Wheat Experiment
A typical day might looks something like this:
Breakfast: a combo of cereal such as grape nuts, wheaties and corn flakes and a banana.
Lunch: sandwich or soup with crackers, Multi-grain chips
Dinner: Jim makes a wonderful variety of crock pot or stir fry delicacies which we usually accompany with bread and butter, Spaghetti and sauce.
Desserts and snacks: cookies, cakes, muffins, etc.
Basically I was fueling myself with wheat and gluten.
These days you hear a lot about people eating wheat-gluten free diets. And aside from those with honest to goodness celiac disease or wheat allergy, it's the newest 'this will cure everything' dietary bandwagon which I was not interested in jumping on. However, when a friend at work mentioned that wheat/gluten can cause inflammation I started to wonder, reluctantly, if perhaps I might need to look further into this.
I have not known a pain-free day in ages. My back is a downright mess. The muscles in my upper back, under my shoulder blades especially, are constantly inflamed, achy and knotted up. I've got bulging discs, and yadda yadda yadda. I have hours banked at a number of PT offices trying to deal with it all. Yoga has helped with strength and flexibility, but not the inflammation. I was willing to try anything to relieve it.
A little bit of research seemed to indicate that wheat and gluten do cause inflammation but usually (though not always limited to) along the digestive tract for those who are sensitive to it. I have never displayed any GI issues from eating wheat. I sent my doctor a note through MyChart and she confirmed that there were no studies that she knew of that proved a connection between muscular inflammation alone and wheat, but that there were a lot of resources online I could explore. She also offered to order a blood test to check for celiac disease if I wanted to check that out. I arranged to have that done.
In the meantime I decided to do my own little experiment to dispel any of my own wonderings about this. One weekend I stopped eating wheat/gluten producs after lunch on Friday and kept a journal of what I ate as well as a pain level scale. On Friday evening I put the pain scale (1-10, 10 being the worst) at an 8. To my dismay, by Saturday night it was lower and by Sunday night it was probably between a 5 and a 6 (I don't have the actual data in front of me). Since I found it to be easier than I thought to avoid wheat, I decided to continue on with the restriction. I fully expected the change to prove itself psychosomatic or have to do with introducing Yin Yoga, a more relaxing and opening version of Yoga into my practice. I went another two weeks with eating little to no wheat products. I began to notice that I woke up easier and was less groggy throughout the day. I began to thin out a little bit. And my back continued to stay between 4 and 5 for the pain level - some days even less and certainly I felt looser in the shoulders. When I did eat something heavy in wheat I would notice a mild burning sensation in my upper back. Nothing to write home about, but definitely noticeable. As my friend says, regardless of any scientific proof or hard data, sometimes you have to do what you think is the best for yourself so I have continue to go easy on the wheat and gluten.
The Celiac panel that they did at the doctors office showed no wheat allergy for me, so that was good. But by and large, I am enjoying the overall benefits of eating this way. It's fun to discover alternatives. And it makes the less-frequent indulgences in cake or cookies or mac and cheese, that much more enjoyable. For instance, yesterday Jim and I each ate an entire medium pizza from Dominos (seriously!). Yes, I am paying for it now with tight shoulders and a sore neck, but I know that for the rest of the week I will be eating very little wheat and I will be fine. Just knowing that there's an end and that I have some idea of what contributes to it helps a lot. As a side note - you can eat pizza on this wheat restricted diet by simply using the crust as a vehicle for the cheese and other goodies piled on top. Except for yesterday, whenever I eat pizza now, I nibble some of the crust but mostly eat the toppings.
So, that's my experience and I'm sticking to it.
In case you are wondering what my new 'usual' meals look like now:
Breakfast: Oatmeal or a corn or oat-based cereal like Cheerios, with a banana(of course!)
Lunch: Soup, turkey chili, or sandwich made with corn tortillas or using sandwich meat as a wrap.
Dinner: Rice and veggies, Jim's crockpot or stir-fry madness which rarely contains wheaty stuff, no more bread and butter for me.
Desserts and snacks: Ice cream, gluten-free cake and cookies, peanut butter (put it on rice cakes, apples or banans or eat with a spoon), chocolate, cheetos, fritos, potato chips.
I'm trying to stick with a 20% or less of wheat in the daily intake. Many days I have none. I'm so glad that it's not as traumatic as I thought it would be for this lover of all manner of celebration cake.
Any food experiments for you recently?
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