It has long been my belief that we know exactly what ails us and choose to pretend it doesn’t because what ails us is usually something we rather adore and cannot contemplate living without. In my case it is gluten. I am positively gluttonous about gluten. Oh gluten how I love thee! A french stick still warm from the oven dripping in salty butter? Yes please! Iced donut? Why I don’t mind if I do! What’s that you say? Marks and Spencers are stocking their oh so delicious chocolate and toffee hot cross buns? Get me a trolley full! When it comes to gluten my gluttony knows no bounds. And it is killing me. A few weeks ago I got a letter through calling me to an appointment with an endocrinologist I don’t remember asking for and I took it to my GP and said and what would this be for and she said well frankly I have no idea but do go won’t you because appointments with that consultant are terribly hard to come by. And so I had my blood taken and trotted off to the appointment and there he was, a giant of a man who boomed as I sat down, well it’s no bloody wonder you don’t feel well! (Men do seem to boom around these parts.) And I felt puzzled and he muttered on about various thyroid related numbers and as it turns out I am one of the 15% of thyroid patients for whom the usual treatment is useless as my (frankly awkward) body cannot convert it into anything worth having and thus I have been popping pills for a good few years now that have been doing nothing at all and I wasn’t going mad: I would still feel yukky and tired and fat because the issue was going unaddressed. And I listened and said well now what can I do about it? And he said I can prescribe nothing at all on the NHS but you can buy some pills from America and take those instead and I have seen some excellent results with them and all shall be well IF you stop eating gluten too. For you m’dear have raised antibodies to gluten and it isn’t doing you any good at all and it will make you feel like death warmed up on a permanent basis and in the long run make you very ill and are you completely mad? You have a son with Coeliac Disease! You have an auto-immune illness! You KNOW gluten doesn’t agree with you and I cannot help you if you will not help yourself!! Readers I considered myself suitably chastened by this shouty man. Chastened good and proper. For I did know. I knew my fuzzy head and relentless lethargy weren’t normal. Of course I did. But I have been shuffling backwards and forwards to the GP for ever such a long time while she declared my results normal. Because GP’s do not order the comprehensive set of tests that reveal the truth so obviously to those consultants that do. So I thought my abnormalness was just a fact of life: I wasn’t normal and that was that. And yes, for sure gluten didn’t agree with me but heavens to Betsey, it was yummy and it couldn’t be the whole story now could it? Well ummm…. possibly. So two weeks ago I gave up gluten and since then I have lost seven inches from my person. An inch off my over-inflated bust. Two inches off my once bloated stomach. An inch here and another inch there. Seven inches! And all I did was cut out gluten and replace it with more veg and protein. It wasn’t hard because I have had the most outrageous flu, but still no gluten for two weeks and the results are pinned inside my wardrobe where I have stuck a chart to measure my Monday morning inch-loss week on week. Heck, self-deception should be a crime punishable in the Crown Court shouldn’t it? So if you take only one thing away from this post make it that self-deception is a crime against your person and YOU are supposed to be your persons greatest advocate. You see I KNOW that you KNOW what ails you too.And if I can do it you can do it too.
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“You should be your persons greatest advocate”. Love that. We women do tend to put others before ourselves. It’s just the way we are. But we should include ourselves in the “others”. How can we care for others if we are out of energy due to lack of caring for ourselves? Thank you for this post.
Good for you! I had high thyroid antibodies too, even though I was already gluten free due to headaches I used to get. My practitioner suggested going off dairy too for a month (thought I would die……I have a love affair with cheese) and I lost ten pounds in a month and my antibodies cut in half. Wow! I was sold! It isn’t easy and I give myself a cheat once a week that I save for something really worth it, but I feel and look so much better. Keep it up!!!
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“You should be your persons greatest advocate”. Love that. We women do tend to put others before ourselves. It’s just the way we are. But we should include ourselves in the “others”. How can we care for others if we are out of energy due to lack of caring for ourselves? Thank you for this post.
Good for you! I had high thyroid antibodies too, even though I was already gluten free due to headaches I used to get. My practitioner suggested going off dairy too for a month (thought I would die……I have a love affair with cheese) and I lost ten pounds in a month and my antibodies cut in half. Wow! I was sold! It isn’t easy and I give myself a cheat once a week that I save for something really worth it, but I feel and look so much better. Keep it up!!!