Wheat's Wrong With You?

Part 1: My Shitty Knees

I’ve had knee issues for a long while. I remember being in gym class in high school and wondering if the other girls were in as much pain as I was. Freshman year of college I went to the doctor and found out I have a common issue where the cup my knee cap sits in is too shallow, so it is really easy for my knee cap to move around excessively. The doctor also mentioned the muscles around my knee weren’t holding the cap in place properly. The diagnosis, physical therapy and waiting until I ‘got older’. Yes, the doctor actually said I just had to wait until I got older so my muscles would naturally become less flexible. Thanks doc.

The physical therapy and a knee brace to use during exercise, took the edge off somewhat. Still waiting to see if ‘getting older’ helps, 6 years later no improvement thus far.

When I came to PC, I was completely unable to exercise, so the knee problems came back with a vengeance. Once I was out of training and living in my own house, I tried to get back on the exercise train, but it didn’t work this time. For over a year I’ve been taking 2-3 400mg ibuprofen and 2-3 500mg Tylenol a day, every day. On a bad day this might go up to 4-5 of each. If I’m traveling I would take one of each every 3-4 hours. It was the only thing that worked.

Evidently this is a lot of ibuprofen and Tylenol. After startling a few friends with the quantity of meds I was taking, I talked to the Peace Corps nurse. The nurse wasn’t worried about me taking 2 ibuprofenes a day, but evidently 3 is the tipping point where I need to take an additional medication, Ranitidina, to protect my stomach.

I never actually knew ibuprofen could be bad for your stomach lining causing a whole host of nasty side effects. Evidently I was the only one. Sucks for me.

Part 2: Gluten

I didn’t know much about celiac disease until one of the girls in my group in Peace Corps had it. Being the information junkie I am, I did quite a bit of googleing until I had familiarized myself with the topic. In people with celiac disease the immune system reacts abnormally to gluten (a protein in wheat, barley, and rye), causing small intestine inflammation and damage. According to a 2003 University of Maryland study, as many as 1 in 133 people have celiac, though it may be even more common since a large number of cases are undiagnosed. Don’t worry, I don’t have celiac.

Once I had gluten on my radar, I noticed it showing up from time to time in health and diet articles of varying reliability. Admittedly, going gluten-free is one of the newer fast weight loss fads, as can be seen with an increasing number of gluten-free products.

However I did notice that many of the health, not weight loss, focused articles mentioned another issue, wheat intolerance. It is basically a non-allergic, but still negative reaction gluten. People with celiac have very strong symptoms that can occur within hours of eating a small amount of gluten. Wheat sensitivity is a more difficult to detect because the symptoms take longer to manifest, sometimes 2-3 days.

What caught my attention was that aching joints was one of the most frequently listed symptoms. In addition to knee pain, I’ve also had unexplainable aches in my hips and pain in my hands severe enough I had become concerned I might have carpal tunnel.

I’ve also had inflammation problems. When I go for even a short walk my hands will swell painfully. Since coming to Paraguay I’ve also had such severe swelling in my legs that it felt like my calves were going to burst open. During my first summer in particular, I can’t tell you how many sietas I spent with my legs up in the air against a wall trying to get the inflammation to go down. When I googled causes of chronic inflammation, wheat and dairy issues always at the top of this list for dietary causes of inflammation.

Part 3: The Experiment

(Note: While there are scientific tests for celiac disease and wheat allergies, they are notoriously unreliable. Also they often don’t work for wheat intolerance because the effects are more subtle)

Here is what we know. I’ve been taking obscene amounts of ibuprofen to combat joint pain and inflammation. Ibuprofen causes digestive issues. Wheat intolerance causes joint pain and inflammation. Wheat intolerance stems from digestive problems. Did the Ibuprofen cause wheat intolerance? Hmm. So about a month and a half ago I decided to do an experiment called an elimination diet.

