Gluten free and me

So I took the Clonidine for two weeks, as planned. At least, that’s what I told my endocrinologist. In reality, I didn’t take it for much of the two weeks because I felt pretty awful.

I went to his office the other day to tell him that I’d finished the Clonidine and that I didn’t like it. Since I’m unemployed, I offered to sit in his reception area and wait until he had a spare minute to talk to me. But his receptionist sent me away and said that the doctor would call me later. When he called, he agreed that I should stop the Clonidine. He said that he could prescribe some beta blockers, but that the effect would likely be the same. He also said that there were some pretty hardcore surgical options to address the sweating, but he wouldn’t recommend them.

Then he divested again, telling me that I should go to my family doctor and get him to submit a request to the HMO for a second opinion with a specialist at Mass General. Apparently, this is something the HMO offers for people on their supplementary plans. Perhaps I’ll do this. Perhaps I won’t.

In the mean time, I’m starting a gluten-free diet. I’ve done the gluten free diet several times, but usually combined with something else. Once it was no grains, once gluten-free and dairy-free, a couple times paleolithic. I have long believed that I might have Celiac disease, especially after I failed to rule it out with genetic testing about five and a half years ago (HLA DQ2 was not detected; HLA DQ8 was detected). Still, the blood tests usually come back in the normal range toward the high end, and I’ve had two upper endoscopies that were clean, as well as a colonoscopy.

Both hypothyroidism and Celiac can affect pretty much every part of the body, so excessive sweating could be caused by Celiac, as well as the fact that I had diarrhea every day for the past 17 days.

I’m two days into the gluten-free diet and feeling ok. I’m a little bloated because of all the fruit, but I’m having an easier time than I did in the past because I’m eating rice and dairy and processed foods. I plan to keep it up for two weeks and then evaluate how I feel and whether the sweating has diminished at all.

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