Photo taken 4 years ago, before I was “sick”
Today is the 5th annual Celiac Awareness Day.
I might be new to this Celiac thing, but dang it… I’ve learned a lot about myself in the last month and half and I want to share it with you so you can understand more about this gluten-intolerance. 
Yesterday over lunch, my friend Sarah and I were having a conversation about allergies. The conversation was started a few months ago and continues each time we see each other.
“You look like you’re glowing,” she said yesterday. Well . . . I am! I feel great!
What’s changed? Let me tell you about five of the most incredible changes that are suitable for public consumption…
1. My skin. My skin is better than it has been in decades. Not one to ever suffer from acne, I endured the occasional break-outs. The difference in my skin is remarkable though. Where my skin used to look pallid with grayish undertones, I’m pink again. My skin is milky and pink in all the right places. The listless, dark circles under my eyes are gone! My eyes sparkle with the intensity and warmth I feel in my soul.
2. I sleep. Holy Moses. I. Sleep. I’ve had insomnia for over a decade, which was one of the biggest complaints The Husband had about me. Each night I would try to combat the insomnia, getting in bed by 10:15, reading something relaxing, saying my prayers . . . I’d finally drift off to sleep around 12:30, only to wake time and time again throughout the night and give up at 5:00. The sleep never made sense to me before. While I had insomnia, there were strange nights where I’d sleep the whole night through without explanation. The night of my first gluten-free day, I slept all through the night and I have ever since (oh BOY! do I sleep!).
3. I have energy. While I could never understand why I had more energy on the weekends than during the week, I finally get it. Weekends were my days to eat whenever I wanted. I’d snack on fruit in the morning and generally forget to eat until The Husband was asking what was for dinner. I was always bounding with energy on weekends, busy running from one project or errand to the next. I’d make dinner, then I’d crash. I’d be exhausted, sick to my stomach and just downright puny. I get it now. When I wasn’t filling my body with glutens that were toxins to me, I was full of energy, happy, creative, attentive. Once I ate, it was all over. I always attributed my energy to lack of stress from the work-week, then the crash because I hadn’t eaten all day. Wrong.
4. My Attention Deficit Disorder has improved. I know I’ve talked before about the illogical “bad brain days” before. I have a list of tasks that need completed before I leave the house in the morning. No joke. My list in the bathroom drawer reads: Deodorant. Q-tips. Brush Teeth. Contacts. Dry Hair. Fix Hair. Astringent. Moisturizer. Makeup. Clean Counter. Unplug straightening iron. I have to glance at it and make sure I’m not leaving something out. I also have to do everything in the exact same order. Every morning. To some, this seems a little OCD. I agree, but the OCD is a by-product of the thousands of dollars my parents spent sending me to Sylvan when I was young to learn “coping mechanisms.” The list is one of the coping mechanisms. Not knowing whether I was going to have a “bad brain day” or not, I have to follow the same pattern, or it’s guaranteed to be a bad day. While I will not say that I am without ADD these days, I will tell you that my attention span has greatly improved. I’ve actually worked whole days without the mindless chatter of a news program in my ear. The bad brain days? Totally attributed to what I was eating!
5. My attitude. This is a really hard one to explain. While my main mode of operation is happy!, I had begun to be snappy, irritable and angry for no reason. This occurred over a long period of time. For the most part, outwardly I was the same person to strangers, the happy, easy-going girl . . . but even in the past few years that had begun to spiral out of control and I was downright rude sometimes. The most frustrating part was that I had no reason for being unhappy or rude. I just was. I tried to snap out of it, give myself a couple good slaps across the face and tell myself to soldier-airman on. It didn’t work. I was just crabby (or crappy depending on how you want to say it). The week I went gluten-free I was back to my normal, happy self. No longer did the little irritants in life bother me; I was back! Finally, I wake up each morning thankful for being back to the me of days gone by. Such a simple shift in attitude, one that I’d tried in vain to change for years. All of it controlled by what I was eating.
Of course, there are many, many more things I could write about that have changed, and maybe someday I will, but sometimes things are better left unsaid. You don’t need to know the nitty-gritty of all of the things that have changed in my physical body to know I’m a brand new me; or rather, the old me before I was sick.
Today is the 5th Annual Celiac Awareness Day. In the myriad of books I’ve pawed through over the past few months I’ve learned this staggering fact: the amount of people living undiagnosed with Celiac disease in America is unbelievable. 1 in 197 people have Celiac disease, only 1 in 4,000 are actually diagnosed. Educate yourself.
Many people are using gluten-free as a “fad diet.” That’s great and I wish all the success in the world to those who are living a gluten-free lifestyle. It’s healthy, regardless if you’re a celiac or not. For the rest of us, it’s not a fad . . . it’s an intolerance that can be deadly if left untreated. Please, I urge you. If you’re having gastrointestinal problems, if you get sick when you eat, listless, tired, dull, educate yourself. Check out the symptoms, go get a blood test (tTGA), and learn as much as you can to improve your life.