About Me
My name is Eric. I'm 27, and last year I discovered that I suffered from a wheat intolerance. For all of my adult life, I had tolerated constant discomfort in my stomach and esophagus after eating pretty much anything. Instead of looking forward to dinners and drinks with friends, I dreaded the inescapable pain that accompanied ingesting foods that my body didn't like. I felt helpless, knowing that it was coming, but unable to do anything about it. Rather than continuing to brush it aside and write off the discomforts as a "fact of life", I decided to do something about it.
Consulting with my primary care physician, a dietitian and a gastroenterologist, we examined my diet, and did some tests, including an endoscopy. The tests turned up nothing, except for some mild acid reflux. My doctor told me, "Well, you can either be on a pill for the rest of your life to try to control the symptoms, or you can try to figure out what's causing them." I said, "OK... write me the prescription for the pill!" I was only half-joking, but knew I needed to finally get to the bottom of this.
We looked at my diet: bagels in the morning, sandwiches in the afternoon, and pasta at dinner. In hindsight, no wonder I felt so bad! We decided to cut wheat out of my diet, and sure enough, I started feeling much better. In fact, I remember early on feeling weird because I wasn't experiencing discomfort--it had become so routine, that I felt weird when it disappeared!
My friends often tell me that they probably have a problem too, but they'd rather just put up with it, because they can't imagine giving up so many of their favorite foods. What I found, though, was that once you start cutting back, you'll never want to turn around. After years and years of living with pain, one tends to forget how great it feels to live normally. Once you experience it, though, it makes you want to continue down that path--in my case, cutting out wheat for good.
I decided to start this website not to tell my story, but to help others like me, or that think they may be like me. My quest to live a healthy lifestyle was hampered initially by the lack of resources available on wheat intolerance and wheat allergies. Although celiac has become "popular" in recent years, wheat-related problems still remain on the back burner. Doctors are aware of them, but often don't really know many specifics, mostly because there still hasn't been much invested into researching and investigating them. I hope that sharing my experiences and accumulated knowledge will help make the lives of others just a little bit better.