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[Sappho]

I've decided to try to put my obsessively analytical personality to good use and document things as I go. I'm always trying to understand how and why my body and mind work they way they do, and how to modify them. I have a lot of physical and neurological problems, so it's an interesting study with no shortage of possibilities to consider.

Spoiler: Sodium (Ongoing) (click to show/hide)

One possible cause of my allergies and eczema is sodium: apparently high sodium intake has been linked to autoimmune diseases such as these. I cut much of the salt out of my diet about a month ago (end of April) – no more potato chips, tortilla chips, etc., and very little bread (since it is apparently a large hidden source of sodium), and I almost never get takeout food anymore (even pizza, which I used to have at least once or twice a week). Basically, I started cooking almost everything I eat from scratch, which is a lot more work, but worth it if I can get this rash to go away. I don’t even put much salt in the food, and the salt I do use is sea salt, since apparently it contains way more minerals and nutrients, rather than the pure NaCl of refined salt.

So far the low-salt thing is going well. I never felt good about all the preservatives in pre-made food, and the salt thing pushed me over the edge. I can definitely maintain this long-term and I enjoy cooking anyway. And I have noticed that my allergies are much better this year than last, though whether that is the result of the reduced sodium intake remains to be seen. I am keeping track of what I eat each day and trying to make sure I'm not inadvertently taking in loads of salt, or else replacing it with something else which is also bad for me. I already caught myself eating extra sweets to make up for it, and decided to increase my fat intake since I might be missing extra calories from cutting out salty stuff.

Spoiler: Gluten (Completed) (click to show/hide)

Original post:

The next step was gluten. I discovered about a year ago that I was lactose intolerant, with mortifyingly foul-smelling gas. I reluctantly cut my dairy intake to almost nothing (and completely cut out milk) and the situation improved. However, I still have some odd problems, including the allergies and some stomach issues. It has been suggested to me by several sources that I might actually be gluten intolerant, and eating gluten is causing all these problems (and messing up my system so I can no longer process dairy – I might not even be lactose intolerant). I have resisted considering this possibility for a long time because I LOVE bread. Pitas, sandwiches, flatbread, crackers, not to mention pizza (homemade now due to sodium considerations), pasta, bulgur, couscous, dumplings, pastries, noodles… The list goes on and on. I feed on this stuff almost constantly. I like rice and potatoes, but they never fill me up the way bread does, and they’re never as convenient to eat.

I've finally decided to give the idea a chance. Starting Sunday, I completely cut gluten out of my diet. I will continue this for a week and evaluate whether it’s worth continuing. I will log my progress and daily notes in this thread. If anyone wants to join me, or offer feedback or ideas, you are welcome.

I didn’t keep careful track of my food before today, but from Sunday to Tuesday the only starchy foods I ate were potatoes and rice. Mostly I ate stir-frys, homemade fries, and various sauces with rice. In general I was feeling much more tired than usual, and with a much bigger appetite – even after stuffing my belly with rice and beans, I never quite feel that cozy “full” feeling that tells me I’ve had enough. I keep finding myself hunting around for snacks, but not finding anything that doesn’t contain gluten. I’m restless and unsettled.

Important notes:
-I must also take into consideration that my hormone levels are very high this week, so this is a factor as well. I might have to do this for two weeks to have more balanced results.
-I work in a preschool so snacks are built into my daily schedule.
-I am not a vegetarian by philosophy and I do not refuse to eat meat, but I don’t eat much of it because it is expensive and I don’t know how to cook it very well. I prefer the taste of vegetarian food anyway.
-Any food that I didn’t make myself will be noted as such.

Conclusion:
After a week without gluten there were no positive effects, but plenty of negative ones. I was tired, irritable, always hungry, and generally just feeling awful. I even stopped enjoying food. When the week was over I resumed eating plenty of gluten with no ill effects to report.

