why i gave up wheat

{note: feel free to skip this post if you don't care}
 
i know that a lot of people have eczema. i've had eczema on my hands for years and years. there have been brief periods where it has seemed to let up a bit, but it really got bad once i hit high school and it has only gotten worse since. the kind of eczema i have is called dyshidrotic eczema which is especially uncomfortable (google it if for some reason you want more information).

there have been times when it has been so bad that i have cringed every time i washed my hands because they were so sore (this was terrible when i was working as a nurse!). almost every night, i would wake up in the middle of the night with itching and burning hands and i would lay there scratching and hurting. it would keep me awake at night. there were times when i wasn't able to bend my fingers without pain. it was actually quite debilitating. i would also be embarrassed in public because my hands were so red and irritated sometimes.

in high school i went to dermatologists who prescribed steroid creams. i would put the cream on before bed and wear gloves while i slept. my college housemates thought that was hilarious.

all that made my skin feel better, but didn't actually "cure" the problem. (and of course, those steroid creams weren't the best thing to be putting on my skin anyway).

it was miserable and significantly impacted my daily life, especially as a nurse and now as a mom who needs to have functioning hands to do daily tasks. i eventually just resigned myself to living that way for the rest of my life, and realized that in the grand scheme of things it really wasn't that big of a deal. but...to me, it still felt like it was.

then i started learning more about health and food and i just kept thinking that it could be related to something i was eating. i thought maybe it was sugar, so i stopped eating that for a while, but i didn't notice a dramatic change. i've always wondered if it could be wheat, and i've stopped eating wheat at times, but never long term.

and then last january i started this low-carb thing and stopped eating wheat because of that. i went from january to the beginning of august without wheat (except for a few very minor encounters with it). sometime in the spring i realized that my hands were drastically better (it can take quite a while for the wheat to get out of your system). still on the dry and itchy side, but significantly better. i was hopeful that the eczema had somehow gone away, but i also thought that maybe it was just a fluke. and then august came and jeremy was off of work for a week and i decided to eat a few things i was missing as a special treat. i made a homemade pizza with a wheat crust (recipe to come on the blog soon, by the way) because that was what i had missed the most. i ate two pieces and didn't have a thought about my eczema (at this point it had been a lot better for several months).

and then...the middle of the night came...and i woke to itching, burning hands. something i hadn't experienced for months. it lasted for a few days. since then, i've done quite a bit of research. (i had in the past, but not so seriously.) it seems there are a lot of people who have eczema who are allergic or sensitive to wheat/gluten. i certainly seem to be one of them.

why has no doctor that i have ever talked with brought this up as a possible cause of my eczema? i have no idea. it is frustrating because maybe i could have realized this and done something about it years ago. (this reinforces my lack of trust in doctors...but i won't get into that here).

i have read a lot about how the wheat we eat today is different than it used to be and how that can mess up our bodies. that all makes sense to me. i have also read a lot about "leaky gut" and healing your skin by healing your gut (i even tried the GAPS diet for a couple of months two years ago). maybe in the future i will look into something like that again with the help of a professional. for now, though, i am glad to have at least figured this out.

in a lot of ways, it's inconvenient to not eat wheat. but, the plus side is that i feel much better without eating wheat anyway...more energetic, happier, and just better overall. i'm also used to not having it now, so it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to give it up.

from what i have read, some people who are sensitive to wheat can eat traditionally fermented sourdough bread without any problems. a couple of years ago i took an ecourse and started learning about sourdough. I made a starter and made a few recipes and really liked it. then i found out i was pregnant with jobot and couldn't handle the smell of the sourdough (sad!), so i quit. i providentially have a new friend who has a starter she is willing to share and i am looking forward to seeing if i can eat that bread without problems. we will see.

i'm just thankful that now i can sleep all night without waking up when my hands are irritated, and it's wonderful to be able to use my hands without pain. if that means eating an almond flour pizza crust while my family eats a wheat crust, that's totally fine with me.