2 weeks wheat free!

PeachyCarol

thorsmom01 wrote: »

Candidalagasse wrote: »

My husband got diagnosed with celiac by a stomach biopsy when he was 18 months old in 1978- two of our kids tested postitive when they were 2 and 1 (now 7 and 4) It upsets me when people say that they are "gluten free" or self diagnosed- since I would give anything for them to be "normal" and included in things such as school hot lunch days and BBQs.

Exactly. My friend @PeachyCarol is celiac and I bet she feels more then just "icky" when exposed to her allergen.

Trust me, you wouldn't want to be around me when I'm exposed to gluten. It's not safe.

It's fine to have concerns raised by self-diagnosis ... if you follow them up by going to a doctor. That's how my celiac was diagnosed. I actually suspected I had it and pursued a medical diagnosis and had it confirmed with a biopsy 18 years ago.

The funny thing is that it was suspected by a previous doctor that I had it, but he never tested for it because I didn't have all the symptoms yet (I didn't have joint pain).

I'm of two minds about people who self-diagnose. Part of me feels a big heap of ... whatever. You don't want to eat wheat, don't eat wheat. But wheat's not the only grain with gluten, mind. Whatever floats your boat. The popularity of going gluten free as a trend makes it easier to get gluten free products, even though some unscrupulous people don't take avoiding gluten contamination in food processing seriously enough and there have been incidents where people with celiac disease have experienced "glutening" from supposedly gluten-free items obtained from such people.

And that's where the other part of my reaction to self-diagnosis comes in. The prevalance of self-diagnosis has lead to a healthy dose of skepticism in some circles of the general public in reaction to people asking to have their request for gluten-free products met. This crosses the line and conflicts with the needs of people with diagnosed celiac disease and true wheat allergies and is problematic.

PeachyCarol

Blueseraphchaos wrote: »

My husband noticed he was vomiting after every meal that included gluten. He quit eating it and stopped. He can eat tiny amounts and be all right but otherwise, no.

We haven't bothered with celiac testing because what we've done works...if it works, do it. Good thing i guess that i naturally dislike bread and all that.

Oatmeal is gluten-free, though, as long as you find one made in a factory that doesn't also make other stuff. So if you aren't celiac, you can probably handle gluten. But get tested if you think you are and you think you can't avoid gluten for the rest of your life.

It's not just the factory you need to worry about with oats. You need to find oats grown on dedicated fields. Oats are grown as rotation crops with gluten-containing grains, typically. There can be volunteers from prior year's harvest in with oat harvests.

actualbears

Sorry if it's been mentioned already, but my sister gets sick when she eats any kind of wheat, and milk too. At first we thought she was intolerant of lactose/gluten, but after some digging we found out both of those have traces of penicillin in them, which my sister is VERY allergic to. Avoiding those foods hasn't necessarily made her lose weight, but it has definitely given her more energy and she doesn't feel so sick!

Blueseraphchaos

PeachyCarol wrote: »

Blueseraphchaos wrote: »

My husband noticed he was vomiting after every meal that included gluten. He quit eating it and stopped. He can eat tiny amounts and be all right but otherwise, no.

We haven't bothered with celiac testing because what we've done works...if it works, do it. Good thing i guess that i naturally dislike bread and all that.

Oatmeal is gluten-free, though, as long as you find one made in a factory that doesn't also make other stuff. So if you aren't celiac, you can probably handle gluten. But get tested if you think you are and you think you can't avoid gluten for the rest of your life.

It's not just the factory you need to worry about with oats. You need to find oats grown on dedicated fields. Oats are grown as rotation crops with gluten-containing grains, typically. There can be volunteers from prior year's harvest in with oat harvests.

That is good to know. Thanks for that info. My husband hasn't bothered getting tested for celiac because, like i said, what we've done has made him feel better, but also because of the mass amount of drs visits in the last year because of his diagnosis of a deadly heart condition and subsequent surgery to implant a defibrillator. I think the idea of seeing a doctor and getting a firm diagnosis of yet another terrible disease terrifies him, at this point. So we've done our best to avoid gluten because i know celiac is actually an autoimmune disease that has effects that can't be seen right away...never realized that oats could be contaminated right from the start....

And who knows, he may not have it all, but better safe than sorry. We try not to tell anyone that he is gluten-free just because of the perception that gets associated with it. I feel bad for people who truly need to be gluten-free that then get told "it's just a fad, it doesn't matter anyway"

Jiveli85

I am completely sure that going wheat free cured my endometriosis.