Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Off the Paleo Diet for One Week - Eek!

My CFS doctor recently sent me a lab slip to get some blood work done. I'm also supposed to get some blood work for the endocrinologist done sometime over the summer. Now seemed as good a time as any so I scheduled an appointment for this Saturday at the local lab. Today, I took the time to actually look at the doctor's lab slip and on there is a request for the Celiac disease test. Basically, it looks to see if there are any antibodies to gluten in my blood. One small problem - I haven't had any gluten except for the very rare oops since January. So, the chance of there being any antibodies in my blood, even if I do have Celiac,is pretty slim. So, what's a girl to do? Eat gluten!!! Yep, I'm going on a binge for the next four days, eating Chinese food, vegan baked goodies from Whole Foods Market and whatever else I can find! Yippee!

Of course, once I have the blood test on Saturday the gluttony must come to an end. I've lost 24 pounds since January and can fit into a size 6 dress again. I feel really good about the way I look and I do have a tad more energy during the day - not bunches of energy but a tad more. Another thing, if I feel really terrible even after just a day of this, I'm going to stop eating gluten immediately. There's no point in putting myself through hell to prove something I already know.

In other news, the honeymoon period with Daisy came to an abrupt end last week but we're starting to reach a truce of kinds and I think things are going to work out with her. Turns out that the first week we had her, she had kennel cough and a fever. So, her calm demeanor and constant sleeping was due to illness not personality. Last week, when she started feeling better after a course of antibiotics, she decided to start testing me to see who was dominant. She mounted the kids and humped them, snarled and snapped at me when I tried to take a stick away from her and refused to listen to my commands. I made my husband take her to the vet since her behavior change was so dramatic but they assured me it wasn't due to any health problems. Our whole way of doing things had to change. I'm in charge of feeding her at all times so that she sees me as vital to her life. In addition, nothing comes for free to her anymore. She has to sit on command before she gets food, let out in the yard, given a toy or even to be petted. Amazingly, this seems to have worked the proper change in her. I still don't trust her to be alone with the kids, I have to supervise constantly, but she seems to have figured out that she's at the bottom of our pecking order in this pack. Everyone is dominant to her and she seems fine with that. I can only imagine that as time goes by and we continue to work on her training she will bloom into an exceptionally wonderful dog.

2 comments:

Don Wiss said...

Four days of eating gluten is no way enough for a celiac that hasn't eaten gluten for months to get a positive test. Sorry. But you should go back to a heavy gluten diet for like three weeks. And Chinese food has little gluten. Only a little is in the soy sauce, unless you eat their wheat rolls.

It appears from this post that you are dairy-free. Going dairy-free, especially casein-free, should have reduced your airborne allergies.

But with your CFS and FM (I don't know anything about Hashimoto's) you should be on the paleo diet no matter what any celiac test says.

Good luck, Don (gluten-free for 20.5 years, dairy-free for 15 years, and paleo for 14 years).

Sleepy Mama Cat said...

Don,
Thanks. I certainly learned my lesson. Even if my blood tests are inconclusive or negative I'm staying away from the gluten and grains from now on. I felt terrible even though the food was so yummy and my stomach decided to rebel on me. So, it wasn't worth it. Yes, I am dairy-free 99% of the time. The other 1% is from dining out - when I don't interrogate the waitstaff and I just decide to pretend the dairy is not there.