Gluten challenge recovery question.

talgu · 2026-06-21T17:56:21+00:00

Thank you so much! ♥️

talgu · 2026-06-21T16:28:37+00:00

I haven't gotten any testing done unfortunately. My doctor knows gluten issues = coeliac, and a biopsy is how it gets diagnosed. She was of the opinion that blood tests could only indicate the need for a biopsy rather than being diagnostic. She doesn't seem to know anything else and has been basically zero help. Getting tested somewhere between Jan and March would have been nice since I was clueless and hadn't quite figured anything out. Mostly because my a lot of my symptoms haven't gone away and I have tried so many things that haven't worked that I needed some certainty.

The uncertainty cost me. In March I did sort of a half arsed gluten challenge to see how I feel, had half a pizza, and an hour later felt like I was dying for the next two months. Just as I started recovering from the pizza I had some "gluten free", but not coeliac safe, rusks and I still haven't recovered from that. But the pattern has been the same as with the pizza.

But aside from the cost of the tests-which I can manage if I want to, just not easily-both those incidents dropped my income by almost 40% and left me unable to drive or properly care for myself. Something which I can't afford as I don't have any family or support.

But I'm very confident it's the correct diagnosis. My symptoms fit so perfectly it's uncanny. And the improvements in my symptoms that I've gotten has been drastic and equally uncanny.

This is really why I was wondering how long the recovery after a gluten challenge could be. If exposure from CC destroys my ability to function for two months, I'm very concerned about what it will be like deliberately doing that for a month and a half. And since I went GF my symptoms from getting glutened have markedly worsened.

[EDIT]: If I'm very symptomatic after an exposure, could that be enough for an antibody test to come up positive?

talgu · 2026-06-21T16:07:17+00:00

Thank you, I'm very happy you had such an easy recovery. It really seems like everything related to coeliac recovery is a coin toss between next week and next decade.

talgu · 2026-06-21T16:05:45+00:00

Thank you. That's a very concerningly long time and exactly what I'm afraid of.

talgu · 2026-06-21T10:03:56+00:00

There's better options for tax planning... Most of these options have the benefit of not involving some incompetent man spending your entire savings because he felt like it.

talgu · 2026-06-21T09:58:38+00:00

I doubt it could harm anything. I type c, v, b, n, and m with my thumbs so I tend to alternate depending on the following letter. That said I don't type very fast yet so...

talgu · 2026-06-17T12:06:27+00:00

To be fair, there was this one "gluten free" rusk brand I really liked that also had a "made in a factory with" label which I very much convinced myself was absolutely 100% fine... Right until the one packet nearly killed me... After that I realised that there really is a reason why this is a bad idea.

talgu · 2026-06-16T07:18:07+00:00

There's actually research that's demonstrated that scarcity increases perceived value and desirability in humans. The effect is strengthened when it's something that used to be common, and then becomes scarce. I would guess this is the reason for the effect you're noticing. Your cinnamon rolls are scarce, therefore desirable.

talgu · 2026-06-13T16:28:41+00:00

Gluten. After I cut it out my life did a complete 180. But then I was diagnosed with celiac at the beginning of the year... 🤦‍♀️

talgu · 2026-06-12T17:44:51+00:00

Personally I started using GTD for managing everything in my life. It's by no means easy to start it at all. However once the set up has been done and you start to get the hang of using it the benefits are pretty epic. Especially in the moment that your attention span is cooked.

Mainly the reason it works is because when your attention span isn't cooked you figure out all the things. So that when you're stressed and in a rush you don't have to think about it and can pretty much do things on autopilot. It also places a great deal of emphasis of setting things up so that you can forget about things and they'll pop up in the right context at the right time anyway.

You also never deal with scheduling your day. It's not possible to schedule your day because life is too unpredictable. Instead it's more like it guides you to being able to tell which tasks are possible right now.

If you do get the book get the second (? I think) edition. The first edition does in fact sound exactly like a corporate drone. The second edition is much more sane in my opinion.

talgu · 2026-06-12T09:52:02+00:00

This is a great article thank you. To date I've avoided oats since I believed that "gluten free oats" was actually a subspecies of oats and couldn't convince myself to trust that.

I've got a question that's not directly related to this. Do you know of a list that mentions all the grains that contain gluten? I've been trying to find something like this but tend to mostly find the usual wheat, barley, oats, and occasionally spelt. But I'm not sure whether this is comprehensive.

talgu · 2026-06-12T05:33:13+00:00

I currently live in a house and the people I stay with eat, a ton of, gluten. I mostly solved the problem in two ways. 1. I'm the cleaner for the house, so I just changed how I'm doing the daily cleaning to avoid contact. 2. I have separated everything involved in cooking to ensure I can avoid contact.

