Doctor Says "You're Not Alergic, But Don't Eat Gluten..."
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It's very strange that people have been eating Wheat and Gluten products for thousands of years and only in the past 10 years or so has everyone and there dog suddenly become intolerant.
Great point. I always tell people to try making their own bread before they cut it out. Most of them come back to me and say that they're fine when they make the bread themselves but not when they buy it...I can't give a causal explanation but it's interesting stuff...unless of course you are a celiac sufferer, in which case it wouldn't help.
This happened to me. Commercial bread made me incredibly ill after eating occasionally. As a test I baked my own, ate it like it was going out of fashion and I was fine. Interestingly I've now moved countries, and the bread here is made from different grains and I'm still fine. Maybe I'm just allergic to crappy white British bread
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Celiac is NOT an allergy. It's an auto immune disorder. People who don't have Celiac can still be allergic to wheat, gluten, corn, rice, any number of cereal grains or their ingredients. Then there's the issue of "sensitivity", which for some reason is listed as different than an allergy. Not sure why.
It's perfectly within the realm of possibility that you DO NOT have Celiac but you DO have an allergy or sensitivity. Also, I've known people with Celiac who've taken the test multiple times before it came back positive. The tests are difficult to administer properly and are often administered by people who just don't know what they're doing. Or for that matter don't even realize exactly what Celiac is. To some people this doesn't matter, as long as they know to avoid gluten. To others they want to absolutely know for sure if they have Celiac, allergy, or sensitivity.
I wish you well giving up gluten. It's tricky, for sure. 2 of our 3 daughters had gluten sensitivity that became so severe that when we finally figured out what it was, it wasn't JUST the gluten anymore. We had to give up almost all cereal grains, along with some other foods that were helping with their GI irritation. Eventually, when their bodies healed enough, we were able to re-introduce all foods but gluten. Now, we're JUST gluten free. Which is a challenge, but much better than being cereal grain free, for sure.0 -
I had the same kind of question. While I've not been tested for a gluten allergy, I inadvertently went gluten-free while trying a new diet and felt so much better! I was a night/day difference. I can have some gluten, but I can definitely tell when I've had too much.
I don't know the exact reason why so many health issues are popping up these days vs yesteryear. It seems there's a lot more flu/cold epidemics, cancer at younger ages, more heart disease, more of all kinds of food/medicine intolerance... of course, that's just one girl's opinion.
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One cause for concern is that if you had a test for coeliacs and it has come back negative and a then Nurse told you the negative result means you are not allergic to gluten. Coeliacs is not a gluten intolerance or allergy but an auto immune issue and having the test will only prove you dont have coeliacs not that you are allergic to wheat or gluten. I' have got coeliacs and if I took an allergy test would probably get a negative reaction. If I had a nurse tell me this I would go back and ask for someone who actually knows what they are talking about.
I agree that cutting out gluten can sometimes be beneficial to those who have problems with their joints
I agree with this. A few years back I was suffering from severe depression, lethargy (sleeping in until 10 am, when I went to bed at a normal time), clumsiness, and brain fog. Not to mention either running to the bathroom in a hurry or being backed up six ways to Sunday. After reading about gluten intolerance I eliminated gluten for a week. Within a week I was sleeping normally, waking up with energy, and going to the bathroom normally as well. I went back on gluten and felt like crap--either vomiting after meals or falling asleep into a coma-like state-- but I wanted to get blood tests for celiac. They came back negative, but my doctor advised me that 1) 20% of celiacs have false negatives on blood tests, and 2) that obviously cutting gluten out made me feel better. I could have gone for an endoscopy, but money was an issue. My doctor said, "You are really your best laboratory and evidence; if what you're doing is making you feel better, then do it.
Gluten intolerance is a spectrum. There is celiac and then there are people who have intolerances without the autoimmune reaction. And it is not an allergy; I have allergies to several foods and those reactions are very different from my gluten intolerance.
TL: DR; if gluten makes you feel like crap, don't eat it. You may not be allergic, but you may have an intolerance.0 -
It might help to remember that there is a difference between coeliac disease (an autoimmune disorder that affects the gut and is triggered by gluten), wheat allergy (an allergy to the proteins in wheat that can provoke allergy symptoms like sneezing, hives, breathlessness, swelling, rash etc), and irritable bowel syndrome, which some people find is made worse by ingesting certain foods and which is affected by lots of things including stress levels.
If you find you can eat rye with no problems but wheat is a problem, it's not gluten intolerance, it's more likely wheat allergy or IBS.
Many people try a gluten-free diet to lose weight only (I'm not suggesting you are, but as some people have discussed, this is a bit of a trend), but if they do lose weight it's *NOT* because gluten makes you "fat". Actually, it's just damn hard to eat a lot of unhealthy food if you're avoiding gluten as you've instantly wiped out pizzas and big sandwiches and burgers and cake and all that kid of stuff. What's more, people with coeliac disease tend to *gain* weight on a gluten-free diet, as when they eat gluten they're not absorbing the calories and nutrients very efficiently, as their gut will react - so when they eat gluten-free alternatives they are suddenly able to "use" all the calories they're getting.
