People always ask me, “How did you find out you were gluten intolerant?”
It was neither at the office of a gastroenterologist nor an internist, but an optometrist/optometrist.
I have had gastrointestinal problems for years, and I have been to an internist, a gastroenterologist, and finally, a gastroenterologist at Stanford hospital for various tests. But nothing was found wrong.
One day, I was having a checkup at an optometrist. On the medical questionnaire, there was a section to write down the medication I was currently taking. So the optometrist asked me why I was taking that medication, which I explained.
The Japanese-American optometrist replied,
“In Western medicine, they give you a lot of drugs to suppress your symptoms. But they don’t investigate the cause!
He said, “I had a patient, a little girl, who had a gastrointestinal problem. The parents took her to a number of doctors, but they didn’t look deeply into the cause, thinking it might be Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and just prescribed medicine. But then she went on a gluten-free diet, and she was cured! She was gluten intolerant.”
He explained emphatically.
When I heard those words, I started wondering if I might be gluten intolerant, too.
In the car on the way home, I thought, “Maybe, just maybe, I am. But I don’t want to know that I’m going to be wheat-flour intolerant for the rest of my life. But…” My head was spinning. I got home and immediately looked up the symptoms of gluten intolerance.
And there it was!
Oh, kidding, really?
I was surprised, but I wanted to know if I was really gluten intolerant, so I immediately started eating without gluten. It was right around the time of the Covid stay-at-home enforcement, I anyway didn’t have the opportunity to dine with other people, so it was the perfect time to try the gluten-free lifestyle.
I did, and lo and behold, my gastrointestinal tract was fine!
And after 3 weeks, I stopped taking my dreaded daily prescription medications as well.
No meds, no stomach aches!
I was so happy and my heart was so bright.
I felt so much better now that I knew the cause of the problems that had been plaguing me for so many years.
Now I don’t have to take any more medicine!
Even happier, I can now eat and drink things that used to give me a stomach ache.
Caffeine is one of them. I used to avoid caffeine unless I was very sleepy, but now I can have one or two cups a day. I can also enjoy coffee now.
Traditionally, people with gluten intolerance were thought to have no intestinal damage from ingesting gluten, but a 2016 Columbia University Hospital study found that there might be also damage to intestinal cells. In my case, maybe that’s why, after I went gluten-free, the damage to my gut diminished, my gut cells became healthier, and I was able to eat things I couldn’t eat before.