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Pat,
I put this under the original message that we had been going on about with Joan. I thought, after the fact, that it would be better if I sent it to you more directly.
Jan
Pat,
Yes I did have Entrolab gluten test. I can't seem to find the results since it was done in early '06. It did show I was gluten intolerant but the number was way on the low end. Based on trying things, I found I couldn't eat oats or barley (which I need to add to my list).
My last severe outbreak was in May of last year. We had been to Illinois for the oldest niece's college graduation and commissioning into the Air Force. We had my Mom with us (she was fighting lung cancer at the time and this was her big dream). We went to a farmer's market and they were selling kettle corn. Well, I do love popcorn and hadn't had much in a while. I definitely overindulged. To this day I don't know if it was the corn of the hulls but I was in bad shape with lots of large clumps of mucus. Luckily I had a good enough relationship with my Dr. that I was able to call from Kansas, tell them what was going on, and they called the prescription in. I was on Entocort for about 3 months that time. I haven't had the need for it since.
Now, that doesn't mean there aren't times that I need the immodium. If I have salad two days or more in a row then I'm in trouble.
You asked about my diet. I guess it's probably closer to the paleo diet. I do eat things that are man made (i.e. rice cakes and some bread) but mostly it's meat and well cooked veggies. When it comes to fruit I usually used canned that are in "light" syrup. If you look at most of those lables the syrup is grape juice. Luce had told me on the other board that canned peaches and pears seemed to work for a lot of folks and they do for me also. If I don't have it every day I can also tolerate applesauce.
My biggest challenge is that I need to lose weight. There is a history of diabetes in my family and my tests are showing signs of insulin resistance. The problem is getting enough to satisfy my hunger without a ton of veggies. I've been working with a dietician and we're still trying to perfect something for me. Luckily I don't have a soy problem so eat cooked soybeans as a snack. I can do without sweets so that helps but sure miss the salty, crunchy stuff.
Boy, you got me on a roll. I hope this help anyone reading it.
Jan
Hey Pat
Moderators: Rosie, Stanz, Jean, CAMary, moremuscle, JFR, Dee, xet, Peggy, Matthew, Gabes-Apg, grannyh, Gloria, Mars, starfire, Polly, Joefnh
Thanks!Pat,
I did see your response on the other thread.
I personally prefer the soybeans in the shell. Unfortunately, it's a lot harder to do portion control with those. I'll probably have to watch my salt intake as well. I notice that my BP is on the slight rise.
I also hope to get back to exercising. The rheumotologist has linked my muscle and joint pain to my MC. I have read Tex's input about gluten and that this could be the cause. Since I don't eat much wheat (i.e. for a sandwich) and I do almost all my own cooking I am having trouble making that connection. Anyway, they put me on Lyrica almost 3 weeks ago. That has helped for probably 75% of the pain. I'm going through PT for a couple of areas that seem to be soft tissue problems. Hopefully before the first of the year I can get back on program. I've been off almost a year now.
Good to talk to you again. If I remember correctly you are also in the Austin area. Maybe we can meet over a cup of decaf coffee somewhere.
Jan
I did see your response on the other thread.
I personally prefer the soybeans in the shell. Unfortunately, it's a lot harder to do portion control with those. I'll probably have to watch my salt intake as well. I notice that my BP is on the slight rise.
I also hope to get back to exercising. The rheumotologist has linked my muscle and joint pain to my MC. I have read Tex's input about gluten and that this could be the cause. Since I don't eat much wheat (i.e. for a sandwich) and I do almost all my own cooking I am having trouble making that connection. Anyway, they put me on Lyrica almost 3 weeks ago. That has helped for probably 75% of the pain. I'm going through PT for a couple of areas that seem to be soft tissue problems. Hopefully before the first of the year I can get back on program. I've been off almost a year now.
Good to talk to you again. If I remember correctly you are also in the Austin area. Maybe we can meet over a cup of decaf coffee somewhere.
Jan
While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart. - Saint Francis of Assisi
Hi Jan,
I've been thinking about the symptoms and reactions that you've described, and it appears that you and I may be kind of similar in the way that gluten affects us. Early on, I suspected that I might be a celiac, (I had never heard of MC at the time), so I kept a close eye on what I ate and how it affected me. I could never detect a consistent link with gluten. Sometimes it seemed to cause a reaction, but not always. All sorts of other things seemed to trigger severe reactions, though. Eventually, I even started keeping a detailed diary of what I ate, and how I reacted, and I still couldn't see a definite link with gluten. I got sick after eating corn, dairy products, fruit, and certain vegetables, (lettuce would practically turn me inside out), anything with a lot of sugar, and even things such as slurpee/icee type "drinks" would cause me to get sick. I decided to cut all traces of gluten out of my diet, anyway, after reading about how insidious it can be, and after a few months, I began to notice that I wasn't getting sick near as often. I finally had to cut out all sorts of foods, in order to achieve complete remission, though, and after keeping them out of my diet for a couple more years, to make sure that my gut had adequately healed, I began experimenting, and I found that none of those foods made me sick anymore, as long as I kept gluten out of my diet.
