Duh... beer!

Duh. Duh. Duh.

So of course I know that beer is made from wheat and has gluten. Of course, for the most part of my gluten-free life (all of 6 months) I have been thoroughly excluding beer from my diet... but a few times over the past month I have had a few... and because I have had breakouts very closely tied to those times ... well, you all know where I'm going with this.

It's not that I didn't think that gluten was a bad thing... it's just that I didn't really tie it into the whole auto-immune thing too much... but my head must be up somewhere... because gluten proteins (oh, and grains!) are one of the biggest contenders for leaky gut out there. They are high up there on the "avoid at all costs" list.

What was I thinking?

Well, I'll tell you what I was thinking... I was being social. I was thinking that it would be nice to sit back and relax and have a beer with my friends (round one of beer since going gluten free, 3 or 4 12-oz. May 27th - breakout May 28th) and also to sit in my backyard after a day of running around and doing errands and share some talk and a beer with my neighbor (round two of beer since going gluten free, two 16-oz. June 15th - breakout June 16th) and then the final one, again having a beer with my neighbor after some pretty heafty yardwork (round three of beer since going gluten free, 1 16-oz. June 22). Today is June 23rd... we'll see how much more I break out... I'm still trying to heal from last week's breakout... multiple locations and multiple intensity of pain/soreness/discoloration.

And, I gotta say... when I go all "glutenized", I don't just stop at beer. Back in May, not only did I have that beer, but I had crab cakes which had some sort of bread in them... then the next day I had pasta! PASTA! Like I said in my previous post - classic Peg. Last week when I had the beer it was because I had already had a breakout going on (not a horrific one, but nontheless) and I thought ... oh yeah, you saw that coming didn't you... classic Peg.

So, I will need to heed to my body's wellness first and foremost. Have a glass of wine - not great but better for me than the gluten and grains. I can still be social, I just have to learn that I can say "no thank you" and still participate in the conversation... have a glass of wine, a glass of water, a coconut water... anything but the damn beer!!!!!!!!!!!!!