Gluten-Free Diet Story by Ashley

A gluten free diet can be very beneficial to many people.  You may experience more energy.  Cutting out gluten may turn your whole life around.

Ashley left this comment on one of my other sites (gluten allergy symptoms).  It is such a good and useful comment that I’ve turned it into an article.

Ashley talks about the problems she had and how cutting out gluten helped.

She also explains the battle she had with doctors who did not understand that she has a gluten allergy.

Ashley writes:

Hey all, many people seem to have troubles figuring out if they have a gluten allergy. I do have an allergy to gluten, and maybe my story can help some others figure their allergies out. As well as bring up some difficulties there are…

When I was little, I used to eat soup, bread, and Cheez-its religiously. Now if I even smell bread I can feel a brain fog coming on.

My allergies started getting bothersome when I was 13-ish, I noticed that after I ate mac & cheese my ears felt achy and itchy with lots of pressure build-up. Later, in high school I got really tired after lunch & had developed some messed up menstruation cycles. I was on my period for 2 months straight & had iron deficiency because of that–needless to say I’ve been put on birth control to regulate (later on I figured out this could be due to allergies).

Other weird symptoms I noticed was that it became difficult to swallow after eating sandwiches & stuff, so I would force it down with water. I figured I was just taking too big of bites. That was, until summer at camp when my throat swelled up & I couldn’t breathe after eating a chicken pot pie. I forced down water to open my throat up…which pretty much saved my ass. Nobody had seen it happen and I was terrified to eat anything. I finally went to an Allergy Specialist a year later, and my results came back with low allergies to yeast and molds. They wouldn’t give me an EpiPen, but put me on a diet.

Over the last few years I’ve been on a wheat, gluten, mold, and yeast-free diet. My throat hasn’t swelled in a while. But I have new symptoms. Every time I eat “bad foods”, like pizza I get horrid cramps, diarrhea, bloating, and so tired that I’ve woke up on the floor two hours later. The scariest is the feelings of depression. I’ve literally ran out of the bread aisle in the market crying (before that I was having an excellent day). The stomach stuff I can handle, but I’m in college & the fatigue and depression is death when I have classes and all these new stresses. I don’t like eating in the dining hall since they ALWAYS cook processed foods (aka: yeasty paradise) and the smell puts me in a fog.

I havn’t used even half of my meal plan because I can’t eat there, and I’m trying to get out of getting a new plan for the semester (its a requirement of living in the moldy dorms). Plus the plan costs A LOT of money, so why waste money when I’ve got other bills to pay my school? To get the meal plan petitioned I need a note from the Allergy Specialist, but they aren’t being much help since “your second test results came up negative for any allergies–except for environmental molds”. How hard is it for them to pull up my first test results? They put me on the diet, and I feel better when I’m eating that way. But now I’m getting no help when I want to keep myself healthy.

I’ve heard that allergies don’t always show up on allergy tests. My Aunt has a serious allergy to nuts, but she’s never had an allergy test come back positive (She has an EpiPen). I guess this happens often.

What bothers me the most is that my school is wiling to forgo the meal plan, but my doctor (the Allergy Specialist) isn’t listening to me. He signed my petition form, but all his letter says is that I came to him complaining of “severe fatigue” and gave an attached copy of my negative test results. It says nothing about the diet, my original test results, or the fact that my symptoms stopped when I began the diet.

Maybe I’m just venting, but why is it so hard for those of us with allergies to figure it out? I know that gluten symptoms vary a lot, but it just seems like a doctor should want to help out their patients. Just to prevent issues like mine, aone with allergies should hold onto a copy of ANY positive allergy test results they get from a doctor. Because it sucks feeling like you’re defending you’re health alone.

Well, as I’ve been writing this, I’ve finally gotten someone in the Specialists office to give me a copy of my first test results…I’m going to pick them up today. Good Luck to everyone, researching on you’re own is often the only relief. I was lucky to be diagnosed early on, but just trying the diet can be a life-changing experience.

Peace Out!

Thanks for that, Ashley.

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