Guest guest Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 I've been reading for a few weeks now, and it seems many of you have a lot of knowledge and experience, and maybe someone would recognise something about what I was dealing with an give me some ideas and suggestions on how to improve these specific issues. About 3 years ago, my teeth started to break. There was no reason anyone could find, and suggested it was 'stress'. Nealy all of them have fractures in them, and two broke beyond repair, while two more had crowns before they split completely. They are also nearly translucent - about half the of each tooth is still opaque, the rest is translucent. Also around this time, I began to gain weight. Before that I was an effortless size six. I maintained this by eating according to physical hunger and stopping when I was full. I have continued this way of eating, and now I just gain weight. I check calories every so often just to assure myself I am not deluding myself and according to every 'diet' out there I should be losing weight easily on what I eat. I walk my son to and from school every day, lift weights three days a week and get longer walks in a couple of days a week. During this same time period I had four miscarriages that were determinded to be caused by blood clotting and immune factors - meaning my immune system destroys the embryo anyway. The doctors believe, but cannot be sure, that this makes me at risk for other autoimmune conditions. I'd rather not find out. I believe all of this is somehow connected - it's too much to think it could all have started at the same time without there being some connection. I just don't know how or what to do about it. I've given up on having another child - six m/c is too many - but I know something must be very wrong or I would not be gaining weight and losing teeth. Any thoughts or recommendations on nutrition factors to focus on would be appreciated. CJ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 At 08:34 AM 9/21/2004, you wrote: >I believe all of this is somehow connected - it's too much to think it >could all >have started at the same time without there being some connection. I just >don't know how or what to do about it. I've given up on having another >child - >six m/c is too many - but I know something must be very wrong or I would not >be gaining weight and losing teeth. Any thoughts or recommendations on >nutrition factors to focus on would be appreciated. > >CJ well, before heidi beats me to it, sounds to me like you have celiac. in fact, you have the same symptom set as my sister in law, the former gov'r of ma. she did end up being able to have babies, so don't totally give up! and she's slim and trim now too, and runs marathons regularly. her recovery was a bit tougher than some i've known, but going gluten free is the first step. i believe that her difficult recovery was because she was gluten free but still eating factory food, so she was still completely nutrient deficient. all the recommendations will come - we all have this routine pretty down pat now but run, don't walk, to a gluten free diet!! -katja Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 >well, before heidi beats me to it, sounds to me like you have celiac. in >fact, you have the same symptom set as my sister in law, the former gov'r >of ma. she did end up being able to have babies, so don't totally give up! >and she's slim and trim now too, and runs marathons regularly. her recovery >was a bit tougher than some i've known, but going gluten free is the first >step. i believe that her difficult recovery was because she was gluten free >but still eating factory food, so she was still completely nutrient deficient. Yeah, Katja beat me! But what you describe is pretty classic ... my own journey began when I couldn't figure out WHY I was always starving hungry. Mind you I DID eat carefully or I would have gained more than I did, but I ended up 100 lbs or so over what I was. Joints all hurt, and I started to get Sjogren's, which is an autoimmune disorder, and a lot of other problems. Miscarriages and tooth problems are classic too. The kicker is, most docs will tell you it is not celiac or gluten intolerance if you are overweight ... yet that is a common issue (I'd guess the body is trying to compensate for lack of digestion). The good news is, eating GF can be quite tasty and is not as difficult as it seems when you first think about it. We eat a LOT better (as in, tastier) than we used to. We don't eat factory food much, but we do have goodies (like pizza, brownies, cookies, though we don't crave them like we used to so have them more rarely). And everyone is skinnier ... The best rundown of the issues is the book Dangerous Grains (we agree we don't like the title: it's a very well thought out and scientific book though). WWW.celiac.com has some good links too. http://www.aafp.org/afp/980301ap/pruessn.html That link is one of my favorites ... good one to hand to a doc if you want to get tested too. Lists the symptoms and why one gets those symptoms. It is older though ... they prevalence they say is 1 in 300, it is now more like 1 in 100 have celiac, and 1 in 10 folks are gluten intolerant by blood test, probably 1 in 3 by gut test. It has been shown though that one's life will be shorter if you have this and still eat gluten, so it is worth treating! Not to mention it makes life rather painful. Heidi Jean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 Do you guys know if some ethnicities are more likely to be gluten sensitive? I know a couple of people that are Lithuanian and their teeth are falling apart (along with other health issues). " Lithuanian " Dan http://worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/lt.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 21, 2004 Report Share Posted September 21, 2004 >Do you guys know if some ethnicities are more likely to be gluten >sensitive? I know a couple of people that are Lithuanian and their >teeth are falling apart (along with other health issues). > > " Lithuanian " Dan Absolutely. The countries that have had wheat the least have more of the HLA genes that are at the root of the problem. Those genes are very rare in the middle East, a little more common in the mediterranean, and common in Ireland. In the northern countries, wheat has only been eaten very recently (less than 200 years in some places). It also varies by wealth ... the wealthier people had wheat, poor people didn't. My grandad said that as a kid, they couldn't afford bread much, they lived off oats (homegrown, from the sounds of it). He LOVED bread, and his brother founded a bakery after WW1 when times got a little better, and bread existed for a long time in Germany, but the common folk didn't get it so much from