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Polly and others have noted that even though they had felt pretty good, they felt even better after eliminating other grains like rice, corn, tapioca, etc that they didn't think that they were sensitive to. I wonder how much of this is reducing the total amount of carbs in their diet, based on my husband's recent experience with going low carb. He doesn't have MC and shares my gluten-free diet. At his last physical, the lab tests showed he had higher than normal blood glucose......not in the diabetes range, but heading there. He isn't overweight at 5' 10" and 165 lbs, and he gets a lot of exercise and is in pretty good shape. In talking with me about this, he admitted that most mornings he would feel bloated and have very uncomfortable colic-like pains when he was walking. And he felt his worst after our Sunday morning special breakfast of gluten-free waffles with maple syrup and fresh raspberries/blueberries. So I suggested that we look at how many carbs he was getting with meals, especially breakfast, as he was most symptomatic then. That waffle breakfast has a huge number of carbs, and so did his other breakfast choices of cereal, bagels, etc. with orange juice. So he decided to go lower carb (less than 50 g of carbs /meal) and see what happens. To put this in perspective, that waffle meal has around 250 g carbs. He's only been on it for 9 days now, but the turnaround has been dramatic! His bloating and colic pains totally disappeared the first day. And he had several other unexpected benefits. For the past 4 years he has been plagued with blocked tear ducts. He's forever mopping his eyes, and has lots of irritation of the skin at the corners of his eyes and uses cortisone cream on it. When the allergies hit in the spring he is miserable. He even had surgery on one of the tear ducts, but it didn't work. So imagine his surprise when after just one day, his tear ducts cleared up, and have remained totally clear since then!
The annoying red irritation of the skin around his eyes has disappeared too. He is absolutely overjoyed! And now he thinks that his sense of smell, which had pretty much gone away, is starting to come back. Apparently he is very sensitive to carbs in his diet, and I can't help but think that the carbs have been responsible for lots of inflammation in his sinuses contributing to the blocked tear ducts and loss of smell. And who knows what other inflammatory processes have been going on undetected elsewhere in his body. He's a believer, and now is checking for carbs in whatever he eats. I've had to make some adjustments with cooking too, but since he has been so supportive with the menu changes around my LC, it's a small price to pay for him feeling so much better. He is basically now eating Paleo with the addition of dairy.But now I have a conflict. My diet is already limited, and I want to put on some weight, and I actually slipped back a few pounds this past week eating the low carb meals I was cooking. I have noticed that I have less gas, but not much other improvement. So although I believe that lower carb is good, I don't think that I'm at a place where I can severely reduce carbs myself. It's really hard getting enough calories from meat, fruit and veggies without adding rice, potatoes, and the GF baked goods. Maybe as time goes on I'll be able to reduce even further, but for now my priority is getting the calories I need.
But I did want to post this to encourage people to look at the total amount of carbs in the diet, even though gluten has been eliminated, if they still have bloating or other GI symptoms.
Rosie
Actually, I'm on a very restricted diet now. Have you ever seen the ileostomy diet? When you place those restrictions on top of avoiding gluten, dairy, and soy, you end up with a rather limited diet, but it still leaves plenty or room for taking in too many calories. (Actually, I can tolerate dairy and soy, these days, but I don't believe that they are any healthier than gluten, so I generally avoid them.)