There is an entire Gluten Free restaurant in Manhattan. There was just a review for it in the NY Times a few weeks ago.... Italian themed and they offer everything on the menu in wheat/ gluten free option as well. Starts with a P - I'm sure if you do a search for gluten free italian restaurant in NYC it'll come up.

Whole Foods @ Union SQ is a staple for me as well - pricey but you can get stuff like bagels, pizza crust, beer, pastries, etc.

Hi Henry -

Sorry you're going through this. I know how much is sucks. The food definitely makes a huge difference! I mostly followed this diet for 2 months, and saw a huge difference within a *week*.

from www.diagnose-me.com/cond/C7890.html
Suggested diets are a variation on these basics:

* Avoid sugars. Some doctors strongly recommend you cannot have ANY sugar or grains at all on a program and should also eliminate all fruit until the symptoms resolve. Others are less strict and suggest avoiding foods high in simple carbohydrates such as refined sugars (sucrose, fructose, corn syrup), fruit juices, honey, and maple syrup. Limit intake of high carbohydrate vegetables such as potatoes, corn, yams, and parsnips. How strict you need to be will have to be discovered.
* Avoid foods with a high content of yeast or mold including alcoholic beverages, cheeses, dried fruits, melons, and peanuts.
* Avoid milk and milk products with a high content of lactose.
* Avoid all known or suspected allergic foods.

Foods that can be eaten freely include all vegetables, protein sources (legumes, fish, poultry, and meat), and whole grains. Two to three one-cup servings of the following fruit can be eaten per day as well: apples, blueberries, cherries, other berries, and pears.
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I'm also vegan, so this put me on an extremely limited diet. Lots of beans and brown rice or quinoa, lots of veggies, some soy, and not a lot else. But it was really worth it! You can find things like wheat-free tamari (San-J makes one that's pretty widely available) so you're not giving up everything you love. I'd cool it for now on the wheat-free bread products, as they tend to have a lot of refined carbs in them (potato flours and corn starch, just for a start). If there's a Trader Joe's near you, they have a good line of brown rice pastas that don't turn to mush when you cook them.

My experience is that eating out is pretty tough through this. But I'll leave it to folks closer to your home to make suggestions. If you eat meat and eggs, I imagine you'll have an easier time than I did.

I'm not familiar with either of the probiotics you've tried. The two that have worked well for me are one of the liquid ones (can't remember the name) in a brown glass bottle in the refrigerated section of health food stores with a nature scene on the background that comes in a blueberry flavor and I think has nature and/or life in the name and one called HLC from a company called Pharmax (my doc has me on this, they have both a heavy duty and a maintenance weight pill).

Good luck!