Lessons Learnt: of Gluten, Rice, Dairy, Chocolate and IBS...

Yes, I just popped in again. For most of the previous months it was much the same old, same old, and I didn't feel that much of it was worth posting in bits and bobs. But all the little discoveries I've made since my last post have been accumulating, and have been particularly enlightening to me. I think another post is now in order...

I'd gotten used to living life gluten-free, but I still got bothered every now and again but episodes in the toilet with symptoms consistent with being glutenized. The only problem was -- each time I had no idea what the offending item was that I had eaten and triggered the symptoms. All I knew was, it was most likely gluten lurking in some innocent-looking ingredient, but most times it was difficult to zero in exactly on what it was.

But after some investigation, I hit on something. One of these offending ingredients is... (insert drumroll/spooky music here)... unfortunately the humble rice noodle. I'm not going to carpet bomb and relegate all rice noodles to the "Cannot Eat" bin, but did you read Christopher Tan's recipe for chee cheong fun in the Sunday Times recently? One of his ingredients (small in quantity, but it struck fear in my heart nonetheless) was WHEAT STARCH. Not the most pleasant news to read on a lazy Sunday morning, but even though I sorta knew this kind of non-purist rice noodle creativity was going on in kitchens everywhere, it still wasn't nice to see it advocated in print. Incidentally, I also caught a repeat of Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey, in which he profiled the traditional method of making rice noodles (wholly gluten-free) in Vietnam. It was a long and laborious process, which he explained was necessary to encourage the weak proteins in the gluten-free rice grain to bind together. It seems only logical for non GI cooks to want to add some gluten to their rice noodles, as it'll give them immediate stretch and elasticity. So gentle reader, proceed with caution when it comes to rice noodles outside your home (whose fabrication you did not supervise). If you're not hyper-sensitive to gluten, then perhaps this isn't such bad news, and you can down your chee cheong fun, koay teow, tanghoon and mifen AYOR. If you are, maybe you should stick to cooking your own, after checking the ingredients on the label religiously. I think I'm going to take the middle road. Once in a while I'll test a rice noodle dish at a new stall, and if I don't get a reaction, it should be OK to keep going back.

Now what I've learnt about dairy... As I explained to the first commenter on my first post, many of those stricken with advanced GI have their intestines in such a damaged state that they can no longer digest lactose efficiently, leading to many concomitant symptoms. But give the gut time to heal after going gluten-free, and you may find the lactose intolerance disappearing. It did for me! Hallelujah...:)

And now some bad news about dairy. A certain percentage of GI sufferers also develop a sensitivity to EGGS, and unfortunately I think I may be among them. I don't experience crashingly bad symptoms after having a dish with eggs in it, but it is enough to be a bit of a bother in the toilet. I first noticed reactions after eating some gluten-free cake, and thought there had been gluten contamination of the ingredients in the factory. And mysteriously, I seemed to have reactions a day or two after the weekend, even scrupulously gluten-free ones. And also after Nasi Padang dinners.

Turns out the eggs in the cake, the scrambled eggs I would frequently have on weekends, and the egg-dipped Nasi Padang bergedils were to blame. After avoiding eggs, I no longer have the frequent tummy grumblings. However, I will eat them on special occasions (the symptoms aren't as severe as those provoked by gluten anyhow, so I can tolerate an episode now and then).

And for this blog, I'm going to continue treating eggs as pretty much neutral, since I am blogging about going gluten (not egg) free.

One of the difficulties in pinpointing offending items is knowing when an offending item might have been ingested. To know that, you have to link time of output back to time of input, and who really knows for sure? Well, happily enough, I think I have an idea. For me, it takes about 36 hours from the time I eat something to the time it makes its graceful plopping exit. And how do I know this? Quite by chance, actually. Once, after having had a delicious squid ink paella at Don Quijote in Dempsey, I discovered that the body DOES NOT DIGEST SQUID INK. You pass out the black stuff as hitam as it went in, and for me this happened about 36 hours later. So if you ever want to know for yourself -- book yourself a sumptuous (and very black) Spanish dinner (I get no commission for this plug, by the way).

A bit about chocolate. It's gluten-free, so it shouldn't cause any problems for us GI sufferers. But back in the day, I noticed things would turn all Kafkaesque in the toilet after I'd eaten goodies like chocolate cake and brownies, much more so than usual. Today, I think this was because chocolate in larger quantities can cause constipation. Mixed in with my intolerance to eggs and milk (sometimes in the cake) at the time, plus the GI, and things could (and did) get like a battlezone in the loo. I believe chocolate worsens the symptoms of GI. But on its own, without gluten, it causes me no problems and I eat lots of it everyday, because it gives me Pleasure. I am an absolute chocolate fiend.

