You've seen the "I'm drunk" threads but...

…have you ever seen a “I’m high on gluten” thread?

i have [dermatitis/url [url=http://www.emedicine.com/DERM/topic95.htm]herpetiformis. One of the lesser known side effects of this condition is that people get what has been described as “fuzzy head” when they eat gluten. Well I have been told that I have a rather extreme version of the “fuzzy head” because if I eat gluten, I get really messed up. I have a hard time focusing on anything and I don’t recall much during that time. Well I bought my wife a fresh made cinamin bun and also one for my son. He had half of his and I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to finish it off. Well I am messed up and I got called in to work on an emergency :eek:

i a m sitting here taking a break trying to get ahandle on what I am doing. i am writing everything down so I have a reference later.
This must be what it’s like to be at work drunk, but I hve been told that my condition is more like a drup trip than a drunken stupour.

Anyway, this is truly mundane and pointless…

Ok, well I got a genuine questions for you. Since you have this problem with gluten I’m going to assume you’ve done some research and know about gluten and it’s affect on people.

My sister was diagnosed as “gluten intolerant” a few years ago. It seems that more and more people are discovering problems they have with gluten (or maybe I’m just becoming more aware of it since my sister’s daignosis).

So what’s the deal with gluten? I mean is it being discovered that gluten is in general not good for people, but some people can tolerate it better than others? Or is it that more and more people are having problems with it as the generations progress? Or is it just a frequence of diagnoses because medicine has become aware of it? Do you follow my questioning? Can you enlighten me?

What exactly does it feel like? That is, what are the mental, physical, emotional and perhaps even visual feelings you experience?

This would be a good time to write a screenplay.

I’m back and am feeling much better now.

I will try to answer your questions pussycow.

First off, gluten is a naturally occurring protein found in most grain such as barley, oats, rye, and wheat.

I too, have noticed that more people are going away from gluten. (Can I get a grammar check on this sentence?) I can think of several reasons as to why people are moving to a gluten free (GF) diet.

  1. The conditions and symptoms brought on by gluten intolerance were not well understood and not studied all that much until the last decade. I don’t know what brought this on but when I was diagnosed 12 years ago, the specialist I went to see told me that he decide to test me for DH as a last resort. He had never seen a case of DH before and there was few papers written on the condition but he had run out of options in terms of what was possibly wrong with me. I think the greater forcus and understanding has led to a dramatic increase in the number of GF diets prescribed.

2)The GF diet is healthy. While it does remove many sources of fibre from the diet (that can be offset by taking fibre supplements), the GF diet forces the dietee (?) away from unhealthy foods like fast food chains and most snacks. The GF diet also removes most processed foods from a diet so all the chemicals added to give a food “shelf life” are no longer being injested. The person ends up eating more natural foods. The result is that the dietee starts eating healthier and, even if gluten is not the cause of the problem, a GF, or healthier, diet may be part of the solution.

3)The fact that little is known about what causes gluten intolerance coupled with the fact that the GF diet is beneficial, in that it forces a person to start taking notice of what they are eating, makes it an appealing diagnosis for doctors and laypeople alike. Their are dozens of people in my community who tried the GF diet hoping that it would help them with whatever was ailing them, and it has. Doctors also seem to be more willing to tell someone to start a GF diet. I have no stats to back it up but it is either that or our society is in the midst of a gluten intolerance outbreak. I have not had the time to read more on the overall gluten intolerance movement but it seems to me that, for some people, the problem may not be the gluten but other chemicals contained in gluten bearing foods. The GF diet eliminates so many ingredients that, IMO, it makes it hard to say if the person recovered due to the abstinence from gluten or from something else being removed from their diet without continuous testing.

Emotionally Fetus, it is freeing. I don’t seem to care about what is happening around me. That or I do care and am too apathetic to do anything. I get lethargic while being prone to severe mood swings.

Mentally, I can’t focus on anything for any real length of time. My brother tells a story of me phoning him at midnight to talk but my conversation was so fragmented that he could not follow me.

Visually, I have halucinated once. While I don’t know exactly what I ate, I know I ate a lot of it so now I am very careful not to overdue it if I do end up cheating on my diet.

Physically, I can break out in a rash that is insanely uncomfortable. Before I was diagnosed, I had a rash that was quite severe. No ointment or medication seemed to stem the itch. Scratching did not help much either. I would actually remove the part of the skin that was itching. I would take a knife and cut a small hole around the itch and remove the layers of skin. You see, scabs don’t itch…at least not as bad. One thing that has occurred if I cheat too much is that I will forget to breath. I will try to explain by giving the worst experience I have had with this. I was lying in bed for all intents and purposes, stoned, letting my mind just go when it started to occur to me that I had not inhaled in some time. I made a mental note that, yes indeed, I was not inhaling. I glanced over at my watch and started counting the seconds 1-2-3…18-19-20…33-34-35!! By this time, I am starting to get really concerned. I was just about to wake my wife up when I started inhaling, gasping for air. Freaky.
One last story to respond to Shirley Ujest. There was a major project to be completed on Tuesday a few years back in school. I had the project all complete and took it home on the weekend to test, debug, and tweak it. I accidentally ate something bad and could no longer think straight and started editing my project because suddenly nothing seemed to work. I called my wife, who was out on Sunday night, in a panic saying that I would be removed from the course because the project wasn’t working and she came home to help (She may be sweet but she is not a computer programmer). By the time I got to school Monday, my project was in pieces and, I’m told, I was calling functions that didn’t exist. Fortunately for me, my study group know of my condition and that I already had the project complete before the weekend so they basically rewrote it for me so I could hand it in on Tuesday. They still wish they would have saved that code. They ask how the person who finished first in his class could possibly write a program like that.
I could try and write a screenplay but it would be really messed up. You’re right, I should try it.
Thanks for your interest. No one ever asks about my condition and, after the length of this post, probably no one ever will again.

An old boss of mine and his daughter had gluten intolerance. He had to avoid licking envelopes or stamps, lest there be gluten used in the glue in some form! Plus his daughter ended up with diabetes, so their home revolved around healthy meal-planning, especially in trying to steer their pre-teen daughter towards eating healthy even if it wasn’t all the same stuff her peers were eating, or in making gluten-free versions of popular food like pizza. I’m fairly certain their symptoms weren’t as strong as yours, however. You have my sympathy; that sounds dreadful to deal with the side-effects. Do you get that strong of a reaction when you unknowingly ingest some gluten, like from licking envelopes where the glue contains it?

The short answer is no. I generally can take small amounts without a severe reaction. Sometimes (I think it may depend on ingredients but I really haven’t bothered to track it), I can have a reaction like this past Friday after eating very little gluten (half a cinnamon bun).

Generally I just avoid gluten but I won’t go to extremes. The lady that runs the GF bakery I go to has her husbands food stored in sealed containers in a freezer in their garage to avoid getting gluten into the air of their home.

I should be more careful perhaps as studies are showing links between my condition, untreated, and intestinal cancers.