Me & Gluten: An On-Again, Off-Again Love Story

Have you been reading this blog long enough to remember the first time I went gluten free?

It was sometime around this post.

I even made several varieties of gluten-free Christmas cookies that year, along with ordering gluten-free pizza for Christmas Eve dinner.

(We go ultra-casual on Christmas around here. No fancy-schmancy dinner. My family is lucky I wear pants to visit them.)

Have you also been paying enough attention to remember that I also went gluten-free last spring, after feeling very fed up and disgusted with wheat due to overeating & binge issues?

I even distinctly remember going to a family party in July and deciding to go ahead and try the carrot cake.

I looked 6 months pregnant within an hour. I immediately blamed the cake.

I went back to eating wheat — mostly Ezekial bread — sometime in the fall, but I dropped it again about 2.5 weeks ago. I also dropped dairy, except whey protein isolate, about a week before that (incidentally, the night of the carrot cake belly, I also ate cheese, so maybe I should’ve blamed the dairy instead).

This time, my main impetus in dropping the gluten was this:

Keratosis Pilaris

Yes, sports bra. Pretend you don’t see anything but my arm.

If you have it, you know it, but you may not have known the name. Keratosis Pilaris is basically a bunch of little bumps — often red — on the upper back side of the limbs. I mostly get this on the backs of my arms, but I also have had it on the back of my upper leg in the past.

When I was a kid, my dermatologist told me there were two things to do for keratosis pilaris — use an alpha-hydroxy moisturizer, and get some sun.

Three problems with this advice:

1. I was already sensitive to heavy sun exposure because I tend to burn (badly) and not tan much.
2. Alpha-hydroxy products are known to make you more sensitive to the sun (doh!).
3. Neither bit of advice is a cure, just a cover up that may or may not lessen the issue.

Keratosis Pilaris is harmless. It just looks crappy.

And I have never *never* been self-conscious about wearing sleeveless clothing because of it.

But lately, I have been reading a lot about gluten (I should be getting a masters degree in gluten instead of Applied Nutrition) and it’s ties to skin problems like acne, eczema, etc. It started because David gets a really bad case of eczema on his eyelid, and I suspected it was tied to his diet.

While I did find some info linking eczema to gluten intake, I also found interesting ties between keratosis pilaris and gluten intake. 

So I figured I’d do the whole self-experimentation thing and try gluten-free again.

This was my arm area after about 1.5 weeks without gluten:

Pretend you also don’t see how odd I look with my bangs pulled back.

So far, I think it’s improved. But it may take a few months to really see a difference.

And while I haven’t done any pics this week of the results, I will say this:

I had gluten this weekend (and cheese) to test the waters.

My skin didn’t rebel, but my stomach did.

*sigh*

I love you bread, but we’re never, ever, EVER getting back together.

Unless you show up in the form of carrot cake.

In which case, we can hang. Maybe.