To Gluten or Not to Gluten?

A couple of days after my last post, where I mentioned that I would talk about brain fog and what has helped me, I was faced with a real challenge to my biggest brain fog trigger…gluten.

My new Dr wants to send me for the scope to check for Celiac disease…but to have the most accurate test results, he wants me to eat gluten for at least two weeks prior to the test.

Part of me is looking forward to not having to label read with more scrutiny than a cop on the scent of a criminal and am in fact making a list of the foods I haven’t had in many years. The other part is knowing what that two weeks will be like and wondering if I will be able to go through with it.

It will take a lot of planning that’s for sure to prepare both my husband and I as neither of us want me going back to the high pain/brain fog/almost catatonic state I was in before going gluten-free.

The decision to try a gluten-free diet in the first place came easier than deciding this.

Soon after my Fibromyalgia diagnosis, I went to see a Naturopathic Doctor who specializes in the disorder. After many tests, he suggested I may be gluten sensitive or that I could have Celiac disease (which runs in my family). I could pay ridiculous amounts of money ($300+) that we didn’t have at the time for further testing for that (and other things), and upwards to $2000 for eight weeks worth of treatments, with possible repeats of six to eight week increments, or I could try a gluten-free diet for two weeks and see if there was any improvement.

As our first grandchild was due to be born a few months later in another province, that money would come in handy to actually go and meet our first grandchild, I opted to try the diet instead. I had no idea that gluten had been such a big aggravator for me until about day three on the diet.

I went 70-80% gluten-free but the pain and brain fog had decreased so much in those first few days that I decided as long as there was improvement, I would keep on it. It is a very hard diet to stick to and all along I hoped it would not need to be a permanent way of life for me but by two weeks in, there was such a vast improvement in my health overall that I knew for me, though not a cure for Fibromyalgia by any means, it was a huge part of my solution.

Over the course of about a six-month span, I was not only able to research more about what has gluten in it and rule out fact from fiction, but I also realized the electric shock feeling going up my arms and legs and burning pain I experienced when stepping into pool water had lessened, and I was more and more able to function on a daily basis. 

Seven years later, I am still gluten-free and know when I have been glutened.

Brain fog, in my experience, isn’t always addressed, or understood, by doctors. As there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with any aspect of this disease, it has been very much learning by trial and error what works for me. Gluten worsens my brain fog but isn’t the only trigger…but that’s for a post another time.

Until then, be gentle with yourself.

*If you decide to try going gluten-free, just a head’s up, doing so before the blood test for Celiac can also (and did for me) give false negative test results.