I was a child.  I missed a lot of school and had tons of allergies.  They seemed to improve over time, but I still noticed that I didn't seemed to have as much energy as everyone else.  I thought it was just the way my body was.  I was really worried about going on a mission, for example, because I feared I wouldn't be able to handle the busy schedule and I would just fall apart.  I followed a standard "healthy" diet, but still had a lot of healthy issues.  God really blessed me to be able to complete my mission and I even got to stay an extra month.  I feel so grateful for the time I was in Hungary and that I was able to have those experiences.  Still, it was hard to have control over my diet with the busy schedule of being a missionary, plus I still didn't realize how I needed to eat to feel well.  All of this took a toll on my health, and when I returned from Hungary at the age of 24, my health was worse than even.  I felt really sick and realized I needed to do something dramatic.

In Kecskemet, Hungary

When I got home, I tried different kinds of cleansing diets and they all helped, but I suffered from low energy, needed to take a lot of naps and had low motivation.  Still I tried to move forward with my life.  I went back to grad school and slowly began to work on my MA thesis.  As I mentioned, in the "About" section, this was when I met Jake.

Even though I was very happy to meet Jake and get engaged and then be a newly wed, I was concerned about how sick I was feeling.  Fortunately, Jake and I have such wonderful supportive and kind families that helped out a lot.  I probably should have told people how sick I was feeling, but I think I was just used to feeling tired, drained and fuzzy headed too.  I kind of forgot that the way I was feeling wasn't normal.  I knew intuitively that if I ate bread, for example, that 15 minutes later I wouldn't be able to think straight, but I just figured everyone else felt like that too.  I was pushing all the time to survive and I was getting more and more exhausted.  I guess because I thought what I was feeling was just normal life, I didn't tell anyone.  Also I would have been too embarrassed to tell anyone because I didn't really know what the problem was.  I worried that maybe I was just a lazy person or a hypochondriac.

When Jake and I got married and I moved to Virginia, I started to get really worried about my health.  As a newly wed, I was determined to learn to cook and make healthy, "normal" food.  I knew I kind of had strange eating habits (previously, I did avoid gluten to some extent intuitively and I tried to eat a lot of produce, for example), but I decided I wasn't going to be "weird".  I was going to make my new husband foods I considered "normal" and "traditional."  Whole wheat bread, homemade pizza, lazagna, etc.  I discovered that I loved cooking.  I reasoned that because I always made things from scratch and used a lot of fresh ingredients that I was going to feel well.  Mind of body.  I would eat "normal" and I would feel great and stay at a good weight . . . My health got worse than ever.  I started to get really down and worried.  I thought, "How can I ever have the health to have children someday if I barely have energy to take care of my health?"

My Tipping Point

Several months after we got married, I finally called my mom and confessed to her how sick I was feeling.  I still hadn't told anyone, not even Jake, what was going on!  Pretty ridiculous, huh?  I cried when I told my mom how bad I was feeling.  I told her that it was getting hard for me to even be nice to people because I felt so tired and sick all the time. I was worried I was becoming anti-social and that I would never feel well enough to have a good life or have children.  I told my mom that I tried so hard to eat healthy foods, but I wasn't feeling healthy at all.  My mom reminded me that several people in our extended family had been diagnosed with gluten intolerance and suggested I remove gluten from my diet.  I think I suspected in the back of my mind that I needed to do this, but hearing her say it was confirmation.  In fact, I felt like it was the answer to my prayers.

Eliminating gluten was a huge leap forward for me.  Slowly, I began to heal.  My mind became more clear and I found I had more and more energy.  By removing gluten, I noticed I was so much more aware of how my body felt when I ate other foods too.  When I ate foods that contain gluten regularly, I lived in a constant vicious cycle of feeling sick and trying to eat something to make me feel better.  When I eliminated gluten, I noticed I was able to listen to my body and find other things that I was sensitive to.  I kept a food diary and wrote done foods that made me feel good and foods that didn't.  I also decided that if I was going to be gluten free, that I was going to do it naturally. I wasn't going to eat all the gluten free processed foods that were starting to appear on the market because they were full of starches and sugars that I could tell made be almost as sick as just eating foods made from wheat flour.

I was really surprised (shocked!) how much eliminating gluten changed my life.  It wasn't easy at first to figure out what to eat, but within a few months I completely stopped craving products with gluten and loved my new diet.  I went from having to put all my energy into have basic conversations, to being able to have the energy I wanted to keep up with my very busy husband.  That summer we spent biking and camping and traveling and I was finally able to really enjoy being active, like I always wanted to.

I found out there were a lot more benefits (for me) for being gluten free and following a natural diet.  I was so surprised by how much weight I lost.  At first I didn't notice, but a lot of other people started mentioning it.  I never owned a scale, but I noticed I had to start buying smaller and smaller clothes.  I wasn't really heavy to begin with, but it was nice to have the few extra pounds just disappear.  My goal at the time was never to loose weight, I just wanted to feel good.  I was shocked when I finally weighed myself I found I'd lost 25 pounds.

