I have always been athletic but with a bad diet. I have a sugar addiction and love fried, doughy delicious but bad for your body items. I also yo-yo eat. Basically, I have always looked fit but felt like crap. At one point I became a raw food vegan, a journey that lasted for three months. I felt great and got to a point where I no longer needed any of the four medications I was prescribed for asthma and allergic rhinitis, but I was too lazy to be consistent with that level of discipline, not realizing that dietary mental toughness was inevitably kismet.
Fast forward to the gluten diagnosis…
Now I’m forced to be disciplined. That is, unless I want to deal with indigestion, hives, rashes, depression, extremely dry skin and a host of other symptoms that had me convinced that I had stomach cancer. I wrote about ti for Ebony. Here’s a snippet:
Hives, random skin eruptions, fatigue, indigestion, anemia, painful cystic acne, and extreme stomach pain. These are just a few of the inexplicably increasing symptoms I had grown accustomed to over the years. My skin was extremely dry and itchy, to the point where lotion and oils were useless. I suffered from depression and had extreme nausea and occasional vomiting after eating. I was in so much pain toward the end of last year that I stopped eating for days, convinced that I had stomach cancer. Even when I did eat, salad was the only thing I could consume without experiencing severe discomfort. Finally, I went to a gastroenterologist.
The first gastroenterologist I saw wasn’t convinced that it was cancer. I was sent to an allergist about my skin and given a prescription for steroidal pills for my alleged eczema since I had a history of allergies, sent to a therapist, told to take prescription iron supplements, given probiotics and tested for celiac. My dry skin didn’t respond to the steroidal pills, and the probiotics helped with a lot of my stomach pain so I was able to eat more but still noticed that I’d vomit or experience extreme nausea shortly after eating things like pizza, sandwiches and even crackers or toast, and my indigestion wouldn’t quit, even with prescription antacids.
Read the full story over at Ebony.