(First Day Notes from original post)

Food for the day:
Drinks: Lots of tea (Oolong), a glass of chocolate soya milk, plenty of water
Breakfast – Greek-style yogurt with homemade strawberry-rhubarb preserves for flavor. Four rice cakes (flavored with soy) with a small amount of tahini spread on them.
Snack – A handful of chopped yellow bell peppers, cucumber, granny smith apple, and blueberries.
Lunch – A small bowl of split pea soup (provided by school, details unknown but all school food is organic and low-sodium for the kids). A big salad of tomato, ripe avocado, red pepper, and sliced turkey sandwich meat (biggest source of sodium for the day). No added salt or sauce of any kind.
Snack – A small pot of yogurt with the strawberry-rhubarb preserves. A handful of homemade roasted peas rolled in tandoori masala spice.
Dinner – Two bowls of veggie soup with fresh chopped herbs and a pinch of sea salt, rice noodles, and egg. Tasted so bland I added about a teaspoon of store-bought sriracha (small enough amount that the sodium level isn't a big problem, though I regret the preservatives).

Planning to make a batch of cornbread using this recipe: http://www.plantoeat.com/blog/2012/06/100-cornmeal-cornbread-gluten-free/

General feeling:
Overall moodiness, easily attributable to hormones.
General feeling of hunger all day. Constantly reaching for the roasted peas to munch on. Work doesn’t give much time to hunt for snacks (not supposed to eat while the children are not eating) so spent most of the day feeling uncomfortably hungry. Spent the hour-long trip home thinking about how hungry I was, desperate to stop at a pizza stand for a slice, but fought the urge.
Not sure if I could keep this up long-term. Would I get used to this food and stop feeling so hungry all the time?
Realized today that although I’ve been eating ice cream and cheese during the week (today being the exception – yogurt is safe for lactose intolerance), I haven’t had any of the embarrassing gas I normally get. Might be I just haven’t had enough to cause a problem, but could actually be that the glucose really is causing the dairy problems. I kind of hope not – I miss my bread so much I feel like crying.

Spoiler: Vitamin B12 (Ongoing) (click to show/hide)

I was discussing with someone various problems I've had recently and she suggested a possible vitamin B12 deficiency. Apparently this is quite common in people who don't eat much meat and don't realize how important this vitamin is, so they don't find another source for it (true in my case for at least the past year or two). The symptoms include drowsiness, confusion, memory problems, concentration problems, "brain fog," and even psychosis if left unchecked for too long. She suggested that I start taking a B12 supplement immediately. If my symptoms improve within a month, it is probably the B12, as other causes for these symptoms would probably not suddenly go away. If it does not get better in a month, the supplements are not helping and I can discard them and seek other explanations for my problems. In any case, extra B12 isn't going to do me any harm.

She suggested taking 2500 mcg of B12 each day, but that seems quite high to me since the highest concentration I could find in pill form was 500 mcg. I've decided to take 1500 per day (3 pills) and see how it goes. I'm tracking my related symptoms carefully, hour by hour on charts I've made for this purpose. For now I'm hand-writing the charts each day. I hope to put these charts into the computer soon.

Spoiler: Cleaning Habits (Successful!) (click to show/hide)

I've always been terribly messy. My apartment was an utter disaster and I could never get myself to keep the place tidy. There were many factors here. I had no habits of spending time on cleaning - I was never given chores growing up or even encouraged to clean. When I moved away from home I had flatmates who pressured me to clean up after myself, but I always waited for them to ask before I did any cleaning. Now I live alone and there is no one to tell me to clean. Combined with this is a recent problem with depression and a lack of energy at the end of each day when I get home which sucks away all my motivation. My current goal is essentially to program myself with a compulsion to keep things clean.

The idea is to solidly imprint myself with an image of how everything *should* look. Until now I knew it was a mess, but I didn't have a clear image of how it should look and the idea of finding a place for everything was overly daunting. Now I'm deep-cleaning the entire apartment and forcing myself to keep each item in its clean state. If there is a mess somewhere, it should irritate me, as it is not the way it is supposed to be, and I must interrupt whatever I'm doing to fix it. So far I am already having success with keeping the living room floor vacuumed (once per day), and the sink and drying rack in the kitchen clear of dishes. As I finish cleaning each item I must hold on to that clear image of how it looks in its clean state so that I can easily keep it that way. It should get to the point where I am bothered by things being out of place, so it doesn't take any extra effort to push myself to tidy it up.

