Adventures In Going Gluten-Free
Not that I'm a Greek god, but at six-foot one, 190 pounds (give or take), my body's always been naturally fit -- until recently anyway. Over the course of the past 10 months, I've experienced recurring back problems, suffered from chronic fatigue and been diagnosed with astigmatism. I feel this is fundamentally unfair, especially considering that at 39, Brad Pitt hadn't even married Jennifer Aniston, let alone thought about playing daddy to six children with Angelina Jolie. And yet, here he is nearly a decade -- a decade -- older than I am and still flaunting sit-up-free abs that could be mistaken for rumble strips, while mine are starting to resemble something closer to a single, large speed bump!
My most recent ailment has been the addition of an intolerance to gluten. This should've come as no surprise given that the hereditary nature of this autoimmune disease means a sizable portion of my mother's side of the family already deals with this minor inconvenience. Aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings, young and old, are affected by the gluten gene or some form of it. And even though it's shown up at varied stages of our lives, like a coven of vampires who can trace their origins back to a single point of origin, we all agree that our vampire creator is Grandma. Of course, no one blames her -- these things can't be controlled -- and furthermore, after two colonoscopies, I can attest to the fact that Grandma... continue reading