And finally -- all my posts aren't just for a bit of self-centred catharsis at the computer. I do hope my little discoveries help others out there who are still trying to find the answers to why their own digestive systems seem to have gone all Alexis Carrington on them. One of the secretaries where I work once told me she'd been "diagnosed" with Irritable Bowel Syndrome, or IBS (I use inverted commas for the word "diagnosed" because IBS is really just a label for a set of symptoms, not a specific disease with a known cure). I immediately told her that what worked for me after my IBS "diagnosis" was going gluten-free. She tried it -- and it worked for her magically too! That left me feeling positively energised, knowing that spreading the awareness of GI can make a tremendous difference to other sufferers. I hope you find your cure too.

What's Normal Feel Like to You?

Hi there. Googled this blog and actually found it last night! That means chances of other readers finding it are higher now. So I'm inspired to keep posting.

I've written at length about the sludge and the diarrhea, and the creepy floaties, and the wind and the rain and the sound and the fury, all assailing you as part of your GI experience...

But there's no amount of verbiage that can accurately capture the immense sense of relief you get when, after years of suffering toilet carnage, you actually have a normal bowel movement. It was like rediscovering a sweet memory of childhood (actually, for me who developed GI as an adult, a normal bowel movement during my GI years was but a sweet memory of childhood).

For the majority without GI, a visit to the toilet is supposed to be relief for the body. You're relieving your body of waste: you do feel a real physical relief. I thought I'd never feel that way again.

Then came Christmas about two odd years ago. December for me is usually a time of parties and feasting, both for Christmas and New Year's. I'm a bit of a gym nut, and am always fussing over my physique (or lack of it). So while I look forward to the company and food around the festive season (and people in Singapore love food), I dread the accompanying weight gain (especially the thickening at the waist, that seems to creep up on you so easily after 40). You're not talking loads of extra poundage, maybe just a pound or two, but it shows on your waist when you're lanky as I am.

Enter the brilliant idea: I decided to try going carb-free, in preparation for the calorie-laden end of year. (Except for the carbs in my veggies -- you mustn't cut them out totally, or the brain can't function at optimum. Thanks to Oprah for that tip!) No rice, but also no bread, pasta, pizza, cake, cookies, noodles... in short, I was going wheatless, in addition to other things.

After a week or two, I began noticing a HUGE difference in my life. No more cramps or bloating. No more diarrhea. No more straining for hours on the toilet bowl trying to move a load of gluey poo. I still remember exiting the toilet one day, with a broad smile on my face and this thought in my head: A NORMAL BOWEL MOVEMENT! Who'da thunk something as mundane as that could bring such joy?

Let's get a little bit into the details. A normal bowel movement for me is one with stools that aren't too hard, but aren't too soft either. And banish the thought of stickiness! The poo's gotta hold together, so that when you push it gently on its way, it slides along nicely keeping its shape. And upon exit, you get the nice C-shaped sausage (thanks Dr. Oz for that advice!).

You know, even if it comes out in solid blobs I'd be happy. The thing is, when it's hard or semi-hard, it doesn't just hold its shape, it holds in its smell too. The poop's pretty odourless, unlike the stinky soft and semi-soft stools.

And then when Christmas and the associated feasting came around, I had a bout of diarrhea. And after New Year's, I bought a loaf of my favourite chocolate chocolate chip bread to celebrate my full return to carbo-land. Yikes! The ensuing sludge was the stuff of nightmares.

So that's when I realised it was probably something in the carbs that was affecting my digestive system. It wasn't all carbs to blame, as I hadn't cut them out totally, but something in the bread, pasta, pizza, cake, cookies, noodles DING *lightbulb moment*....

And so that discovery marked the beginning of my gluten-free journey. I was so overcome with joy and relief, not just at the return to bowel movement normalcy, but also at finding out it was something external that was the cause of my travails, and not actually my own body breaking down. That had been a constant nagging fear -- what's wrong with my body? Why's it behaving like this? Turns out my body was fine; it was just reacting under attack like a normal body would, only this time the attacker was gluten.

Oops. I'd been thinking it was time I shifted away from postings on poo, but I guess it's not time yet. Maybe later.