If you have an intractable anxiety disorder & Irish or Italian ancestry, get tested for celiac sprue

(If we had longer subject lines, there would have been a "please" in there.:))

Celiac disease or celiac sprue is an autoimmune disorder where a person reacts with gluten. Gluten is found in wheat, oats and barley; you'd be astonished at the range of products that covers. Bread, pasta, pizza, yes, but also beer, (probably) anything with caramel color, ricotta cheese (well I was surprised anyway) etc, etc, ad infinitum. Celiac sprue results in malabsorption, as it damages the small intestine.

If you're interested, my story is below, after the asterisk (*). It was originally here, but even I was finding it boring (also a little heavy with the bodily functions) so I moved it down.

It's a little hard to sort out the good information among all the crazy people on the internets (you are certainly welcome to regard me as among the latter), but it appears that a prime effect of celiac sprue is insufficient absorption of vitamin B12. It also sucks that symptoms vary widely. A lot of people suffer anxiety (I'm one) but only limited obvious digestive effects. Celiac is quite uncommon, but commoner among persons of Italian or Irish ancestry. The official medical advice (as in from doctors, not from me) is to have a doctor run a blood test called the celiac panel. If this indicates that you may be celiac, you would then have a biopsy of the small intestine to see if you have the characteristic damage from celiac sprue.

The bad part (apart from the whole getting cut on aspect) is that you have to keep eating gluten to get accurate results. So the crazy-guy-on-the-internet advice is to try going gluten-free. If you notice anxieties and digestive difficulties clearing up after three days, try to make it two weeks. If you still feel different (ie better), you can of course just stay on a gluten free diet for life. Common sense, though, says that this is a good time to go to a doctor. (If I could afford it, I certainly would.)

If you're interested in a gluten-free diet, I have a number of suggestions to make it easier. Just PM or reply below and ask. I've only been at this a little while; there are folks all over the internets with great ideas, too. In short, it's pretty easy, but easier if you live in a metropolitan area; don't expect to be able to eat in too many restaurants though. Don't try just to cut out wheat, barley, barley malt and oats; it's still just as important if not moreso to maintain a balanced diet. Seek substitutes. Rice, potatoes and corn are all superb.

Sorry for the unloungy PSA nature of this, and I won't be the least bit surprised if it plummets straight to the archives. It's only my duty to tell you; it isn't yours to listen. And if the mods want to lock it as medical advice, I won't be upset or offended either.

*In my case, I came at this from the other direction. In my early 40s I started having trouble with the other ED, explosive diarrhea. As you can well imagine, I was more than a little concerned. Eventually I figured out that I was lactose intolerant; I'm embarrassed to say that this took about two years. I was a little bewildered, though, since lactose intolerance is quite uncommon among people with Northern European backgrounds. Except for a Jewish great-grandmother, my forebears were all Northern European, so I chalked it up to the Jewish great-grandmother. But now it appears it was the Irish great-grandmother that got me instead. (Celiac sprue AND being raised Catholic; THANKS A BUNCH, GREAT GRANDMA!:))

I couldn't help but notice that I was still having bouts of diarrhea, even when I took Lactaid, and this was especially true after visiting the local pizza buffet. So I looked up wheat sensitivity, and there was my picture. (Not really, but it did seem a good fit.) I quit wheat and suddenly all my assorted and groundless and unnecessary anxieties just evaporated. Man I was happy, but they came back. Sooo I considered the possibility of celiac, with thoughts in my head along the lines of "That's different, man! That's a disease!") and eventually came around to the acceptance that I should at least try going gluten free. As of so far (only a few weeks), it's working out for me. For the first time, I feel capable of fulfilling some of my extravagant potential. (Oh, and in the intractable anxiety disorder department, I should mention that I tried a wide array of medicines prescribed by a couple of very good psychiatrists. The best were Paxil and Luvox (at different times). While each made me feel great (and also sleep half the time), neither made me feel able to get up and get going like I feel now. We'll see how it turns out.)