I stayed gluten free for over a year until we found out we were expecting or daughter.  With morning sickness and working full-time, I wasn't able to keep it up (All I wanted to eat was pizza!).  I found during my first pregnancy and nursing I seemed to be able to handle gluten better as well.  Maybe it was because I had spent the year before gluten free or maybe it was because pregnancy changed my body.  I'm not sure why.

Currently, I'm 31 weeks pregnant with our second child.  With this pregnancy all of my old symptoms returned.  I finally figured out that it wasn't morning sickness that was making me so sick at 14 weeks, but a gluten problem.  I'm amazed (again!) by how much it's helped me to eliminate all of the breads and pasta from my life.  It seems that being gluten free just works for my body.   I feel so much better and more in control of my diet.  I never thought I could have so much energy while being pregnant even while chasing around a toddler all day.  After seeing these huge improvements now twice in my life, I'm definitely planning to keep this diet indefinitely.

 Putting it all together

 I wouldn't say I'm an expert in all things gluten free by any means, but I have done quite a lot of reading and research trying to figure out why gluten affects me and so many people the way it does.  For a long time, I was upset that I couldn't digest gluten well.  I viewed bread (and still do) as the food that sustained our civilization for thousands of years.  Why couldn't I eat what people have eaten for so long? Surely if gluten negatively affected as many people throughout history as it does today, it wouldn't have been the staple of the Western diet?  Why couldn't my body handle it?  I figured the reason gluten intolerance was on the rise was because people's body's (including my own) were weakened by environmental toxins and pollutions making our digestive systems less hardy than our ancestors' were.  This may be a part of the problem, but I think there's actually a lot more to it.

When I decided to go gluten free again, I knew I needed to motivate myself because I knew the first few months would be really hard.  I started reading up again on gluten problems because to strengthen my resolve.  This time around, most of what I found focused on problems associated with the genetic engineering of wheat, particularly in the mid 20th century.  I found the information in the popular book Wheat Belly by Dr. William Davis very helpful.

While Dr. Davis writes about a huge variety of topics related to gluten free diet, I was drawn to the information on the genetic engineering of wheat, as well as the link between gluten problems and diabetes and gluten and some psychological disorders. (Note: Dr. Davis writes of many issues that seem to be linked to gluten, but these were the ones I related to.)  I had read about wheat being genetically engineered in the mid-twentieth century, but I always figured that it couldn't be such a big deal, because it was still wheat, right?  I was shocked to read about how dramatically and recklessly wheat was altered to be a more efficient and palatable crop.  Of course, the scientists who were responsible for all of the changes done to wheat were working to eradicate world hunger.  They had a noble cause and were working to help feed the masses.  But unfortunately, the new wheat that's been introduced all over the world in the last 50 years made it to the markets without being tested to see how the changes would affect humans.  Dr. Davis points out that the genetic difference between humans and apes is only 1%, and yet the differences are astounding.  Wheat, as well as some other crops, have been changes much more dramatically in their genetic makeup than only 1%.

One of the changes is in the glycemic index index ratings for wheat.  It seems that ancient wheat had a much lower GI than modern wheat.  This is particularly troubling for prediabetics and diabetics.  Since diabetes runs in my family, and I've had blood sugar problems in the past, I'm very concerned with blood sugar. When blood sugar is elevated too high it damages organs in the body and creates and high insulin response (which leads to more fat storage, particularly belly fat). Over time, a person with continually high blood sugar can develop diabetes.  Unfortunately many people who are trying to improve their health consume large amounts of whole grain bread.  Conventional medicine viewed this as a healthy option, but considering white and whole wheat's high GI index, consuming wheat may not be the best option to people who are diabetic or prone to diabetes.  In fact, Dr. Davis explains, the GI of wheat is actually higher than table sugar, candy bars and soft drinks.  Some people may be able to handle these spikes in blood sugar, but clearly many people in our society cannot.  Personally, I notice a spike and subsequent drop in my blood sugar when I eat wheat and it inevitably causes a vicious cycle.  Also, this explains why I'm able to loose weight so much faster when I eliminate wheat and gluten from my diet.

Wheat also effects many people, including myself, psychologically.  For me personally, wheat can make me feel down, fuzzy headed and anti-social--not how I want to be at all.  Over the years I've made several friends with gluten issues and I'm always surprised how many also describe psychological effects from eating gluten.  I'm fortunate not to experience any (noticeable) digestive problems from eating wheat (no cramping or diarrhea like many people struggle with), but I can attest that the psychological effects on me personally are no picnic.  


I hope sharing my story will help raise awareness about some of the effects gluten has on some people in our society.  I truly believe that one diet does not fit every person and every lifestyle and feel it's essential that we respect others and their ability to determine what kind of diet is best for them.

Wishing everyone good health,

     Serena