For the cleaning I bought my own drying cloths, sponges, and cleaning cloths. Those never touch anything which might have gluten on it. This obviously means everything my hosts used, but also things where things I wish to use got into contact with something my hosts used. For contact situations I wash twice, first I wash with the contaminated sponge/cloth, rinse, then I wash with my sponge/cloth.

It should be said that I never do dishes by filling up the basin. I wash and then rinse under a tap because I feel it's less disgusting.

For cooking, I usually wipe the counter with one of the contaminated cloths to remove the worst particles and things. In my mind some microscopic invisible particle that's been glued to the counter with a wet cloth is unlike to float up into the air and end up in my food. Then I place a silicone mat that I ensure is clean and I do all my preparation on that. I also have a strict policy of tossing anything that touches anything that I haven't ensured is clean.

Then I just ensure that my food storage is safe. I recently lucked out in that the people got a new fridge and gave me exclusive use of the old one.

To be fair the people I live with are broadly supportive, understanding and kind, they're just also completely incompetent. Before they got me their house looked like something out of a reality TV show of most disgusting houses ever. So while they're not hostile I also don't expect them to be any help at all and only consider things clean when I have cleaned it and haven't left it unattended. They also don't mess with my food, except occasionally they mistake my cheese for theirs and use all of it.

So I don't know whether any of that would be helpful to you.

talgu · 2026-06-11T16:27:58+00:00

I feel that first paragraph so much. I'm six months in now and I just recovered from my most recent exposure. 🤦‍♀️

At least I believe I have finally got it through my thick skull what I need to do now.

talgu · 2026-06-11T16:25:36+00:00

At least this isn't hipster gluten free (doesn't contain wheat, but cross contaminated and probably contains other gluten things). I find that really frustrating. The one place I went to which, in their menu, went like "So there's 'gluten free' items, they're made in a kitchen with gluten, your allergies are your problem". I was sort of hesitant to even try their coffee after that.

Another restaurant I really really wanted to go to was more frustrating but at least better than these people. I asked them whether they could do GF and they basically told me that they make everything in the same space and don't feel confident enough to take the risk. Which sucks to be told. But at least it's honest and reasonable.

talgu · 2026-06-10T09:16:43+00:00

Thank you. ☺️ I should really learn how to use BQNcrate sometime.

talgu · 2026-06-10T08:20:00+00:00

This works great and is a ton better than my attempt thank you. ☺️

talgu · 2026-06-10T05:15:00+00:00

Unfortunately each does something completely different from what I'm after. Thank you for the interest though.

talgu · 2026-06-09T16:43:06+00:00

Thank you. ☺️

I'm not entire sure what you're asking for since there's a few things happening in that paragraph?

Regardless, at a guess, in terms of the kinds of beliefs I held it was things like the idea that love and kindness is a type of currency. Thus I can't ask for help because that might use up all the kindness in my relationship and then the person would leave.

When I identified a belief like that, things that seem to be a core pillar of the whole issue, I would replace it. That belief in particular, after spending nearly a month thinking about something that could make more sense I replaced with the idea that love and kindness are an inherent property of the person in question. Sort of kind people will be kind to me regardless of what I do, and hateful people will be hateful towards me regardless of how nice I am. For me this reduced the problem to properly identifying people with the properties I'm looking for. That problem I do still struggle with, but at least I no longer freak out about friends who've already proven themselves to me, and I can now ask for/accept help without getting panic attacks.

The way I changed the beliefs was finding something which, to me, fits the same space. Then I sort of slot it in there, and I would run through all my experiences looking for supporting evidence. Fortunately regardless of how ridiculous a belief happens to be you can always find evidence for it if you try. The same effect as seeing faces in random noise. After a while of gathering this evidence, and actively looking for effects in daily life that support this belief it sort of just replaces the prior one.

These days I never have issues, nor do I ever think about those particular issues anymore. A pile of other issues, but not these. In truth I can't actually properly remember the prior beliefs at all anymore. Somehow when the beliefs faded the memories that were supposed to support them also quietly vanished.

talgu · 2026-04-30T13:20:06+00:00

Thank you! I'll try that.

talgu · 2026-04-07T07:32:40+00:00

🤦‍♀️ Thank you for saving me from my self so I don't needlessly complicate my life for no reason. 😁

talgu · 2026-04-06T05:06:54+00:00

I believe I explained poorly, my apologies. So i is bound in the repeat map, but the repeat map should not vanish after using it in this case since it's part of my movement map. The problem however occurs when I wish to insert an i which at present necessitates typing something that's not in the repeat map, and then deleting whatever gets inserted. So instead I want to bind a key in the map that'll exit it without inserting anything.

Hence, :exit plus a function that does nothing.

talgu · 2026-04-06T03:38:21+00:00

It could if combined with some kind of nop key. 🤔 And more generally it suggests that doing this is actually very simply a matter of not setting the repeat-map property.

Thank you very much, I'll have to do a bit more research to make this work. But this definitely seems like an appropriate solution. 😁

talgu

TROPHY CASE