Conclusion
After only about a week of trying to develop these cleaning habits, there has been great success. I am vacuuming the apartment just about every day (which automatically means tidying so I can reach the whole floor) and always washing dishes and putting them away, as well as wiping down counters and tables, etc. I have developed the habit of tidying and keeping things clean. I feel better about my environment, which makes me feel better emotionally. I have a general feeling of accomplishing something, getting things done, and even when I'm feeling tired, I no longer feel lazy and I can still get up and do things that need doing. The hesitation and lack of motivation I used to feel is disappearing, not only when it comes to cleaning, but even with doing paperwork, paying bills, keeping in touch with friends, etc. I will still keep an eye on myself to make sure these habits don't degrade with time, but as of now (9 June), I'm calling this a success.

Spoiler: Volunteers Wanted! (click to show/hide)

I am now looking for some other people to help me with my data collection. I have plenty of data on myself and I know my own opinions on what is normal and reasonable, what is unusual, what I should expect from myself, but actually I don't really have anything to compare it to. For all I know, other people have completely different ideas. Maybe I'm not as unusual as I think I am. Maybe others feel the same way as me and I just don't realize it. Or maybe I really am very different. Talking to others about it and speaking in generalizations doesn't really help because everything is so subjective and relative. What I need is real data.

My request to anyone willing to help out is to gather data on yourselves, the same way I am still doing. One day, a few days, a week, a month, however much you are willing to do. I have uploaded a blank "symptom tracker" form, the same one I use to keep track of my moods and status. It is mostly based on the symptoms of B12 deficiency, including the opposite state of each symptom. I fill in the chart every hour that I'm awake, but for others, I'd be happy with whatever data you're willing to offer. Fill it in once every few hours, or just a couple times a day - it will still be useful information.

You can get the blank chart here. Please let me know if there are any problems with the link.

Here are the instructions for how to fill out the chart.

What I Will Do With This Data
I am already working on compiling my own data in a useful, readable format. I will make all of my own tables available to the public to view in case anyone wants to see them, but mostly I will present the results in graphs and charts. I will add data provided by volunteers as a comparison, show average values, etc., depending on how many people I get data from. Of course data will be kept anonymous if anyone doesn't want it associated with their name (or if you want to have your name on it, that's possible as well).

XKCD has posted a very appropriate comic, very well-timed for this experiment:



The root of what I'm trying to get at here, is how different are we really from one another when it comes to these things we don't normally talk about? Let's find out using !!SCIENCE!!

[Levi]

Gluten and Salt are REALLY hard to avoid unless you eat nothing but raw vegetables.  Good luck!

[freeformschooler]

Gluten and Salt are REALLY hard to avoid unless you eat nothing but raw vegetables.  Good luck!

Salt yes, but my mom just finished her month-of-gluten free and came to the conclusion it wasn't as hard as she thought it would be. She was very diligent, though.

Good luck to you though, Sappho.

[Sappho]

Gluten and Salt are REALLY hard to avoid unless you eat nothing but raw vegetables.  Good luck!

No reason for them to be raw. I have a great bamboo steamer and I can make very good stir-frys with just fresh chopped herbs and veggies for flavor.

In any case, I'm not cutting out salt completely, but I've reduced it immensely from the amount I used to eat (which was a lot). If I put a normal amount of salt in the food I cook, it's still drastically less salt than I would get in, say, a single slice of pizza or a falafel pita at a food stand, or any kind of instant meal you'd get at the supermarket.

It is perfectly possible to just eat potatoes, corn, and rice for starchy stuff and avoid gluten, but it's definitely not as filling or as easy as smearing something on a slice of bread in 30 seconds and just eating. I actually thought this would be fairly easy, but it's only 4 days in and I'm having a really hard time. I'll have to persist at least until my hormones stabilize, as they can make things seem more difficult than they are.

