Gluten Free Goodness.

I made these gluten free cheese crackers today, and my goodness they were tasty! I can't stop eating them! Nom nom nom nommmm!

They are very close to Ben's mom's famous holiday cheese crackers, except since they are made from cornstarch and not all purpose flour, they are lighter and flakier. Next time I'll add some cayenne to give them the same zip that hers have, and they will be perfect. It's a nice recipe because, other than the small bit of xantham gum, the recipe is super cheap. All the ingredients can most likely be found in a "normal" kitchen. And since the flour substitute is cornstarch, and not some weird, "exotic" hard to find or expensive flour, these crackers are super cheap to make. Yum.

Mmmmmmmmmm. Seriously, it's all I can do to keep myself from finishing the whole batch off.

In other gluten free news: I've found all sorts of flours at the local Asian markets. We've got a CAM Asian market just down the street that has lots of rice, tapioca, potato, sorghum, and millet flours. They don't really cater to the Indian part of the Asia crowd, but we just discovered a couple of Indian markets that have lots of flours too (especially bean flours, rice flours, and millet flours). Fun! And by they way, peeps, spices are SO much cheaper at Indian markets! So, let that be a lesson for even the non-GF baker! If you need spices check the Indian markets!

And, that's my multi-cultural lesson for the day. You're welcome.

Fall.

It's officially fall in the Ohio. Let's be honest, it really is one of the only redeemable qualities Ohio has. Summer can either be brutally humid, or horrible rainy. Winter is dismal, complete with concrete sky and scraping windows every_single_ morning. But fall, is (usually) beautiful. And, it comes with apple cider, apple orchards, fields of pumpkins, the Circleville Pumpkin Show, among other wonderful things.

Here are some recent highlights:

• I went apple picking with a few friends. I bought 20 lbs. of honeycrisp apples and we have pretty much eaten all of them in less than 2 weeks.
• I learned how to make & can applesauce. (I probably won't ever do this again, unless I own an apple tree. It's not worth the opportunity cost.)
• Ben took a week off! Woot! He hasn't taken a nice, solid vacation in SOOOOO long and he (and I) needed it!
• We went to the Zoo.
• We also visited "Grandpas's Cheesebarn." We were the youngest people there, by about 30 years!
• We watched all 3 Lord of the Rings movies. Extended versions! And lots of the extra features! Yes, this makes us nerds.
• We've been going on lots of bicycle rides (thanks, K, for letting us borrow your bike!)
• OSU lost a game, and it made me (not so secretly) happy. Oh, how I despise living in a city that is so obsessed with football!

And there you have it. Plenty o' fun!

Apology in Advance. This is long.

So, I apologize in advance that this is going to be yet another post about gluten! And it's a long one. But, hey, it's my blog, and you can choose to not read it, so I guess I don't really need to apologize after all! I just need to get out into words all the things I'm thinking about, because somehow that helps me, personally, figure all my shiz out. For rizzle.

I'm not sure how long I've suspected that I have an issue with gluten. In 2005, right before a trip to Ghana, and especially right after I got back, I remember having awful stomach issues, but I chalked that up to my waxing and waning lactose intolerance that I've had since I was a kid. I think I started suspecting that gluten could be an issue after a few friends of mine were diagnosed with Celiac. These friends also happened to have Type 1 and that's when I found out that they pretty much go hand in hand. But, I'm stubborn, and sick of being "the sick one," and decided that gluten was not my problem, that indeed I did not have any more problems, and so I never tried to go gluten free to see how it made me feel.

But, my stomach/intestinal issues just kept getting worse. I was so opposed to the idea of gluten being the culprit, that I actually thought for awhile that I had gastroparesis which is a particularly nasty complication that can result from having diabetes (one that the doctors don't tell you about, but which I think is infinitely more scary than having a limb amputated--but that's a whole different post). The symptoms of gastroparesis are very similar to those of gluten sensitivity. Only I think it's worse, because if you have gastroparesis symptoms, you pretty much can't reverse it and your screwed. But I never told anyone about that, because I was so scared that that might actually be what my problem was! Yikes spikes!

Things changed a little bit after a couple of things happened. First, I got a new endo, and she immediately wanted to know if I'd ever been tested for celiac or if I had stomach issues. I never had, and she tested me (blood test came back negative) but said I could try going gluten free and see if that helped. Second, I spent a week with my awesome cousin and aunt in Cincinnati while he received tests for a particularly nasty illness that he has. He has to go gluten free, too. His doctor in Cincinnati wanted to know if any members of his family had celiac disease, or if any of his family had Type 1 diabetes! My aunt told him that I had type 1 and his doctor was super surprised that I wasn't diagnosed with celiac disease and made it sound like because I've had type 1 that it was just inevitable. Any way, spending that week with my cousin & aunt was eye opening and made me see that going GF was hard, but not as bad as I thought it would be! And, finally, I started tallying up in my head just how many Type 1's I knew, and just how many of them have been diagnosed with celiac/gluten intolerance. It was statistically significant, let's just put it that way.

So, I started trying to go gluten free. Which was actually not that hard, I didn't really buy lots of specialty foods and just started cooking more and eating out less and eating less processed stuff. I've been trying to gluten free as much as I possibly can for about a month or two now, and I can't believe how much better I feel! All those intestinal symptoms I had before (especially feeling bloated, and feeling super full by the end of the day) have pretty much disappeared. The thing that I have noticed the most, is that I actually feel hunger pangs again. I knew I was hungry and needed to eat before, but I wasn't feeling hunger pangs. You know, the feeling you get when you've been working hard in the yard or something all day, and you come inside and are starving and ready to eat a big meal, and when you do you are so satisfied? Yeah, I wasn't feeling that before, I was just feeling bloated. And I'm totally feeling that again now.

