Gluten misadventure

I don't eat gluten. This didn't start as a deliberate exclusion; after a few years eating more or less Weston A Price style, I decided to cut the carbs. And low carb whole foods automatically left very little room for glutenacious fare - it was a kind of de facto gluten free diet. I noticed quite a few health improvements that I hadn't expected, and I won't go into these here except one - after some time I realised I hadn't had a single mouth ulcer. This was something I'd had all my life - not constantly, but now and then, especially if I accidentally bit my mouth or scratched my throat swallowing something sharp. Then I was more or less guaranteed to suffer for a week or two. From what I'd read about them over the years, aphthous ulcers are a disordered immune response, often to minor trauma, and this went hand in had with the other improvements I'd seen (allergies and autoimmunity). Googling mouth ulcers+gluten reveals a silent horde of others who have experienced the same thing.

So. A few days ago I got the first ulcer I've had in two years. One of those buggers at the back of the throat, which are particularly annoying because you can't apply the only treatment I've found that actually works (Canker Cover, a sort of gel patch that sticks over the ulcer and heals it in half a day - really). Sure enough, I remembered swallowing something scratchy a few days earlier, but I was puzzled - that's happened on numerous occasions over the last two years and no ulcer ensued. Then I remembered another thing that happened about the same time. I'd eaten in a hummus-type restaurant (social obligations, not my choice), and thought I could play it safe by ordering a Greek salad. This, when it arrived, turned out to be a dollop of green stuff from the meze selection - ie, chopped vegetables swimming in dressing. This inspired instant misgivings - what's in the dressing, for god's sake? - but I'd paid for it, so I started eating it. A few forkfuls in, my misgivings deepened. The odd kernel of sweetcorn was turning up. Not often enough for it to be a deliberate inclusion in the recipe, but very consistent with its being either leftovers scraped from another diner's plate, or detritus adhering to the single serving spoon that did duty for all the meze selection, which included all the usual suspects - couscous, bulgur, pitta, ful medame, etc etc.

At this point I stopped eating.

Now, I don't eat out all that often. When I do, I choose things that shouldn't have any gluten, but so far I haven't routinely asked if something is categorically gluten free. I wasn't seriously worried about the salad. Oh well, I thought, maybe I've eaten a tiny bit of gluten by mistake, I won't order salad here again. I didn't think much more of it.

However, the next morning I had a bit of GI distress, which is very unusual for me. (A case of mild constorrhea, if that's not TMI). This lasted a couple of days. I didn't think much of that, either. It wasn't that bad, and it didn't last. Then up pops this goddamned ulcer, and that got me thinking. If it had just been the GI symptoms, I wouldn't have connected it with gluten, but the GI symptoms and the ulcer, when I hadn't had a single ulcer in two gluten free years, and when before I got several in a year...

This a long and rambling story. The short version is that I'm pretty sure I got glutened in that meal. The ulcer is just too much of a coincidence. The GI symptoms are more interesting, though. GI distress was never a problem for me in the past - but when you've been eating a problematic thing all your life, I suspect that either you partially acclimatise, or you just get so used to the effects you don't know any different. I'm quite ready to believe that having not eaten any gluten for some time, my GI tract would be more likely to react strongly to a reintroduction.

Of course, it's probable that I've been inadvertently exposed to gluten at some other point during these two years without knowing it, and I haven't been aware of any symptoms. Possibly this happened not to coincide with any mouth-biting, though.

And of course I don't know for sure that I did eat gluten, and I don't know for sure that any of these symptoms were the result even if I did eat gluten. But I find it very interesting.

Anyway, I don't plan to ever intentionally eat gluten again. And I think I'll tighten up on restaurant meals, too. If it's the kind of place where you can ask if something's gluten free, I'll ask, and if it's not that sort of place, I'll just have a drink and skip dinner. The social element is kind of the hardest, actually - nobody wants to be the one making a fuss, and if you haven't got a recognisable medical condition to point to, people might think it's a fuss about nothing. But I have to ask myself - is being a compliant social individual really worth eating something you have reason to believe will harm you?