including abdominal pain and sudden attacks of diarrhea. She had it for the rest of her life, and the doctors told her that she had diverticulitis, which may have been the case. She lived with us for many years and with my mother and stepfather until about three years before she died, and I remember my mother saying to her just before meals, "Have you taken your Immodium?"
Flash forward 15 years after my grandmother's death, and I start getting those symptoms. My first thought was "Cancer?" But then I stopped and thought about whether anything had changed in my diet.
Well, I usually cook Asian style, much more Indian and Southeast Asian than Chinese or Japanese (my own attempts at Japanese food don't taste right to me), or make a ratatouille or a moussaka or something like that. I very rarely eat sandwiches or major pasta dishes.
The weak before the nasty digestive attacks, I had eaten an unusually large (for me) amount of bread, wheat pasta, cereal, and pizza. It wasn't planned. It was just the way things worked out. I figured that eliminating gluten, while difficult (I actually love bread--I just don't eat much of it), might be a good test to see if my symptoms went away.
They did. I eliminated bread, wheat pasta, gluten-containing cereal, and pizza, and my symptoms went away. Not only that, my joints hurt less, the psoriasis-like rash on my face began to fade, and the belly fat I acquired over the past two or three years is going away, gradually, but enough that I notice it.
About two weeks after I started the diet, I went to a social occasion where they served pie. Thinking it couldn't hurt, I had a slice. The next morning, my digestive system rebelled. It rebelled again a week later when I thoughtlessly ordered sesame chicken (breaded) in a Chinese restaurant.
My youngest brother, his son, and I have birthdays around the same time, so my sister-in-law asked if I would bring the cake for the celebration. She told me to get a flourless chocolate mousse cake from a local bakery. When I arrived at the party, I remarked that it was a good thing they had decided on a flourless cake, because I was experimenting with being gluten-free. My brother, a doctor, surprised me by saying that he had been gluten-free for over a year after experiencing the same types of symptoms I had had.
So that's my grandmother, my brother, and me, all developing these kinds of symptoms at roughly the same age. Strange that our mother never had any of these symptoms.
Eating out is a pain, but fortunately, there are restaurants in Minneapolis that either label their gluten-free dishes or specifically provide them. I've found a good brand of brown rice pasta, pure buckwheat soba noodles (not the cheap ones with wheat flour added) are gluten-free, and soft white corn tortillas make nice accompaniments to stews and soups.
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