Also, my blood sugars are SO much easier to control! Holy freaking blood sugar cow. One of the reasons I thought I had gastroparesis before was because I would often eat and then go immediately low, treat it, and then spike up super high afterward. This is a sign of gastroparesis, because your body doesn't digest stuff like it should, so your insulin starts working before you start digesting food. You go low, so you treat it, but really you still have all that food in your body, so you didn't really need to treat the low, you just needed to wait (hours!) for your body to digest it, so then you go high afterward. Now, I'm convinced that was happening because my body doesn't digest gluten very well. Since I've been eating gluten free, this hasn't happened to me. But, the other day, I chose to eat gluten. Like all day long. I ate crackers, I ate regular bread, and I ate normal brownies. And oh how I suffered! I was super bloated and uncomfortable by the evening (not to mention the lower intestinal issues the next day). And at night, I had dinner, took my insulin, went low, treated it, and went super high afterwards! Just like before. I haven't eaten gluten since then, and that feeling is gone, and I haven't had a weird low-high situation like that.

Anyway, so as much as I am annoyed that gluten is the culprit in all this stuff, I am equally as excited to know that I don't have gastroparesis (sheesh, that is like my greatest diabetes fear!--other than dying in child birth like Julia Roberts in Steel Magnolias), and equally as thrilled to be feeling better! And, because I like to cook/bake, I'm equally as excited to experiment with new and different foods. I'm a little apprehensive about trying to live the gluten free lifestyle and letting the world know that I'm living it. Right now, only my blog readers and good friends know that this is going on. I don't want to inconvenience people, I don't want people to see me as "that girl with all the problems," etc. But, I know that the people that really matter in my life don't care, and are just glad that I'm doing what I need to do to be healthy. Why is it anyway, that some medical issues people are super duper ready to get behind and support, and others people are skeptical about, or find it annoying or inconvenient? For example: I've been reading things about schools that have decided to go "peanut free" or "allergen free" because of all the kids that have food allergies, and how some parents are in a total outrage about it. Why are people so ready to get behind kids with cancer, but not ready to get behind kids that will get seriously sick (and possibly die?!) because of peanuts? Shouldn't we all just support each other in what we need to do to be healthy? Any way, that's probably another post too, but I was thinking about that, so I'm writing it down.

Ok, this is long, but the basic point of this whole post is this: Gluten and me don't get along. I'm avoiding it, I feel better and it has helped my diabetes! Bonus! And also, mean people are dumb.

:)

Paul Farmer

So, I just found and read through some notes I took from waaaaay back in 2008 when I went to see Paul Farmer give a lecture here in Columbus. I've read nearly every single book this guy has written, and his ideas are what inspired me to want to study public health, and have really shaped the way I see health care and health systems.

So, this post is basically just going to be my notes from that lecture, so I have them in a place where they won't get lost or accidentally thrown away.

• Used worldmapper.org to compare areas of HIV prevalence to areas where physicians are working. Used it to illustrate the vast disparity in where disease lies as opposed to where doctors practice.
• Needs Assessments: Ask people what they need and then do what they say, not just follow convention (ex. G.O.B.I.=growth, oral re-hydration, breast feeding, immunization)
• Cost should be at the beginning of a conversation about treatment, not the end.
• IDA=international dispensary association
• Doctors have 2 choices: You can complain about people telling you their social problems OR you can see it as a privelage that they tell you their problems. When their physical symptoms go away, they'll start telling you about the social causes of those problems.
• Rwanda project is funded by the Clinton Foundation
• When speaking about structure and how it causes disparities: "It's easier to get from Newark to Paris than it is to get across Newark."
• Progressive vs. Regressive Health Care/Insurance Schemes: Progressive= spreads risk, Regressive=penalizes sick
• Use anthropology as a way of re-socializing problems, ex: obesity epidemic in one part of the world while we have a famine in another part
• You don't have to use physicians to do work for chronic illness. Physicians are a limited resource, you don't need physicians to treat illness, you need to get another resource. Must create new modes/modules or care, must get people to fund different care models.
• Our resources are mal-distributed, not limited
• A medical school faculty member asked in the Q&A session about what they should do for all their students who want to go do residencies/internships in underserved places (Africa, Haiti, etc.) Farmer's Reply: Students are driving the agenda and you faculty need to catch up! Discussed how medical schools are illequipped to train students in this type of medicine/social justice work even though students are dying to do it. He told that professor" I know your kids all want to do this, because they all call me and ask to help!" Asked if students need to be spectators of poverty or instruments of change. Talked about finding the right settings for students to work in, and that right now Universities are failing to support the public sector. Universities need to begin finding partners in underserved areas that are doing service work, not just research.
• Discussed gender disparities as a result of unequal access between women and men.
• Referred to the book "Women, Poverty & Aids"
• In Haiti, creating jobs was paramount in reducing health disparities, they created 2500 jobs in Haiti & half were to women.
• Talked about Rwanda's new mandate that half of their Parliament must be women "They are trapping themselves into decency through legislation."

Sigh! So inspired!