I couldn’t stop taking the ibuprofen cold turkey, but I could cut out wheat. So I did. After a week and a half I was down to 1-2 ibuprofen and Tylenol a day. I kept at it. Taking 2 of each became my new ‘bad day’ dose. Some days I didn’t take anything. I continued the experiment during my trip to Argentina. Twice I was in buses for 20-24 hours. I took meds twice during each trip, as opposed to my usual dose every 2-3 hours. Once we were in Argentina we had ice cream several days in a row. I was perplexed because the ache started to come back. Turns out most ice cream has gluten L. Very very sad news.

When I got back from Argentina phase 2 of the elimination diet started, reintroduction of wheat. From Monday to Thursday of last week I ate wheat. On Wednesday I started feeling occasional pain, but I chalked it up to walking Tucker twice a day. By Friday the pain was back. Today is Saturday and I’m fighting the urge to take ibuprofen. I stopped eating wheat again yesterday. I’m hoping that I don’t have to wait a week and a half again for the pain to subside.

Part 4: Conclusion

I currently have a wheat intolerance.

I don’t know if taking large quantities ibuprofen damaged my digestive system and caused the wheat intolerance. Maybe I’ve had a wheat intolerance all along and the hideous amounts of bread I had to eat with my host family during training pushed it to a new level and the ibuprofen exacerbated the effect. Maybe it’s a combination of the two.

The next step is to stop eating wheat again for a longer period of time, I’m shooting for 6 months. That should be long enough for any damage caused by the meds to heal. If the problems come back again when I introduce wheat again, then I probably really am wheat intolerant. We shall see.

Now why did you need to go through that huge TMI overshare? Because wheat intolerance often has a genetic component. If you’re related to me, which I assume most of my readership is, you may unknowingly be wheat intolerant as well. Even if you’re not related, many cases of wheat intolerance go undiagnosed.

For me it was worth the experiment to find out. I’m not at all happy I can’t eat bread, or cereal, or tragically, ice cream at least not for a little while. But I am happy to finally have a way to control my knee pain other that waiting to get older.

Fitness Competition Summary

I need to write something a little more personal, but this will have to do for now. This is the write-up I did for my boss, country director, and a few people in between. Its very numbery, but that is what admin people like in a report, right?

[Superwoman!]

Primary Instructor: Lyndsay Jolley (Community Economic Development G30)

Secondary Instructor: Julia Heitz (Environmental Education G34)

Guest Presenter: Topic-Soy: Rachael Graham (Crop Extension G31)

Guest Presenter: Awards Ceremony: Dr. Luis Valiente

The fitness program in Dr. J.E. Estigarribia began in November 2010, with an exercise class three times a week, attended by 5-8 women. I began by inviting a few teachers who had expressed interesting aerobics classes or those who I knew already walked on their own. Other than this, I didn’t need to do any publicity, the women promoted the class, and then the competition, completely on their own.

The fitness competition began on January 7^th 2011 at lasted until February 7, 2011. We had 101 registered women participants; 51 completed the final weigh-in. It was free to attend the exercise class and nutrition presentations, but to officially enter the competition, and thus be eligible for prizes, women paid 5,000G and did an initial weigh-in. The participants with the most points would win. Points were distributed in the following manner:

Point Structure:

1pt- nutrition presentation/cooking class

2pts- exercise class or outside group exercise activity

4pts- per kilo lost

To encourage the women to be active outside of my classes, I created a captain system. A captain was a participant who had signed a contract with me to hold their own exercises activities, usually group walks, and honestly record the attendees and hours on a form I created. The captains were required to submit those forms to me at the end of each week.

[Even the little ones get in on the action]

We had 5 total captains, 3 of whom were consistently active. They logged 61, 111, and 160 hours of exercise per group. In total, 337 hours of outside exercise were logged by the captains and their exercise groups.

On average, 41 registered participants attended each class of my 14 exercise classes. Also, we often had unregistered women attend the class just to see what it was like and about 5-10 children who regularly observed or partially participated in the classes. I would estimate there were 50-55 women and guests at each class on average. I would also estimate of the 101 registered women, 60-70 continued to actively participate in the fitness events. My fitness class logged 547 hours of exercise.

[Name tags]

On average, 28 women attended each of the 5 health presentations.

