Something else positive that I've experienced growing up is a consistent lack of skin problems. Even through puberty my skin was relatively normal. Luckily, I wasn't prone to oiliness or spots or acne, literally nothing of the kind. In school, I was 'baby face' to all my friends who had their toll with these problems. If I did complain, I was quickly assured that what I was going through with my skin was minuscule compared to what they were dealing with. And I quickly disregarded my occasional 'patchy' and dry skin.
Within the last few years, I've noticed that what I eat can have a serious impact on my physical capability. Sometimes, this problem is non-existent. But when it does happen, I can get really ill. This poses an inconvenience if I'm to go out for food with my friends or if I have plans later in the day, particularly after I've had a meal. I get severe cramps and whatnot, I won't get into too much detail. But basically it feels like my body is rejecting my stomach. It's near enough impossible to go out and eat a meal with the intention of drinking during and afterwards. It makes me really sick, and I can't seem to stomach anything when I combine the two. If I plan on going out, I like to have a meal a good few hours beforehand, that usually helps when I'm feeling like drinking quite a bit.
So recently, within the past year or so, I started to finally get some issues to do with my skin. I started getting these patches of coarse skin on the inside of my elbows. To which, myself and my doctor assumed was the start of eczema. I treated it as if it was, for months. It never really got any better. Really sore, really dry and it made me look like a heroin abuser. Then came, the difficulties with the skin on my face.
About two years ago, I had woken up one day and noticed that one of my temples wasn't looking how it should. It was raised and red, just did not look good. I assumed I had been bitten by a bug, and put little to no concern on it. I went into town with my sister, I think a day after I had first noticed it. And she persuaded me to ask about it in a pharmacy. One of the girls that worked there instantly said that she wanted a doctor to look at it. This man said that I definitely had ophthalmic herpes zoster and I was to rush home basically and contact my GP. Ophthalmic herpes zoster is basically really bad shingles around your eyes and forehead, because it's a virus located in the nerves behind and around your eyes. If it's left to get really bad, it can start to affect your eyesight. I followed all the guidelines that my GP had given and used all the prescribed medication and eventually it disappeared. It did leave me with a scar, but hey I can still see.
Ok back to present time, I started to get really dry, really red and really sore around my eyes again, I assumed that my skin had reacted to something and the scar was flaming up. 🗲 Lauren Greene, the girl who lived. 🗲 It got worse and worse and worse until I was like this can't just be karma and my good skin days finally catching up with me. I started to believe that maybe it was a dietary condition. A lactose intolerance runs in my family and I was convinced it was that, because apparently the symptoms appear in your teens or early adulthood. Once again, I approached my GP and told him about how bad I was feeling and he saw how bad I was looking and boom I'm a coeliac.
Basically, I damaged all the important stuff in my small intestine by inhaling bowls and bowls of pasta and cakes and fried chicken and bagels every single day. SO much so that my body is unable to digest gluten anymore. I near enough cried when I found out, but then I compared that to my assumed lactose intolerance and thinking about it, obviously I got the better deal.
I'm currently a month into my new diet and I haven't had a single bad day (stomach-wise). I will admit that I have cheated and my body hates me for it. If I eat something that I shouldn't be, the effects more or less develop within a few hours. It kind of makes me feel good because I can visibly see how much my body hates gluten and that means no more suffering because I finally found out what was wrong. The photo below is because I ate a bagel.
Thanks for reading and imagine paying 5 euro for 10 slices of bread the size of crackers i.e the bread that I have to eat.
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