My guess is that, in my case, at least, gluten causes chronic inflammation, but not necessarily the clinical symptoms that many others suffer, ( such as D, flu-like symptoms, etc.), right after eating something with gluten in it. I'm sure that if I ate enough of it, I would get D, etc., but while smaller amounts kept the inflammation going, (IOW, kept my gut ultra-sensitive to all sorts of foods), it didn't necessarily cause major symptoms, directly.
For example, a year and a half or so ago, when I did the oat challenge, it took me six weeks of eating oats, before the D started, (but once it began, another six weeks passed before it stopped). I'm pretty certain that I could eat gluten today, and not have a reaction, but I'm not about to try that, because I don't want to get that chronic inflammation started again, and have to be concerned about getting sick from eating all sorts of other foods. It takes only very small amounts of gluten to keep the inflammation going, for a long time.
One clue as to why I think you and I are alike in this aspect, is your mention that lettuce causes you to react. There is almost no possibility that anyone can be intolerant to lettuce itself, because it contains virtually no protein, and what little it does contain has not been been shown to be allergenic. However, sensitivity to lettuce is a classic symptom of active MC inflammation. IOW, the relatively rough texture of lettuce, irritates the ultra-sensitive mucosa of our intestines, when they are already inflamed, and causes a typical MC reaction. Now that my gut is no longer inflamed, due to gluten, I can eat all the lettuce I want, with absolutely no problems.
The main reason why I'm writing this post, though, is because I'm concerned about your increasing insulin resistance. It's well known that refined carbohydrates, especially products that contain gluten, cause a rapid rise in blood sugar and a spike in insulin. Over time, this can lead to one becoming resistant to insulin’s effects and thus more insulin is required, to do the same job, as the body becomes more and more insulin resistant. All this is common knowledge, obviously.
Please read the article linked to below, which describes how it is inflammation, rather than obesity, that causes insulin resistance. You will note that in the discussion, macrophages are blamed for the inflammatory conditions that lead to insulin resistance. We normally think of MC as a disease caused by inflammation due to the infiltration of lymphocytes into the epithelia of our intestines. However, just because this happens to be one of the diagnostic markers of MC, does not mean that the inflammation is exclusively due to lymphocytes. Macrophages are also present, and their effects are increasingly being recognized as significant, not only with regard to MC itself, but also to other issues, (such as insulin resistance).
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 133106.htm
If you question whether macrophages are present in inflammation patterns due to gluten sensitivity, please read this abstract, which discusses the macrophage response to gliadins. As background information, consider that there are two main groups of proteins in gluten, called gliadins and glutenins. Upon digestion, the gluten proteins break down into smaller units, called peptides, (or polypeptides or peptide chains), that are made up of strings of amino acids. At least two gliadin components of wheat, result in peptide chains that are known to cause the classic "gluten" reactions that we are so familiar with.
http://www.jleukbio.org/cgi/content/abstract/71/4/625
Obviously, this article is pretty technical, but it does demonstrate that at least a couple of the reactive gliadin peptide sequences do indeed stimulate macrophage activation.
The bottom line is, even though you may not be showing the clinical symptoms of gluten reactions, IMO, gluten is almost certainly causing a chronic inflammation pattern in your intestines, and possibly other areas of your body, that may be contributing to your increasing problem with insulin resistance, and your adverse reactions to other foods, of course. Also, if your Enterolab test result for gluten antibodies was 10, or above, you are definitely sensitive to gluten, whether you show any clinical symptoms or not, (even some celiacs are asymptomatic, but their intestines show serious damage from gluten, all the same).
Please remember that I'm not a doctor, and I'm not trying to stampede you into doing something that you don't want to do, but please give this some thought, because increasing insulin resistance, is obviously not a good thing.
It would be great to see if Polly has any thoughts or insight on this topic, in case she happens to read this.
Tex
I've been thinking about the symptoms and reactions that you've described, and it appears that you and I may be kind of similar in the way that gluten affects us. Early on, I suspected that I might be a celiac, (I had never heard of MC at the time), so I kept a close eye on what I ate and how it affected me. I could never detect a consistent link with gluten. Sometimes it seemed to cause a reaction, but not always. All sorts of other things seemed to trigger severe reactions, though. Eventually, I even started keeping a detailed diary of what I ate, and how I reacted, and I still couldn't see a definite link with gluten. I got sick after eating corn, dairy products, fruit, and certain vegetables, (lettuce would practically turn me inside out), anything with a lot of sugar, and even things such as slurpee/icee type "drinks" would cause me to get sick. I decided to cut all traces of gluten out of my diet, anyway, after reading about how insidious it can be, and after a few months, I began to notice that I wasn't getting sick near as often. I finally had to cut out all sorts of foods, in order to achieve complete remission, though, and after keeping them out of my diet for a couple more years, to make sure that my gut had adequately healed, I began experimenting, and I found that none of those foods made me sick anymore, as long as I kept gluten out of my diet.
