Living Gluten-Free, Year One

Hello and welcome to Goat City!

I have started my first blog in hopes that it may help people around the world find health and happiness through their gluten-free diets. I am planning on posting some tried-and-true recipes and menu ideas soon, as well as links to gluten-free beers and other people's g-f blogs.

My Story:

I started on this journey to try to stop using steroid creams and get rid of my oozing itchy skin rash through diet on January 1, 2007. I was told it was eczema by one doc and dermatitis by another--whatever it was, I wanted to get rid of it once and for all. Someone else's blog (that I will try to find and link to!) clued me into the anti-candida diet helping with her eczema. I started my elimination diet (very harshly I might add) and thought I would do it for 30-40 days and see if it helped. I eliminated all white carbs, sugars, fruit, alcohol, and fermented foods. It was extreme, extremely difficult and was a shock to my system. I started reacting to anything that had been ground into a flour (corn chips, mochi). I had small very itchy hives on my trunk (new symptom). I was cranky. I then saw a homeopath about 30 days into it, who had me add in some supplements, digestive enzymes and probiotics (all of it REALLY helped), and switch to bottled water instead of Brita'd Philadelphia city water, and had me stay on almost the same diet, rotating in either dairy, soy and wheat every four days. I was still rashy in April '07, four months in. I was finally almost rash-free (and almost gluten-free) in August '07. I let go forever of trying to add gluten into my diet in November '07.
If I had to do it all over again, I would:

1. Get tested for Celiac Disease and wheat allergy BEFORE going gluten-free.
2. Seek the advice of a doctor, homeopath, naturopath &/or nutritionist to help you with your personal plan based on your specific symptoms.
3. Eliminate things one at a time and slowly (not all at once), and then do the rotation diet. Then record your symptoms for the 24-48 hour period after you add the food in question back in once every four days.

Dr. Nicole Egenberger at Remede Naturopathics in NYC really helped me! It was worth every penny. I highly recommend taking charge of your own health and seeing someone like her, and don't take what your M.D. says as the bottom line. When you refuse meds and tell your M.D. that you'll change your diet, they mark down on your chart that you're going to "try lifestyle changes". Well, they couldn't be more right on. I changed my lifestyle and got rid of my Dermatitis Herpetiformis in eight months, but using steroid creams while eating gluten for five or more years didn't work at all: it always came back.
Gluten-free eleven months/DH-free for one year and two months
October 1, 2008