The participants lost 85.9k (188lbs) total. The top 5 women lost 30.6k (67.2lbs) between them.

At the end of the competition we held an awards ceremony with about 55 people to celebrate the accomplishments of all the women, hand out certificates of participation and final awards.

Challenges:

· Finding a location. Most fields were not willing to ask the men to stop playing soccer for an hour so we could have class. Let me repeat that. The only woman's exercise class couldn't find space because the boys needed to play football, which they could have done in any number of different locations. Yes, I'm a little sore on that point.

· Keeping the exercises challenging but fun.

Successes:

· Not having to do any publicity. Everything spread via word of mouth.

· ~55 people attended the final awards ceremony even though it rained

· Women seeing tangible results

· Passing by the field on a non-exercise class day, and observing the women doing their own walks, stretches, and other exercises, without my guidance.

Changes for Competition #2 (beginning the end of March 2011)

· Increase fee to join competition to buy nicer prizes and ensure the event covers all of its own expenses.

· Transfer more of the responsibilities of the classes to the women, possibly through the creation of 2-3 concurrent exercise classes in different parts of the city. This would also increase the number of women who have access to the classes.

· Recruit more guest presenters and instructors

· Find ways other than weight loss, to measure participant progress and successes.

Health Topics Presented:

· Diabetes

· The importance of reading nutrition labels

· The health benefits of soy

· Cooking with soy

· Cooking with fruits and vegetables

· Portions

· Calculating intake and expenditure

· Health and weight-loss myths

· Avoiding ‘snake oil’/ quick fix diets and medications

· Food groups

· What is a normal weight/Body Mass Index Calculation

Primary Exercises:

· Yoga

· Pilates

· Zumba

· Strength training (with old bottles filled with water)

· Sprinting drills

· Plyometrics

· Group walks

· Exercise games

· Dances

Chaocitos Mo, Bienvenidos Tucker

It was raining, he was cute, with big brown eyes, crying, and he came right up to me. I let him in to get out of the rain, let him out again when it was done, but he came back, and hasn't tried to leave since. I'm not emotionally strong enough to say no to that. So I have a dog now... His name is Tucker.

Moab left to go live with Julia, but there was about 2-3 days when I had all 3 pets at the house. Quite a zoo.

[Feeding time at the Jolley Zoo]

Goodbye Old Fridge (and 1 month's salary)

About a week ago the refrigerator part of my refrigerator stopped working. The freezer part, which is not separated from the refrigerator section, was thus doing double duty. I was too busy at the time to do anything about it because of the exercise competition.

[Old Fridge]

I decided not to try and repair the old one, because it was absolutely ancient, never worked really well, was as loud as a freight train, and this was probably just the beginning of its slow death. I've also decided that I'll ask my follow-up to pitch in a bit so that will take the edge off farther down the road.
[Old Fridge. Note the compartment at the top, sans door or partition of any sort. That is the freezer]

Yesterday I was finally able price some new ones in the stores. I first looked around for used ones, but I wasn't able to find any and none of my friends knew of any for sale. I decided to buy one from a friend of mine because I knew that she would allow me to divide the payments of the fridge without charging me interest.

I got the cheapest fridge I could from there, but it still is going to set me back an entire month's salary ouch. Fortunately I've split it up into 3 payments, so that will make it a bit easier, but still.

That said, I'm amazed by how nice the new fridge is. Its so quiet I keep looking at it to make sure its still plugged in. I'm so happy to have an actual freezer, the old one had a freezer, but since it wasn't separated it couldn't even keep my ice cream from melting. Maybe I'll actually be able to have ice now! The door closes completely, I had to use a bike tire to close the other one, so less air escapes. So I'm also guessing it is far more energy efficient, so I won't be surprised if my electricity bill goes down.

[New Fridge. Note the closed freezer compartment on the top]

My B-day

I have to confess, I didn’t realize that Wednesday was my birthday until my friend Monica (and spotted seal) wished me a happy birthday a day early.

This month is really busy, so I wasn’t able to do anything special in particular, but I figure I’d give you a rundown of what my days have been like.

