Sit tight, it's story-telling time.
This is how I found out I had a stress-related gluten intolerance.
The stress from all the exams during my AS year triggered a gluten-intolerance within me which meant that whenever I ate gluten, I'd suffer from terrible abdominal cramps which often left me in tears. At the time, I thought it was just lady-pains because it started during my time of the month, but as I later found out, that wasn't the case.
During my AS exams, I barely ever ate breakfast, had a really unhealthy lunch - not junk food wise, but just not eating the right things to give me energy - and often would eat very little for dinner. I used to eat a lot of noodles then and little did I know how it was affecting me. I dismissed the cramps as just the odd tummy ache because "I couldn't stomach toast in the morning because I was getting late" and also because they weren't that bad at the time. It just felt like I was losing my appetite due to stress. I never took time to notice that what was happening wasn't good.
Exams were over and now I had something else to look forward to - working at the Olympics. I was so excited because it was my first paid job and it was at an event that I'd been looking forward to since I was ten! I started working and it was intense - working in the catering side meant dealing with long-ass queues, sauna-like environments and carrying weights that I didn't even know were possible to carry. I went to work for two days before I started getting terrible pains in my abdomen. This time round, I couldn't link my abdominal cramps to breakfast because I was fasting and breakfast was rice and curry at 3am (it was Ramadhan, I needed good food to keep me going for 18 hours, cereal wouldn't do lol).
In the middle of my third shift, I suddenly felt like someone was ripping my guts out. I keeled over and grabbed my stomach in at the pain which had shot out at me out of nowhere. I shouted for my friend to take over while I took a couple minutes to relax and compose myself. My supervisor noticed and told me that I could take some time out to get some air if I needed to but with me being a person who refused to admit they needed help, I said I was okay and decided to battle through the last four hours in agony, all with a smile on my face for the customers.
I reassured myself that the only reason I was getting these pains was because I was so awfully unfit and carrying all the heavy drinks cases was "working my abs". How wrong was I?! This continued for until the end of my week and because I was under eighteen, I wasn't allowed to work more than forty hours a week so I had to take the weekend off. I still had the pains and they were terrible. I thought it'd wear off with a good day's rest and massage but no. Nu-uh. It got worse. That's when my mum told me I had to make an appointment with the doc to get myself checked out.
Doctor's appointment was Monday evening on my second week of work. I'd done my eight-hour shift and was now home for my seven-thirty appointment. In the time I'd started suffering, I had noticed a few patterns with my food and the cramps but I decided only the doc needed to know that (Mum would think I was being crazy and over-reacting.). So I told her that I can't stomach toast in the morning, cookies gave me a tummy ache and after our evening meal to break our fast, I often was in agony for about three hours. I told her the food we ate at dinner were usually samosas, naans, bread, and a lot of other things that had gluten. Turns out I was basically pumping myself with the toxin that was eating away at my insides.
Doc told me straight up what she thought I had. It was gluten related but she wasn't sure whether it was serious like Celiac's disease or just an intolerance in general. I was sent off to do blood tests, urine tests and other things while I lived on a gluten free diet for the next six weeks.
So I lived like a Celiac for six weeks with peppermint oil capsules for medication and damn, was it hard. I couldn't have a normal egg sarnie in the morning, I couldn't have biscuits or cookies with my cup of milk, I couldn't have pizza, I couldn't have decent cake and I couldn't eat noodles! I had to refuse myself the college fish and chips on Fridays (we were back towards the end of my six week regime) and I was becoming sick of it. Plus, gluten-free food is so expensive for a student like me and the peppermint capsules popped in my stomach before they reached my intestines so the smell and taste of it would waft up from inside me. Ugh *shivers*. It wasn't nice, especially mixed with greasy Asian food.
Results came and the doctor told me that I didn't have Celiac's (yay!) but she also wasn't sure what I did have (bummer!) Funnily enough, I learnt about stress-related disorders which could arise and I told my doctor about the possibility of my intolerance being linked to my exam stress and work stress. She said it made perfect sense (smart-ass me woop!).
Since then I've had to make guesstimates about when I'd get stressed so that I can plan my medication and diet for the time. I've had quite a rough patch since then, losing four people in my family in six months, struggling to cope at college again too. I lost my cousin to cancer a week after I found out what I had and the stress of that lasted for a while. Two months later I lost a grandmother-like figure who I was close to to the same vile disease. Then I had to prepare for my January exams. The stress was there for a while and to be honest, I didn't have anyone to talk to about it. Teachers didn't really understand and neither did friends. I did bottle it up but it made me tougher, which is probably why I was able to bear a lot of the pain throughout the time.
Since my January exams up until last week, I wasn't under any stress which is why I felt fine consuming gluten. But I knew it was coming. I had told myself that sometime this week it would start and I was right. I've sat through writing this entire thing while having my abdominal cramps gnawing away at me inside. It's painful but while I'm distracted I don't really notice it. (Oh yeah, I was watching Top Gear the other day because I was feeling really low and miserable from the pain and it totally worked at making me forget about the pain. I was laughing away and by the end I wasn't sure if I even had the pains or not until they returned about thirty minutes later lol. Sebastien Vettel was the guest and well, isn't he adorable?)
I've been on my medication for about three days now but along comes another problem. The medication causes dizziness as a side effect and I can't concentrate when I have them. If I can't concentrate, I can't learn or remember things, and forcing myself to learn would put me under more stress. It's a vicious circle, the way I see it. I've talked to one of my teachers about it and I need a medical note for my exams just in case I get one during one of my exams or in case I need to be put into another room to do it separately. It sucks but that's just how life is, a roller-coaster.
I just don't want to fail. It's my only shot.
What I've decided to do as part of this and to help other people around me is to put links and recipes to gluten-free foods which are healthy and pretty much like what normal food tastes like. It's weird saying "normal" food but whatever haha. I'll be updating this page often with links to products and posting recipes which I feel would be helpful for the many sufferers of gluten intolerance and Celiac disease. We gotta help each other, right?
Gluten-free, egg-free cookie recipe! 
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