i know a lady who is diagnosed with celiac disease, and recently she was eating a lot of wheat on her travels, and just getting sicker and sicker, she was convinced it was malaria or parasites or i don't know what, but honestly, why not just knock it off with the wheat when you've already been dx'd and told not to eat the durn wheat?

for most people wheat is fine but if you have this, you need to take it seriously

hope you're doing better soon

a gluten diet may seem impractical, but honestly, it is not as impractical as explosive diarhhea in the hotel's dining hall, whilst wearing light-colored trousers

(unless you count the lactose intolerance, which apparently was caused by the celiac sprue). If you talk to that lady again, suggest that she try Thai (sticking to pad thai preferably) and Mexican (sticking to tamales or anything with corn tortillas) if she has to eat out. Hotel restaurants, well, you can order off the Atkins menu and get rice or potatoes on the side, but it's still going to be pretty iffy. Also, if she's getting that extreme a reaction, she may not be able to eat in a place where they're working with gluten in the kitchen at all. As I tell everybody, Thai instant rice noodles are your friend.:)

I've never been tested for celiac, but I feel pretty lousy after pizza or too much bread. I'm fine with dairy (in fact, a non-dairy life strikes me as hardly worth living, and that's after trying veganism for 4+ years in my late-teens/early twenties).

For the last six or seven years (basically my 30's) after discovering that too much wheat did me harm (a discovery I trace to a large pizza that my buddy Ric and I split before a String Cheese Incident show), I have done OK by minimizing the pasta and pizza (I might eat pasta 2-3x per month, pizza hardly ever anymore), asking for corn tortillas at Mexican places, etc. The only bread I buy is the sprouted grains kind (Ezekiel, Alvarado's, etc.) which seems more digestible to me than the flour-stuff. At home, I cook a lot of long-grain basmati brown rice, greens, and pasture-raised meats. When I get bored of rice (rarely - I lurve basmati), I cook Quinoa as the grain.

I find that with a base diet like this, I can occasionally grab a sandwich on the run (my workplace is still in the white-bread and lunchmeats:puke: dark ages, despite having an organizational mission that supposedly includes HEALTH) without any disastrous consequences.

I'm not advising that anyone refrain from getting tested for celiac, but as someone who probably has it, I'll say it apparently can be managed (if not allowed to go too far) without medical procedures.

Anxiety has been a problem for me now and then too, but so far it's been successfully managed by yoga, meditation, physical activity, red wine, and 'herbal' therapies.:smoke:

-app

Edited for clarity (hopefully successfully).

Or in other words, you don't have to go dairy free. Lactaids aren't cheap, but aren't incredibly expensive, and the generic equivalents are probably just as good. (I quit using the generics because I would still get problems after taking them, but on retrospect, this was probably the celiac). Again I note that I'm no doctor or expert, but the doctors and experts say that any gluten can cause intestinal damage and long term side effects (possibly as serious as intestinal cancer and symptoms mimicking Alzheimer's). So if you think you're celiac, it's best to go gluten free permanently. If you just don't want to make that kind of commitment without knowing for sure, then definitely go to a doctor and get tested. I mean I ate wheat constantly for 45 years, I ate the province of Manitoba entire, and all I got in the way of side effects was occasional diarrhea, constant jitters, periodic depression and after 40-odd years, lactose intolerance. So yeah, eating gluten occasionally isn't going to give you very noticeable side effects but the long term effects could be serious and should be looked into carefully. Here's the poop from the Merck Manual: http://www.merck.com/mmhe/sec09/ch125/ch125c.html

myself and DTBK (Depose The Boy King) have Irish ancestery in our veins. we both suffer at times from a bit of intestinal disorders - i've always called mine the "Callaway Curse" and she calls hers the "Hagan Hex". i have thought about limiting or cutting out altogether gluten from my diet. would probably be worth a try at any rate just to see if there is any kind of difference in both physical and emotional states of being.

I'm new at this, but I have many suggestions if you're interested. The only real sticking point is if you like mass-produced breakfast cereals. For some reason, nearly all include malt flavoring, made from barley and a nono. On the bright side, you can eat Jimmy Dean Breakfast Bowls:).