I stare at my finger, fascinated by the healing process. Would be fun to take a picture every day as it heals. I've had a week now of being off of "repair mode" for the first time in quite a while. My abdomen is just about 100% ... took almost exactly six weeks. Am finally back to doing 100 sit ups. I've been running more, 8 - 10 miles a week. It's been wonderful going around the lake in the mornings.
Weird thing is I felt some weakness and neuralgia about a week ago and I'm thinking and it is either: 1. the added miles are harder than I thought, or, 2. (more likely since I've been running more for a while now) I was having a gluten reaction. It's not easy to stay off of gluten when you are also off of dairy and red meat, and sandwich meats, and added sugar, and anything processed. You can have hummus and peanut butter but you need something to spread it on and rice cakes make me want to stab myself with a fork.
So I go back to Aldi's and found some gluten free bagels and, so far, they've been a light and pleasant substitute (unlike the potato slicer which proved to be a finger-mangling menace). The cinnamon raisin variety are legit yummers. After a couple of days of strict gluten restriction the lingering icky-neuralgic bloating dissipates.
I feel it almost right away now when I eat gluten, as if I'm becoming more sensitive to it. Subway sandwiches have always wrecked havoc on me but I figured what the hell I could try a roasted chicken breast with veggies ... boy was I wrong. Stomach ache right off the bat followed by dull broader pains radiating into my hip and down to my left knee. I could feel the immune response overgeneralizing with waves of heightened nerve sensitivity and swelling, a systemic panic or whatever it is -- appearing to attack soft tissue, its preferred punching bag.
But I've cheated with gluten before without the recent borderline acute response, so what gives?
Healing?
Injuries, almost like the flu, seem to dampen the immune response. Since starting Judo almost constant injuries have been a staple. There was an elevated marker in my blood last year that my Dr. was initially concerned about, mentioning how you see it sometimes in people who are injured, so I mentioned the rib fractures and other miscellaneous injuries and he says "ok that explains it." Really curious about what that marker was, because whatever it is, in it's absence my immune response, even down to skin irritations and joint neuralgia, spikes noticeably. Like a guard dog without enough to do who starts overreacting to anything that moves. This is probably the first time in a very long while that I've been relatively injury free and cheated on gluten. But why would my immune response be in a sense "distracted" by systemic repair? I understand illness (infection) drawing the immune system's attention, but injury doesn't always coincide with infection ... although maybe it did so more commonly in our ancestors? Especially ancestors who couldn't figure out how to use a potato slicer?
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