A Day In the Life of Me- January Edition:

4:40am- Wake up

5am- Leave the house to walk to the ruta to meet up with the morning walking group

5:30am- Walking group arrives

6:40 Finished walking, go home

7am-Get home, feed small furry animals. Walk the carnivorous, non-litter box trained one.

8:20am-Walk across town to give out application to my business taller

9:30am- Get home and shower

10am-Go to Julia’s house to play Uno with her English class (learning colors and numbers)

11:30am-Start making norte style breakfast for lunch. We realize that 1) Julia’s stove is out of gas 2) cooking pancakes on a not non-stick surface is miserable. So we go to my house to finish the pancakes and scrambled eggs. I wash some laundry while Julia cooks.

[Julia’s perfect (no seriously) pancakes. They were wonderful ambassadors for Catalina, who has never has US style pancakes]

2:30pm-Finish lunch, I go back home for NAP TIME!

5:00pm-Wake up from nap, update roster for exercise class

5:30pm-Go to internet café to print roster

6:10pm-Arrive at the sports fields for the exercise class

6:30-7:30pm-Exercise class.

8:15pm-Get home, feed furry children, talk with Julia, start planning tomorrow’s health presentation

11:30pm-Go to bed

If today is any representation about how my 25th year is going to go, I'm going to be a very busy lady.

Happy New Year!

Meet Julia and Moab

About a month ago I was gifted by Peace Corps with a new site mate Julia,, at least for the time being. She will actually be living in a small neighborhood about 5 km north of me, but she is spending her first few months with her community contact who lives here in Campo 9.

I’ve really been enjoying having a site mate again; I’d forgotten how awesome it is. This might not be the same for all volunteers, but I definitely get more done with another Norte around. An added bonus is Julia just adopted a puppy. She knew she wanted a pet so I’d had my eye out for stray puppies or kitties. While we were inquiring about a goat for another volunteer, we noticed the family had a little puppy amongst their 5 or so other dogs. It was love at first site for Julia. She had to have her.

The only recommendation I gave her was that she should absolutely not pay for the dog. It is an adorable little thing, but a Paraguayan mestizo mutt through and through, and there are plenty of free strays that pop up all of the time. Also it would also encourage people to take advantage of Julia in the future, since paying for the dog would have meant she clearly didn’t have good money sense. Fortunately the family was fine with the adoption.

About a week later (yesterday), we went to the family to pick up the dog. As it turned out, there had been some confusion as to which dog Julia wanted to adopt. They thought she wanted one of the adult dogs for some reason. But we cleared it up and took the little bundle of joy to my house.

I told Julia she is welcome to leave the little girl at my house whenever she wanted since Julia is still living with a Paraguayan family, so the puppy last night with me.

After bringing her home, Julia decided to name her Moab (as in Utah), because the dirt there is the same as Moab’s fur. We call her ‘Mo’ for short. I’ve also been calling her Mojito, Mojo, and when she is being less than perfect…My Little MoFo.

This is Julia’s first dog, so I’ll be helping her train it up Norte style, in case Julia decides to take her the US.

I was the odd predicament of not knowing how old Mo is or what her eating habits are like. Turns out she can eat solid foods and drinks water, which makes things easier. I’ve actually recommended to Julia that she make Moab’s food, as opposed to giving her table scraps which is what most of the dogs eat, or the dry dog food, which is expensive and pretty useless nutritionally. Considering how small Mo is, Julia could probably make a week’s worth of food pretty cheaply and easily.

(Lila with Tia Julia, trying to steal her apples)

It has been a while since I’ve helped raise a puppy, and I forgot how much I enjoy it. As much as I love and adore Lila, I am a dog person at heart. Speaking of Lila, she and Moab are getting along quite tolerably. I have to watch them like a hawk to teach Moab not to chase or chew on Lila. Fortunately Lila is a good deal larger and much faster than Mo, so she can hold her own I walk out of the room for a second.

(Where is Waldo: Puppy Edition...Can you find her?)

(There she is! Taking morning siesta #3.)

What a wonderful way to spend New Year’s Eve. So much fun to be an Auntie again.