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So far at least -- i have heard from a number of people who have a similar
syndrome to me -- problems with carbohydrates, gluten intolerance,
allergies, food intolerance -- but no particular clues as to what might be
going on.  Is gluten/dairy at the root of it, perhaps?  Or stress the
root cause?  One person told me that being gluten free for a few months
had helped in getting over sugar cravings and needing sweets to get by.
"hypoglycemia" can definitely result from gluten and maybe other food
intolerances, because it can be the result of malabsorption, so you're
short of nutrients.

I got a number of people telling me, some rather indignantly, that they've
been diagnosed with reactive hypoglycemia by a doctor, so they think it's
a mainstream diagnosis.  I looked into it some and my take on it can be
found at
http://www.lightlink.com/lark/hypo

Basically, it looks like "reactive hypoglycemia" is most often a form of
insulin resistance, other causes are a lot more rare.  Insulin resistance
is a precursor to diabetes, and it has treatments.  You don't want to
ignore it.  And treating "reactive hypoglycemia" with adrenal supplements
or otherwise may do nothing for the insulin resistance, which is not good.

Or, "reactive hypoglycemia" may be something that develops into insulin
resistance.  I saw it mentioned as a stage on the way to insulin
resistance and diabetes.

I tried to find out what medical research *would* say about "reactive
hypoglycemia", since according to the research, it is not usually low
blood sugar.  No success so far.

 About adrenal supplements -- i put things about that on
http://www.lightlink.com/lark/adrenal

Caveats about adrenal supplements:

-- They may not really be addressing the underlying problem.  If the
underlying problem is insulin resistance, or something else to do with
your insulin, raising cortisol levels might be a patch which doesn't fix
the underlying problem.

-- There are negative things about cortisol on the hypoglycemia web page
that i mentioned in http://www.lightlink.com/lark/hypo

-- Cortisol can cause hyperglycemia, i.e. it raises your blood sugar,
which might feel good temporarily but be long term bad for you.

 But if stress causes this syndrome -- food intolerance, gluten
intolerance, etc. -- how about getting at the root causes of the stress?
i'm an abuse survivor -- i know from being with other abuse survivors,
it's remarkable how many of us have a lot of physical problems too.  It is
very stressful.  People's bodies fall apart.  From repressed emotions.
From ways of coping that come from traumatic childhoods that cause a lot
of pain.  And maybe therapy can help.

and, exercise helps make carbohydrate metabolism more normal and helps
with stress.  That's very natural, our ancestors got a lot more exercise
than most of us.

I have some faith in the "paleolithic" concept -- try to live like your
stone age ancestors lived and you'll be more healthy.  Gluten-free is part
of that, so is lots of exercise, so is dairy-free.

Connections:
-- Stress is said to cause gluten intolerance.

-- Emotional stress and for me stress of an eating disorder caused
"hypoglycemia".

-- Gluten intolerance was tentatively associated with insulin resistance
in the Dangerous Grains book.

-- Many people say that when they don't eat the foods they're intolerant
to, their "hypoglycemia" goes away.

-- "reactive hypoglycemia" is definitely linked with food allergies on the
   hypoglycemia web pages I've seen.  I think by "food allergies" they
   mean food intolerance, probably not the IgE reactions that the
   mainstream would call an allergy.


I developed my "reactive hypoglycemia" after a binge eating disorder i had
as a teenager.  And fructose was like a miracle cure.  It stopped me
binging.  i had been in severe anxiety before using fructose -- so much
that it felt like i was in an almost solidified cloud of anxiety.  After
the fructose, i was still anxious, but like an anxious person, not like
somebody almost physically trapped (bell jar of anxiety).

when i stopped eating grains, milk, apples and citrus, my intolerant
foods, my anxiety went way more down.

but i ran out of "slow" carbohydrates to eat!  I can't even eat kidney
beans, potatoes, fruit in meal-sized quantities, they just make me hungry.

So, i started eating a lot more fructose.  i was up to about 350 cals/day
of fructose.  Most of my calories probably come from fats, i have been
eating a lot of nuts.

I think the extra fructose might have made my carbohydrate intolerance
even worse.  Fructose is *used* to cause type 2 diabetes in rats, when
scientists want to study DM.  And i started needing to "stoke up" before
exercising, and frantically, involuntarily eating after exercising, which
suggest my body is getting less good at getting glucose out of storage.

So, hoping that me not eating gluten and my other culprit foods might help
me with my carbohydrate problems, i have been kind of coming out of
denial about my fructose habit.  It maybe has *kept* me carbohydrate
intolerant -- maybe when if i had just stopped binging, not eaten
fructose, i might have gotten over my carbohydrate problems in time.  I
didn't have them before my binge eating problems.

So i am slowly quitting fructose.  So far, I have had to eat basically a
low carbohydrate diet because with less fructose, I can't tolerate
carbohydrates as well.

And i understand there are some treatments for "hypoglycemia", like
chromium supplements.

Please folks, I know the basics -- i get a lot of email responses with
really basic info.  I have read a lot of FAQ files.  Things like "you can
get allergy drops" are not basic info.

I went to a doctor back when i first got the carbohydrate intolerance.  I
had read "Sugar blues" and i told him "I think i'm hypoglycemic".  He
snorted "no you're not, that's rare".  Technically he was right -- almost
all the people who are diagnosed with "reactive hypoglycemia" don't really
get low blood sugar after meals.  As a doctor, he was WRONG.  His next
question should have been --

why do you think you're hypoglycemic?

He didn't ask.  Does mainstream medicine KNOW what is actually going on
with people like me with carbohydrate intolerance?

So, I self-medicated with fructose for 25 years.  Now I realize the
fructose "drug" may have pushed me towards insulin resistance and
diabetes.

Laura

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