I know that celiac disease and thyroid problems walk hand in hand. My doctor did bloodwork for thyroid and said all my numbers are good, yet I know something is wrong.

Well, anyways, yesterday I was reading up on thyroid problems again and came across iodine deficiency. There is a "at-home" test you can try for iodine deficiency. You use iodine tincture--you dab it onto the skin on the inside of your arm, you make a silver dollar size circle with it and watch it for 24 hours. Iodine is an orange color, so you can see it very well. If you are iodine deficient, your body will absorb the spot. You check the spot in 6 hours, 12 hours, 24 hours. Depending on how long the spot stays, will somewhat determine if you are deficient. If it lasts the 24 hours, then you do not have an iodine problem, if it lasts 12 hours, then you have a mild to medium deficiency--in only a little over 5 hours, my body had absorbed the iodine. At 11:30 last night, the iodine spot was so faint on my arm that you would not even know it was there if you had not seen it earlier--I had put the iodine on at 6:30 pm.

Well, now I have a starting point. An iodine deficiency does effect your thyroid, which in turn causes fatigue, brain fog, depression, trouble adjusting to hot/cold, insufficient stomach acid, etc. The insufficient stomach acid hit a cord immediately--could definitely be why I am having so much trouble with different foods. I also have been gaining weight, while walking daily and exercising. I was diagnosed with depression/anxiety in Dec and started taking Celexa. I was having severe stomach cramping at the time and the Celexa did calm that, yet I see no other improvements.

Anyone else have this? Any suggestions? I am calling my doctor for an appt tomorrow for further testing or a referral to someone else.

Food study - Iodine

http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...8693#post88693

Sorry to hear you're not doing well Deb. I hope you find an answer soon. I hope the Celexa is doing what it's supposed to for you.

You might want to ask about taking betaine hydrocloride tablets. That's fixed at least two people I've spoken to about food sensitivities... I don't believe it cured their gluten issues... but seemed to help with others.

I really do not feel the Celexa is doing what it should. The severe stomach cramps I was dealing with did go away, yet I still have the anxiety. Today my doctor decided to increase the dose I take and if that doesn't work, she wants to add something to it.

As for the thyroid, I had to practically force the issue. To be honest, the doc I had today was a PA and she had no idea what a thyroid antibodies test is--she pulled out her little computer and looked it up. Finally she realized I knew what I was talking about and ordered the test done.

Why should we have to go to the doctor with the knowledge of what we have to get treated? I swear they would bury me in anti-depressants just to quiet me.

Sorry about mis-spelling hydrochloride before... keying too fast and no time to proof well these days...

I'm wondering if you drink coffee? I drink coffee only on the weekends. Once in a while we have a long weekend and I'll drink it 4 days in a row. I'm still okay on the 2nd day but the 3rd day I start to feel 'down'... and by the 4th day I'm really struggling with my mood. I have not isolated whether it's actually the coffee or the sugar (it's about the only refined sugar I get through the week also as we use honey for anything else).

So I am curious as to whether others who struggle with mood are drinking coffee.

What I think is happening is that either my adrenals are being drained or my vitamin levels. I say this because I've found that since I've healed from my diet, the last year or so I haven't required daily vitamins. However, if I start to feel 'challenged' from my coffee intake, I have figured out that if I give myself a good dose of B50, zinc and magnesium, then I start to 'pull up' very quickly. It only seems to take a couple of days and then I'm fine.

I'm starting to play with taking the vitamins while drinking the coffee but don't have any results yet to speak of.

Now, I don't want people to think that I think coffee is a bad thing only. I like it on the weekends not just for enjoyment or a treat. I also feel that it helps to 'tidy' my system from any toxins that I may have built up during the week. Nothing scientific about it... just the fact that it seems to 'clean me out' if you know what I mean. And after reading about coffee enemas I think, why not put it in the top and clean out the tubes all the way down? I think the problem is that it cleans out everything and one needs to 'top it up' again re: vitamins, etc.

I do feel very strongly that a lot of my mood issues in the past had to do with malabsorption. So, seeing this type of correlation with too much coffee ingestion is not necessarily surprising to me.

No one is touching my coffee!!!!!!!!!! I have given up so much, I will not give it up! Honest, I do not think coffee is a problem for me. I switched to decaf, just to see how I would react and nothing changed, now I drink half and half. Coffee is my one comfort food and I do use nutrataste, never sugar. I rarely ever use sugar. I never had to give up dairy either, nor did my sister. She has never been a coffee drinker. For a long time, tea bothered me, but never coffee.

They did another thyroid panel and an antibodies test yesterday. The waiting game again!

Caffeine is not the only thing that can affect you adversley in coffee. Decaf coffee still has caffeine in it so that's not really a good test.

Many sugar sub's can wreak havoc with the stomach and liver.

You say that you never had to give up dairy but maybe it is affecting you now. I know that my dd was on goat dairy for 2 years before we started seeing 'suspicious signs'.

I can understand you not wanting to give up coffee but maybe it's time you started thinking about it. I know it's hard to think of giving up something else. I sometimes feel the same way and have to work up to it.

Maybe just cut it out one day of the week at first and replace it with something healthy.

I ended up cutting out coffee for a year ... even though "I didn't react to it." Then when I added it back in (a couple of years ago), I really noticed a difference in how it drained my energy after about 3 days. This is why I now limit it to weekends because even though I didn't think I was reacting to it, it was still obviously not doing me any good to drink it every day. Note: I really love coffee and have found that it has become even more special since I've limited it to weekends. It is a real 'treat' now that I enjoy looking forward to all week long.

I guess it depends how badly you want to find out what's causing you distress. I know that for me, it depends on how uncomfortable I am as to whether I am willing to give stuff up. Sometimes, though there isn't much discomfort, I can work myself toward getting rid of something for a set period of time... like 6 weeks... or something like that.

You have three big offenders that you are ingesting every day. That's lots to figure out... if you only remove one, then you risk not seeing your results if you are also reacting to one of the other two.

Hope you find your answer.

I have to think about this! I am not trying to sound ungrateful, honest, I'm not. There are so few things I have left. Sweetener I can give up. I don't know.

deb...your decaf coffee..is it organacly decaffed..or oil based? i noticed a difference for me. i buy the organic whole beans now. i mix mine...1/2 fully leaded and decaf. oh, do you use milk, cream or the powdered creamers? or neither.

i feel for ya. nope..i'm not giving up my morning cup..or sometimes 2.

Curious, how do you know? I too mix decaf with fully leaded! My columbian decaf is Walmart brand and it says "naturally decaffienated" on the label. I use Folgers most of the time. I never use creamers, always use non fat or 1% milk. I just can't imagine giving up my coffee--it's the one thing I havent given up, that and my peanut butter, which I now use the Skippy Natural peanut butter. I depresses me to even think about giving up my coffee--I might as well give up breathing.

My grandson Scott loves Curious George!

Excessive intake of coffee can seriously deplete INOSITOL --- do some searches on coffee - inositol. Inositol & choline are necessary for brain function, and Acetyl L-Carnitine, first thing in the morning on an empty stomach can increase energy & concentration without the jittery anxious feelings occasionally associated with coffee/caffeine or even with the amino acid tyrosine.

There's lots of info at google for the depletion of inositol by too many daily cups of coffee.