A month ago I was talking with a friend at a Bible study I go to. She was telling me about how she used to be just exhausted all the time, and never able to feel rested no matter how much sleep she got. When she started telling me about needing a long nap every afternoon, getting 9-10+ hours of sleep at night and still feeling tired, she was describing my exact situation. She got her thyroid tested, but no problem there. She tried other things. Nothing helped. Finally, this summer she went to a chiropractor who suggested going off gluten. A week later, she said she was a different woman.
Tiredness is one of those non-specific things that is hard to address. When you have spent much of the past several years pregnant and nursing and living with small children there's a sense that of course you should be tired. But I have known for awhile that my level of tiredness is just not normal. I even had a sleep study last year to tell me that I don't have a sleep disorder. But if not that, what?
I went off gluten a day after talking with my friend, and although I'm still waiting for any possible placebo effect to fade, I am beginning to think this is for real. I have not needed a nap one day in the past month. I have been sleeping an hour or more less at night. And I don't go around yawning, feeling miserable and exhausted. It is amazing.
In fact, the past month has been so amazing in this regard, that I have absolutely no desire for all things wheat. If I can feel this good without wheat, it is hands down worth it. It actually hasn't been very difficult at all because we make most of our own food from scratch, I can grind my own non-wheat flours, and we tend to do leftovers for lunch rather than sandwiches anyway.
I've learned during this experiment that gluten sensitivity is most common among people with European ancestry, especially the Irish and Basque (I'm half Basque). I have also known since grad school that eating too many wheat products gives me heartburn. But to think that something I eat could be making me TIRED? Fascinating... and potentially life changing.
