It's been about 5 years since I mostly stopped eating wheat. I dropped 60 pounds. I feel healthy, and I look healthy. I didn't replace the wheat with another grain. Since I hadn't been eating much grain other than wheat, I basically just stopped eating grains. (I eat some corn, particularly sweet corn, and masa.) These days, I eat what I think of as a paleo-ish diet: Meat and vegetables. Stir-fry is my most common meal, if it isn't raw vegetables grazed directly from the garden. I eat a lot of oils, in the form of butter, coconut, and olive.
I have been saying for years that I don't eat wheat because it makes me feel bad: I swell up with water-weight. I get phantom aches in my body. During August, I am practicing what I think of as my "Summer Fast". The bulk of my food is eaten raw, directly from the garden. So my diet has been particularly clean and wholesome lately.
Six days ago, the
local bakery gave me a loaf of
sourdough bread. I felt like being scientific about what effects wheat has on my body. So I weighed myself, ate a half-loaf of the bread, and started keeping a log of symptoms.... I was expecting aches and pains in my shoulder, neck, and hands. So no surprise there. I expected to be congested. But we are having smoky air from fires, so whatever. What I wasn't expecting, was for my mouth to go numb... And not just a little numb. It was numb for days afterwards. I had been eating a lot of apricots and sweet corn raw in the same day. That is also unusual for me, so I couldn't rule them out as the cause of the numbness. It's been 5 days since I ate the half loaf of bread, so my mouth wasn't numb any more. Today, I decided to test the bread again. This time, I wasn't willing to eat the bread, so I broke off a piece and held it in my mouth between cheek and teeth. Ha!!! My cheek, gums, and tongue are numb where the bread was resting against them. It's been a few hours since then. So like last time, I expect that the numbness will last for days. At least I didn't swallow it this time...
I know that this test is only for one particular loaf of bread from one particular bakery, and it doesn't specifically test wheat, or any of the ingredients in the bread. What it does do, however, is give me a strategy to test how these things may affect me without actually eating them... People often ask me if I can eat this or that form of bread, or wheat. And how they affect me. This test might give me a way to
answer those inquiries in a more informed way. If it turns out that I am generally allergic to wheat, then that will give me even more incentive to avoid wheat, and even more tools to deflect peer-pressure to conform to the practices of a wheat-addicted society.
So how about it? Have any of you tried this test? Did your mouth go numb? Is this test generally applicable to a variety of food allergies?
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