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Since I was a teenager, I have suffered from bouts of unexplained rashes, depression, acne, irregular periods, stomach cramps, gas, bloating, arthritis, athlete's foot, and sometimes debilitating joint pain. There have been 2 times in my life when these maladies went away:

1) When I was eating a Dr. Fuhrman diet. I ate this way for 6 months, lost a lot of weight & felt great, but couldn't stick with it because I was always hungry. (I now attribute that to not enough starch in my diet. At the time, I thought maybe I was always hungry because I wasn't eating enough protein/fat...)

2) When I was eating a low carb diet. My stomach problems disappeared, but I was sluggish, unable to lose weight, and all the fat/dairy made my skin break out.

For the past month I've been eating a McDougall diet, and while I've lost some weight, I still haven't rid myself of my other symptoms.

I've always considered that wheat/gluten may be a problem, but I was too busy making other dietary changes to concentrate on eliminating those from my diet too.

Yesterday I made a McDougall-friendly hummus pizza with vegetables on a whole wheat crust. After eating half of the small pizza, my stomach began to gurgle and cramp up. So I started thinking about all the times in my life that this has happened, and it's always after eating wheat flour or drinking beer.

Last night I did my research and discovered that eliminating wheat/gluten from my diet might help me with not just a rumbly stomach, but with ALL the health issues I currently face.

So as of today, I am gluten/wheat free

How did you get to be this way?

I honestly didn't know I was sick, but I had a bunch of symptoms that I had just gotten used to for ... I don't know how long. I was diagnosed with renal failure and in my research to find out about that, stumbled upon Celiac Disease. In looking at the symptoms I had all but one, so I went to see a specialist and sure enough. I was diagnosed in Jan/Feb of this year and I haven't eaten gluten since. I feel incredible. If I do accidentally get ahold of some gluten I get horrible cramping in my stomach for a good three hours. I am very, very careful. Gluten is in everything. That is what is so great about McDougall. It makes for stress-free eating. Glad you found out what was happening with you. The longer you go without gluten, the better you will feel and the easier it gets.

I had heard about Celiac Disease but never knew much about it. I had been having alternating constipation/diarrhea for years and it was just getting worse. So I read Dr. McDougall's book, Digestive Tune-Up. He described several conditions including Celiac Disease. The description of it described what I was experiencing. So I asked my doctor to be tested for Celiac. I tested positive. Since I was already on the MWL (except for a month of eating bread in order to do a "gluten-challenge" for my Celiac test), I realized that MWL with just a few minor adjustments was ideal for treating Celiac disease.
Within just a few weeks my digestive issues were resolved. I just don't eat the barley soup recipes or couscous which has wheat in it. I don't eat bread or pasta either. It's easy to be gluten-free on the MWL plan and I plan to stay on it for life.

I am like Grandma Jackie. I sort of stumbled onto the fact I was Gluten intollerant..
not through this way of eating actually but when I was eating an atkins diet. but I learned that many of my issues were tied into my gluten intollerance.
and MWL relaly is the perfect way to go gluten free.
And you do start to feel better and better as you go along.

I've been eating mostly gluten free since beginning a vegan diet to help with chronic muscle pain and inflammation, similar to fibromyalgia, about 2.5 months ago. I hadn't completely cut out gluten but since I've been eating so few processed foods I wasn't encountering it often to really test it out.
I have had very good success with my new diet and in just three weeks my pain was almost completely resolved , until Sunday when I ate some whole wheat pasta and within an hour pain started up and I went into an awful 24 hour flare and had to leave work early .
So I'm thinking it was the pasta? I did some research and there is lots to support gluten as a cause of fibro-like symptoms. I don't intend to eat guten again--ever!! So not worth it to feel bad, miss work, etc.

SInce starting the diet I've determined that I'm sensitive to msg and soy (fast onset of pain) and dairy (made my face swell up). I think I can now add gluten to the list.

I give up all these things gladly because I do not want to hurt anymore!

Milo--how are you doing since you made this post? Any results?

I knew my stomach rumbled a bit after eating wheat, but it did that after so many foods and I didn't take it seriously. The horrible skin rash of boils that I suffered since childhood didn't seem to be connected to diet either... except they got worse when I started eating more and more vegetarian (ie, more wheat).

Then finally I developed Graves' Disease (autoimmune thryoid disease). I did some research and found out that people with celiac disease are much more likely to get this than the rest of the population, so I decided to experiment and give up gluten for a while and see what happened. Within two weeks my Graves Disease went into remission and has never returned. Within a couple months, my skin rash went away (I now know it was dermatitis herpetiformus). I had been lactose intolerant my whole life, and in two years I experimented with drinking milk, and digested it so easily.

When I accidently ate some gluten after two years, the dermatitis herpetiformus returned for 6 weeks. From just one exposure to gluten! I'll never willingly eat gluten again. In a way it's not so great that I don't have the severe digestive issues that other celiacs do, because I don't have a strong warning that I'm eating gluten until it's too late. So I'm very careful.

One more thing that I'm sure is due to the celiac disease - I have really low bone density, even though I've always eaten lots of calcium-rich greens and gotten regular exercise. It is getting better, but I so wish I had found out about this earlier in life.

I'm not a celiac but I developed an intolerance from eating so much wheat every day.
I mostly had terrible acid reflux, burning and indigestion. I thought I had an ulcer! I decided to try stopping wheat and the pain went away the next day! I don't have symptoms as long as I don't eat wheat. When I get contaminated the burning comes back...then the reflux!

Also my mood is happier, no depression, skin rash cleared up, I'm losing weight easier, anxiety that I had is gone, nightmares stopped. My skin looks better, more energy, and I can wake up faster in the morning now..

I had a doctor a couple of years ago, who suggested I go off wheat. I had once done an elimination diet of everything BUT wheat, because I was just so sure that wheat couldn't be an issue.

The doc finally convinced me to try a few weeks off wheat, and after 6 days I felt amazing. I have very bad panic disorder, and many attacks were triggered by physical sensations I didn't understand, but now do: they were reactions to wheat.

My panic disorder hasn't completely gone away, but my attacks are far less frequent now. I'm off gluten for life.