Gluten Intolerance and edema

I have been battling edema and stomach bloating for over 10 years without much resolution.  There are days where my body, hands, face and extremities swell to the point that it is very uncomfortable.  I seem to appear very healthy to a doctor when I go to the doctors to complain about my problem.  They seem to think that I have an eating disorder.  They think that it is in my mind that I have gained weight and I just can’t admit that I have put on weight.

Gluten intolerance has finally gained some respect in the community because 1 in 133 people in the US is affected by it.  Some don’t even know that they have it.  Most just think that they are gaining weight.  Many doctors don’t understand this new disorder or intolerance because it was not taught in medical school.  It is new because our food chain has been tampered with genetically modified food and processed food with GMO has affected us in many ways.  I am sure that there are more diseases out there that doctors have no answer to.

When I visit a doctor or an allergists or a kidney specialist about my problem, they run their typical blood tests and tell me that I am healthy and that there is nothing wrong with me and have even hinted at the fact I might need to go and see a psychiatrist.

I know that over the years, gluten does in fact causes me to feel dehydrated and therefore, I drink more water and subsequently I swell even more.    What gluten does is it makes your gut more permeable to protein in the gluten and water leaves your blood stream and moves out to your tissue.  This causes tissue swelling/edema.   Some people experience bloating of the abdomen and extremities.  Going on a gluten-free diet helps the situation, but I have also noticed that after being on the gluten-free diet for over 5 years, the gluten-free diet has lost its effectiveness.  I have started to gain more water weight even when I was on the gluten-free diet.  This puzzled me. ….I started to also have more swelling in my stomach and distention to the point that I felt as though I was 6 months pregnant when I wasn’t.  Through further research and trial and error with my diet, I realized that I also had another diagnosis.  I have acquired fructose malabsorption.  This is when your body is unable to process fructose, a sugar from fruits.  That meant that if I ate fruits that had more fructose than glucose content in it, I will not be able to absorb the fructose and it will cause bacterial overgrowth in my gut.  This in turns causes my stomach distention, gas, possible diarrhea and depression in some due to the lowering of tryptophan level in the blood.

Fructose high food such as apples, pears, and watermelons as well as other fruits and vegetables should be avoided to prevent further exacerbation.  You can get your hydrogen breath test to see if you have fructose malabsorption.  This test may give you false negative at which point, you might want to do a lactose intolerance test to follow.

Many doctors, have not accepted that fructose malabsorption as a real disorder or disease.  There are still many clinical trials to be done for both gluten intolerance and edema as well as that for fructose malabsorption.

In the end, it should be known that you know your body the best and if you don’t feel right, don’t let doctors tell you that you are fine.  There are many diseases out there that does not fall within what doctors are taught, but there are new diseases and disorders that all doctors should be aware of.  There are more diseases out there that are still being researched and they are mainly related to our food chain and what it is doing to our bodies.

Many diseases are related to food intake and doctors to this day are still unsure and not versed in are:  Gluten intolerance, fructose malabsorption, autism, fibromyalgia.

I encourage doctors to set up more clinical trials and studies to find out why people are having these problems because these problems are not going aways, they are just going to get more prevalent and more and more people are going to be affected.

Maybe not all of americans are becoming obese, many are afflicted with gluten intolerance that have gotten out of hand and they have suffered severed edema that results in sluggish ability for the water to be removed from the tissue as the disease worsen.