Question:
My wife is getting stomach pains and a very bloated feeling after food which
we may have narrowed down to bread and
wheat products. Can anyone give me any ideas on alternative foods to
bread,pasta etc.so that we can confirm the cause,
Answer:
In the health food stores you can find products that are made from rice,
rather then wheat. They have bread, pasta, cookies, cakes etc. that are
made from rice and many of them are very good. If you don't have a
health food store near you, do a web search for gluten free. Wait a minute. Let's get a diagnosis the cheap, and the definitive, way
before spending a great deal of time and money when it might not be
necessary. The way for the gentleman's wife to substantiate the diagnosis is
to sedulously avoid wheat, oats, rye and barley for one week. It is not that
terribly difficult even without detailed instructions; I have been doing it
for the past three weeks while on an Atkins diet. If the symptoms clear she
can then add a slice of bread on the morning of day eight. If the symptoms
because of which the gentleman asked for our help recur that day, and
particularly if this off-and-on can be done once more for substantiation,
then your suggestions are excellent, and will make her diet a great deal
easier to handle. I have been having similar symptoms. Abdominal pain and bloating after eating 2
slices of bread. After having eating a large serving of pasta and many wheat
crackers yesterday, I developed cramps and diarrhea. Obviously I am cutting out
wheat and gluten from my diet in hopes of improvement.
Is this sort of reaction allergy or intolerance? Does it matter? My other food
allergies cause hives or asthma, not digestive upset.
Also, is it important to determine whether wheat or gluten is the culprit?
Is this reaction something that will occur forever when I eat wheat? I recently
recovered from a major intestinal infection and am wondering if it's possible
to be overly sensitive to some things just for a while. It sounds like allergy to me, but I am not a medical person, just one
who suffered from food allergies. I would suggest cutting out all wheat
and see what happens. An allergy is more likely to suddenly get extremely nasty, requiring
you to carry emergency medication just in case. The reaction is much
faster, minutes or tens of minutes rather than hours or days. An
intolerance might tie you to the toilet for a weekend, cripple you
with joint pain for a week, or plaster your skin with pustules for a
month, and can be far harder to diagnose, but it won't kill you. There is a specific condition, coeliac disease a.k.a. gluten-sensitive
enteropathy, which is caused by gluten in particular. If you can get
a diagnosis of that in the UK you are entitled to some gluten-free
products on a NHS prescription, which will be a bit cheaper than buying
them out of your own pocket. Most people don't bother because gluten-
free substitutes don't taste very good compared with the alternative,
cooking and eating in ways inspired by those cultures (the majority)
that don't use gluten at all from one year to the next. It is. "Tropical sprue", a gut damaged by a variety of GI infections
common in the Third World, is one thing that can do it. "Leaky gut
syndrome" is more or less the same thing. You can help it heal with
micronutrient-rich foods, vitamin/mineral supplements, digestive enzymes,
and fungicidal foods like garlic. Don't expect quick results, though -
count on about a year to be on the safe side. I sure agree with cutting out wheat for a trial. I don't think we can say
from this information whether it is allergy or gluten intolerance, but yes,
it makes a difference. If it is wheat allergy you will probably have to
avoid wheat only. If it is intolerance, it is most likely gluten
intolerance, and you will have to avoid wheat, oats, rye, barley, and hidden
sources that only the gluten-sensitive poeple can tell you about. I agree
with Jack that it sounds more like intolerance, as if it were allergy I
would expect nausea and vomiting as well as the lower bowel symptoms. I
repeat; we do not know which it is by the symptoms you describe. As an
allergist, let me warn you against trying to make a diagnosis by any test
other than dietary manipulation. The other tests very often lie to you, yes
*and* no.