My guess is that, in my case, at least, gluten causes chronic inflammation, but not necessarily the clinical symptoms that many others suffer, ( such as D, flu-like symptoms, etc.), right after eating something with gluten in it. I'm sure that if I ate enough of it, I would get D, etc., but while smaller amounts kept the inflammation going, (IOW, kept my gut ultra-sensitive to all sorts of foods), it didn't necessarily cause major symptoms, directly.
For example, a year and a half or so ago, when I did the oat challenge, it took me six weeks of eating oats, before the D started, (but once it began, another six weeks passed before it stopped). I'm pretty certain that I could eat gluten today, and not have a reaction, but I'm not about to try that, because I don't want to get that chronic inflammation started again, and have to be concerned about getting sick from eating all sorts of other foods. It takes only very small amounts of gluten to keep the inflammation going, for a long time.
One clue as to why I think you and I are alike in this aspect, is your mention that lettuce causes you to react. There is almost no possibility that anyone can be intolerant to lettuce itself, because it contains virtually no protein, and what little it does contain has not been been shown to be allergenic. However, sensitivity to lettuce is a classic symptom of active MC inflammation. IOW, the relatively rough texture of lettuce, irritates the ultra-sensitive mucosa of our intestines, when they are already inflamed, and causes a typical MC reaction. Now that my gut is no longer inflamed, due to gluten, I can eat all the lettuce I want, with absolutely no problems.
The main reason why I'm writing this post, though, is because I'm concerned about your increasing insulin resistance. It's well known that refined carbohydrates, especially products that contain gluten, cause a rapid rise in blood sugar and a spike in insulin. Over time, this can lead to one becoming resistant to insulin’s effects and thus more insulin is required, to do the same job, as the body becomes more and more insulin resistant. All this is common knowledge, obviously.
Please read the article linked to below, which describes how it is inflammation, rather than obesity, that causes insulin resistance. You will note that in the discussion, macrophages are blamed for the inflammatory conditions that lead to insulin resistance. We normally think of MC as a disease caused by inflammation due to the infiltration of lymphocytes into the epithelia of our intestines. However, just because this happens to be one of the diagnostic markers of MC, does not mean that the inflammation is exclusively due to lymphocytes. Macrophages are also present, and their effects are increasingly being recognized as significant, not only with regard to MC itself, but also to other issues, (such as insulin resistance).
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 133106.htm
If you question whether macrophages are present in inflammation patterns due to gluten sensitivity, please read this abstract, which discusses the macrophage response to gliadins. As background information, consider that there are two main groups of proteins in gluten, called gliadins and glutenins. Upon digestion, the gluten proteins break down into smaller units, called peptides, (or polypeptides or peptide chains), that are made up of strings of amino acids. At least two gliadin components of wheat, result in peptide chains that are known to cause the classic "gluten" reactions that we are so familiar with.
http://www.jleukbio.org/cgi/content/abstract/71/4/625
Obviously, this article is pretty technical, but it does demonstrate that at least a couple of the reactive gliadin peptide sequences do indeed stimulate macrophage activation.
The bottom line is, even though you may not be showing the clinical symptoms of gluten reactions, IMO, gluten is almost certainly causing a chronic inflammation pattern in your intestines, and possibly other areas of your body, that may be contributing to your increasing problem with insulin resistance, and your adverse reactions to other foods, of course. Also, if your Enterolab test result for gluten antibodies was 10, or above, you are definitely sensitive to gluten, whether you show any clinical symptoms or not, (even some celiacs are asymptomatic, but their intestines show serious damage from gluten, all the same).
Please remember that I'm not a doctor, and I'm not trying to stampede you into doing something that you don't want to do, but please give this some thought, because increasing insulin resistance, is obviously not a good thing.
It would be great to see if Polly has any thoughts or insight on this topic, in case she happens to read this.
Tex
It is suspected that some of the hardest material known to science can be found in the skulls of GI specialists who insist that diet has nothing to do with the treatment of microscopic colitis.
Jan,
Sure! It would be great to visit with you in person! I'll PM you.
Most of my muscle problems went away when I quit fructose. Very hard to do! You may not be fructose intolerant. I may be in a unique subset or maybe I just need to heal and then I will be able to eat some fruit again. I hope so. No doctor, including the one I saw yesterday in Dallas, can talk intelligently with me about that problem.
I read somewhere that it takes only one molecule of gluten to cause a problem if you are gluten intolerant. I think we are a curious bunch and the traditional medical establishment doesn't really know what to do with us.
Pat
Sure! It would be great to visit with you in person! I'll PM you.
Most of my muscle problems went away when I quit fructose. Very hard to do! You may not be fructose intolerant. I may be in a unique subset or maybe I just need to heal and then I will be able to eat some fruit again. I hope so. No doctor, including the one I saw yesterday in Dallas, can talk intelligently with me about that problem.
I read somewhere that it takes only one molecule of gluten to cause a problem if you are gluten intolerant. I think we are a curious bunch and the traditional medical establishment doesn't really know what to do with us.
Pat