Now you may not believe me, but I have to tell you - I’ve been tired for years, and for years, I’ve been telling my primary care physician how tired I’ve been, and the only response I received was “Well, you’re in college - of course you’re tired!” Yes, I’m a full time student; yes, I work part time; yes, I’m involved on campus - but I take my sleep VERY seriously. Finally, after years of shrugging me off, I was able to meet with an endocrinologist who took my complaints seriously and ran a whole host of blood tests. As it turns out, I’m anemic and severely Vitamin D deficient. 

Why am I sharing this with you? Well, as you may or may not be aware, being gluten intolerant affects more than just your digestion: we are seriously faced with malnutrition and the malabsorption of important vitamins and nutrients. Now I don’t have any kind of medical background and I’m not about to go prescribing remedies, but if you’re gluten-intolerant - especially Celiac - and you’re inexplicably fatigued, you might want to talk to your doctor about testing you for Vitamin D deficiency or anemia. 

I really dislike taking vitamins, but with these recent diagnoses, they’ve become my fourth meal! However, in all seriousness, this has been a real wake-up call for me and I’ve realized that I really need to take charge of my health - even having been told that “everything is fine” if you don’t feel good, you need to keep at it. 

‘Vitamin D Deficiency Soars in the US’ - Scientific American, May 2009
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=vitamin-d-deficiency-united-states

Iron-deficiency Anemia Due To Silent Celiac Sprue  - National Institute of Health, January 2002
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=127632

- Kelsey Ganes, University of Washington student
Please contact me at this link.

ADVERTISEMENT