Hi, thank goodness I found this page... I wanted to add that when I was eating gluten (I'm gluten intolerant and have been gluten free since 2004 - never got tested for celiac at the time, and can't now since my antibodies don't show up, I'd have to start eating gluten again, no thanks), I would experience IC in my bladder, and it made me feel like I had to pee all the time. If I had to sit for a long time, I would feel lower back pain and flank pain - I once went to the doctor asking them to test me for a UTI, at the start of my University degree and we had to sit in plastic chairs for 3 hours during a lecture, but I didn't have one - it was the back pain mimicking the same feeling.
I also had a host of other things that came with active gluten intolerance - hormone imbalances, major PMS, depression, anxiety, irritable bowel, colon spasms, chronic constipation, gall bladder pains, insane acid reflux, gas, bloating, weight gain, medication sensitivities/allergies, food sensitivities other than gluten (but they were caused by gluten, now I can eat them all just fine), increased respiratory allergies, itchy dry sinus, headaches, leaky gut syndrome, candida, mild knee pains, I had to use more antibiotics because I would get secondary infections easier and they wouldn't go away without antibiotics because my immune system was so shot and all my tissues were so inflamed, a perfect breeding ground for bacteria. All this by the time I was 24.
I once had chronic back pain when I had an allergic reaction to an internal feminine product (Canesten, avoid it at all costs), and that persisted for just over 3 months. I also stopped eating gluten after that incident, and it helped me recover back to normal and shortly after, I was cycling every day at age 25 and 26, 1-2 years after stopping gluten completely. I had a lot of great years health-wise after I stopped eating gluten.
But now, I have a resurgence of similar issues plaguing me at age 36.
Now, I own a hypoallergenic cat, but I am originally quite allergic to cats, and so I think that my current back pains and muscle aches are mostly due to my immune system being activated over a period of 4 years. I have chronic itchy eyes, itchy mouth palate (to the point of having
opens sores on my palate), itchy and dry sinuses, more anxiety than usual, occasional mild depression, reduced ability to focus, feeling scatterbrained, more fatigue than usual, poor sleep, irritable bowels, have trouble waking up in the morning, and I can feel my lungs wheeze when I wake up from sleep first thing in the morning. So yeah, not great. I want to get rid of the cat, but my husband is attached to her now, so that's going to be a tough change to make... So I have no peer reviewed research to support the fact that my cat is causing my back pains, since I think that this is what it is due to, but now I found this site, and it confirms my suspicions. Always leads right back to the immune system, don't it? I'm an asthmatic since childhood, and its been inactive, until I got a cat, pretty dumb idea. And these allergy symptoms to my cat are mimicking the systemic allergic reaction I had to gluten, until I stopped eating it. Crazy. Sometimes I think I am going crazy because of it. I can't explain what's happening to my doctors. So many 'normal' tests come back, that something must be amiss. X-rays are fine apparently, I don't have crohn's or colitis according to my colonoscopy. But the allergy doctor said, "Get rid of the cat". I think that when the immune system is activated negatively, it prevents health problems from completely resolving themselves due to the prolonged and constant inflammation, for example, my lower back issues get really pronounced when I am having an allergic reaction that is sustained and chronic. My body has no way to remove the inflammation. What do you think?
Post Edited (1whitehorse1) : 1/31/2017 6:00:05 PM (GMT-7)