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Hi all,

I just wanted to let you all know what has happened since I discovered I
am lactose intolerant. (The Lactose and Intolerance and Pain
discussion).

Thanks to Dr. Fine's tests, and finding out I am lactose intolerant, I
have discovered a waterfall of things that have been cascading into my
system without my knowledge. The elimination of lactose (actually all
dairy, since I am intolerant to all things about it) has caused me to
start reacting even more profoundly to things that have even the
slightest amount of cross contamination from gluten!  I did not think it
was a problem before this time, for me. The pain I was experiencing in
the hip and back has eased, and even my physical therapist agrees that
the muscle spasms I am having is systemic, not structural, and that as
soon as I cut out the lactose she even saw (4 days later) a very big
difference. The good thing is, now I get shooting spasm the minute I eat
something cross contaminated. That tells me it is gluten and lactose
that has been causing the pain all along. I am ecstatic about that
knowledge. The benadryl that I was taking (which was Allegra before I
discovered the lactose problem) was causing me problems. I called the
company and sure enough, they do not guarantee any of their products GF
because of cross contamination. BENADRYL! I know a lot of people on this
list use Benadryl. Now I can't find an antihistamine that is free of
both.

The reason I am writing this letter is to let those people know, who do
not know where their symptoms are coming from and do not know if they
are lactose intolerant, you should check it out. I thought I wasn't
because I rarely ate soft cheeses, only hard (they have little or no
lactose in them) and have hated milk since I was a kid. I never drank
it, and never cooked with it.

The end result is that I have been able to now see that I am also
getting gluten in my system that I was not aware of. I am now struggling
to remove all of those things that are cross contamination issues.  The
minute I try any of those canned or prepared foods, I have problems,
which leads me to believe anything processed is cross contaminated
(Please, no comments on this, it is just my opinion) . I have been
eating tortilla chips for years. I did not know I have a problem with
them until about a week ago.(Diarrhea, which I never got from them
before going LF, and have been getting it with everything that has cross
contamination since then )  Any thing from Frito Lay causes  me a
problem.

And, yes, my stool test did show that I still had gluten in my system. I
wasn't real surprised because I had had a gluten accident shortly before
the test.

So...........check out lactose intolerance, and you may be surprised
what you find besides that!

Diana in RI