In case anyone is interested, I got the information about salt and autoimmune disease here: http://www.trueactivist.com/scientists-officially-link-processed-foods-to-autoimmune-disease/

EDIT: Also, it's important to note that the salt I'm eating is mainly sea salt, which is quite healthy. According to this research, the problem is refined salt, which is what I'm trying to eliminate as much as possible.

[penguinofhonor]

Get some potato bread.

And avoiding processed foods most definitely has benefits beyond not consuming gluten or salt. Make sure not to blame gluten on what crappy preservatives are actually doing.

[DJ]

How do you eat your corn? Cornbread should be fairly filling, I reckon.

[Ameablable]

Agreed cornbread is quite good and quite filling.
just very very dry..

[DJ]

It should go well with a stew of some sort.

[Sappho]

Get some potato bread.

And avoiding processed foods most definitely has benefits beyond not consuming gluten or salt. Make sure not to blame gluten on what crappy preservatives are actually doing.

I stopped almost all processed foods when I decided to cut most of the salt, since the two go hand in hand. For sure I am avoiding preservatives, though I am only human and having been raised on McDonald's and instant ramen, I'm pretty strongly conditioned to crave the stuff, so I still indulge sometimes. These exceptions will *probably* not kill me.

I changed the salt about a month ago. I have definitely noticed some improvements. Now I'm doing the gluten as a separate test. The gluten I'm cutting isn't processed stuff really though. It's bread (some of which was homemade with sea salt and no preservatives, and the local style of bread contains salt but no preservatives and goes bad after just a day or two), homemade pizza, homemade buns and dumplings, vegetable soup with asian noodles, salads with cracked durum bulgur... This stuff is not unhealthy on its own, but if I do have an intolerance, I should notice a difference by cutting it from my diet. I honestly hope I don't feel any better, because I love those foods so much, and I've felt hungry for four days now.

Potato bread is mostly wheat flour, just with a little potato added. To my knowledge, it is not possible to bake bread using only potatoes.

I am going to try cornbread tonight though, gluten-free with cornmeal being the only grain. No idea how it will turn out - it's my first time making cornbread from scratch and definitely the first time without wheat flour in it. Wish me luck! As for other types of corn, they don't grow a lot of corn around here, so it's not easy to get corn on the cob and such. If I want corn I usually buy it frozen, but I don't use it very often. It's all about the potatoes in central Europe!

[penguinofhonor]

Potato bread is mostly wheat flour, just with a little potato added. To my knowledge, it is not possible to bake bread using only potatoes.

This is an incredible disappointment.

[Sappho]

Potato bread is mostly wheat flour, just with a little potato added. To my knowledge, it is not possible to bake bread using only potatoes.

This is an incredible disappointment.

Agreed.

[misko27]

Interesting. There are, as people have said, few ways of pulling this off Although since, I'm trying to remember, about 10% of the population is allergic to some degree, and those who know live fine.


Luck to you.

[Xantalos]

Good luck!
_{Side note: this would make a good How to be a Human}

[Akura]

Potato bread is mostly wheat flour, just with a little potato added. To my knowledge, it is not possible to bake bread using only potatoes.

This is an incredible disappointment.

According to Wikipedia, the potato:wheat flour ratio can vary between having mostly flour to mostly potato. Unfortunately, the recipe for Irish potato bread linked from that article calls for a 1/2tsp of salt, so it might not be what you want for your salt-reduced diet, though you can substitute oatmeal for the flour.
Darn it, now I wan to try that recipe, especially the variant with apple filling.

Hope this works out for you, though.

[Vector]

Hmmm, I've gone gluten-free before by accident (I was trying to cut out white flour, which resulted in my cutting out all flour).  The horrible hunger does go away after a few days, or at least it did for me... I ended up backsliding due to stress, though.  While I was on that diet I'll admit that I felt much better.  More alert, better mood, all that good stuff.