his description. They lived off what they could grow on harvest, which meant goat stuff and vegies and potatoes. So the genes in question could survive. But our genes are so mixed at this point that there isn't a clear boundary, and there are folks from Turkey in the celiac group. Celiac was first recognized in Czecholslavakia after WW2 (or some other country near there, if memory serves), when there was a flour shortage, a whole lot of kids got BETTER even though they weren't getting enough to eat. Then they got sick again when food supplies got better. Something similar happened to (of and fame) ... whenever they were out in the woods he was ok, but when they got back to civilization he had terrible stomach problems, which they figured was nerves and not liking civilized life. I sometimes wonder about the store " Heidi " (my namesake!) .. Clara got better when she left the city and lived in the mountains ... if they ate like my grandad described, they would be eating oat gruel and goat cheese a lot. Anyway, what was the diet like in Lithuania 100 years ago? My guess based on little cultural knowledge would be that they ate a lot of cabbage ... Heidi Jean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 22, 2004 Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 > > I sometimes > wonder about the story " Heidi " (my namesake!) .. Clara got > better when she left the city and lived in the mountains ... if they > ate like my grandad described, they would be eating oat gruel and > goat cheese a lot. I remember in the story that Heidi squirreled away the white dinner rolls they served her in furt because she felt that 's grandmother would love them. I think she had no teeth, and the brown bread was really hard for her to eat. I kept thinking they would not be soft by the time she got them back to the mountains! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 22, 2004 Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 > > Absolutely. The countries that have had wheat the least > have more of the HLA genes that are at the root of the > problem. Those genes are very rare in the middle East, a little > more common in the mediterranean, and common in Ireland. > In the northern countries, wheat has only been eaten very > recently (less than 200 years in some places). It also varies > by wealth ... the wealthier people had wheat, poor people > didn't. > That is fascinating. That pattern of occurrence matches the pattern you see when you consider vitamin D deficiency. The farther north you go, the more deficient people can be, depending on the color of their skin and the amount of sun exposure they get...and whether they use cod liver oil. So if you don't have enough vitamin D in your system, then you're more susceptible to the problem? Just thinking out loud again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 22, 2004 Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 >I kept thinking they would not be soft by the time she got them back >to the mountains! > > In the book, it talks about how she learned from her grandma how to cook them in the oven with water so they softened up again. Which goes to show how much they treasured white bread !!!! Heidi Jean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 22, 2004 Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 >That is fascinating. That pattern of occurrence matches the pattern >you see when you consider vitamin D deficiency. The farther north >you go, the more deficient people can be, depending on the color of >their skin and the amount of sun exposure they get...and whether they >use cod liver oil. > >So if you don't have enough vitamin D in your system, then you're >more susceptible to the problem? That or vice versa ... if you have the problem, you will have a vitamin D deficiency (even if you are getting lots of it). Gluten intolerance seriously screws up vitamin usage ... folks who have it can have fine calcium levels in their blood, and have osteoporosis, and be depositing calcium in their brains, all at the same time. My own thinking is that it is basically genetic ... most folks with the gene seem to end up getting it sooner or later, and the gene seems to " recognize " a peptide in gluten as being a virus. Said peptide is very similar to candida, so it may be a genetic warning system for candida. The one thing that seems to help is breast feeding, which is also rarer nowadays, and not introducing cereals too early (also not done nowadays). One piece of compelling evidence for me is the food aid problem ... you can have some village in Africa that is doing ok, then they have a civil war, run out of food, and we send food aid. Suddenly the kids start getting " malnutrition " symptoms ... which turn out to be the wheat mucking up their digestive tracts. Folks in Africa eat millet, not wheat! But they do get plenty of sun, and the mercury levels probably haven't changed. The thing is, a lot of what humans eat, as Sally noted, is not really stuff we are adapted to. Like acorns. Acorns are toxic ... some cultures can live off them, but only if they are treated correctly. Cassava is the same way. Wheat is similar, but the results are slower to recognize, and it is addictive, and it is genetically linked ... so when a culture starts eating it, those prone to reaction die off but it's not easy to see the connection. Most of the " reactive " people die in childhood ... more are surviving nowadays, but that is because of antibiotics (my Mom and I are two who would have died ... I'm only alive because of modern medicine). Heidi Jean Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 22, 2004 Report Share Posted September 22, 2004 - > The thing is, a lot of what humans eat, as Sally noted, is not really > stuff we are adapted to. Like acorns. Acorns are toxic ... some cultures > can live off them, but only if they are treated correctly. Cassava is the > same way. Wheat is similar, but the results are slower to recognize, and > it is addictive, and it is genetically linked ... so when a culture starts > eating it, those prone to reaction die off but it's not easy to see the > connection. Most of the " reactive " people die in childhood ... more are > surviving nowadays, but that is because of antibiotics (my Mom and I are > two who would have died ... I'm only alive because of modern medicine). > > > Heidi Jean Wow Heidi you're posts are REALLY interesting. I had NO idea that wheat could mess with people that much. I don't think I'll every touch the stuff again or let my daughter ever have a taste of it (at least while she's in my care). Where do you get all of your information from? Any good books I should read? ciao, Dawn Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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