Gluten connected to Itchiness-makes sense to me!

http://health.yahoo.net/caring/10-things-your-skin-says-about-your-health

This article made me so happy! Now I know I'm not crazy! Before I got put on my purge diet, I had these horrible, dry, itchy patches on my shoulder, mid back, and thumb/wrist area. HORRIBLE. I would literally rub the skin raw by scratching it myself, rubbing it on my jeans, the carpet, anything textured enough to make it stop even temporarily. Then, when I wanted to lose weight and I saw my nutritionalist, he said I'm sensitive to wheat and should avoid it for 90 days. (I thought my carb love affair had ended, and spent several weeks moping around the house, depressed over missing bread and cookies. Ha! How things have changed!) Well, I discovered that to avoid wheat, it's easiest to find things that are gluten free. So everywhere I went, I told people I'm gluten free. Those 90 days, after the first couple weeks where my system was purging, I had no more itch! Not thinking of this significance, I had some Christmas cookies at a friend's house. They tasted good-sat in my stomach like lead-and after my gluten hangover the next morning, I realized my shoulder had itchy, rashy bumps again!

Well, well, and the article draws a link to the two. If only I'd been bright enough to connect those dots awhile ago!

Thankfully, since I've been back on avoiding gluten again, my shoulder and thumb are slowly lessening their maddening itchiness. Now I know though, if I want to go crazy, sure, I can eat that cookie my friend made, I can have that soup from the restaurant, I can have a bread sample in the store. But I will pay the price with my sanity later. If that piece of gluten-infested-food is really worth my sanity, then sure, I can have some. But I better make sure it's worth it!

And on that note, now that I'm thinking about foods, I think I'll make some cookies while I wait for my sis-in-law to get home. TBG and I are helping out this week with her at home. I have a valid excuse to make breads, cookies, muffins, foods that are high in carb! She's craving them now that she's on a gluten free diet, and I'm more than happy to fill that nasty gluten void! ^_^