If you've had a blood test and it said you were not coeliac, you're probably not but it doesn't really matter in practical terrms. If YOU feel better without gluten in your diet, then don't eat gluten. You can always try to eat tiny amounts of gluten at some future point to see if you get symptoms returning - if within hours of eating gluten you get sharp, gripping pains, diarrhoea etc, you know not to eat it again. It's worth steeling yourself to try that, otherwise you won't know if you get symptoms from the gluten or from IBS. You can avoid gluten, but IBS management is a bit more complex.0 -
I had the same kind of question. While I've not been tested for a gluten allergy, I inadvertently went gluten-free while trying a new diet and felt so much better! I was a night/day difference. I can have some gluten, but I can definitely tell when I've had too much.
I don't know the exact reason why so many health issues are popping up these days vs yesteryear. It seems there's a lot more flu/cold epidemics, cancer at younger ages, more heart disease, more of all kinds of food/medicine intolerance... of course, that's just one girl's opinion.
I am the same as this. I am not diagnosed with anything, but when I started to minimise the gluten/wheat in my diet I felt a million times better. I havent cut it out completely, but I do limit the amount I have, as I know if I have too much for too long I feel run down, achey joints, runny nose. But the odd slice of bread or cheat meal of pizza is a nice treat.
Try cutting down, see how you feel. Start to introduce it back in, track how you feel 2 hours after you have eaten the gluten product, and just gauge it from there.
Good luck :-)0 -
He is a rheumatologist not a dietician. Any doctor who advises a restrictive diet like this without cause needs to go brush up on their nutrition skills.
It annoys me when I see that doctors have said this sort of thing. I have a sister with Celiac Disease and know how hard it is for her to maintain that diet while getting essential nutrients. I have also given nutrition education to trainee doctors and where I come from they get a total of 20 hours of nutrition instruction during all their medical training. Most of them are 18 and don't even bother listening because nutrition is seen as the easy subject in comparison to all the rest of the stuff they have to learn... and knowing the effort they put into learning about nutrition I would never take nutrition advice from a doctor unless I knew they really had done their research.
Don't forget, doctors are just as susceptible to all fads as any other member of the population, and in my opinion they let that overrule good medical practice in some cases.
Unless you react to gluten don't go on a gluten-free diet. And if you do have a medical reason not to eat it (even if you don't have Celiac) please get the help of a dietician rather than trying to do it on your own.
Gluten intolerance and inflammation is being studied within the rheumatology field as it relates to treatment of RA and other rheumatological disorders. Not a lot is known about it right now.
I'm certainly not a doctor, and of course doctors don't know everything, but I'm willing to give the benefit in this circumstance. Cutting out gluten isn't exactly harmful to someone. (well, it might be emotionally scarring to never eat good bread again)
A dietitian is likely to help a person with setting up a diet to make them lose weight, feel better, etc., but dietitians aren't immunologists. Some rheumatologists are immunologists or work closely with them.0 -
For hundreds of years people ate bread and "didn't have a problem" - I hear that a lot. I ate gluten for most of my life, and the doctors say I'm fine. But after my Aunt was diagnosed with Celiacs and talked about what a difference GF made in her life, I started to think about some of my other issues and out of curiosity one day I decided to try GF for a a couple months, just to see. Now I have been diagnosed as having IBS, and I USED to have quite a few flair ups. Before I tried to go GF I switched to making my own bread and making my own Peanut Butter, and this actually helped a litlte (regular peanut butter recently had started to make me very ill, and I love to bake so I make my own bread). I went GF and a miracle occurred: the constant bloating and stomach pain from my "IBS" went away. 2 years later and everything that used to cause an "IBS Flairup" causes me NO PAIN.
Everyone reacts to things differently. I Could have gone on eating like I was and probably been fine, but would have constantly treated my IBS. Going without gluten fixed that problem and more so. I treat it as a mild intolerance, not celiacs. We don't buy things with wheat in it (like canned soups that have added wheat, we make sure to buy the Progresso versions that don't have added wheat), but it isn't so bad that if my husband wants to eat regular bread he can't. He eats regular bread, I eat gluten free. I still get plenty of nutrition and eat healthy, I just use less bread products (because GF stuff is expensive) and I make my own recipes and I don't eat "box meals". If anything going GF forced me to eat healthier. And, because baking my own GF bread is a lot more work than baking my own regular bread, it also means I don't bake a loaf of bread and then eat half of it right out of the oven.
My point? People don't realize what little things may actually be affecting them until they stop eating it. No one even THOUGHT I could have an intolerance, but gluten was hard on me. At least, that is what I assume the problem was because cutting it out made me feel better.
Does this mean when I go to restaurants and ask for the GF menu I have to deal with people who think I'm just on the "fad" of "weightloss"? Yes... Does it suck? Yes..... but do I feel better anyway? YES!
Do what makes you feel better. If that means cutting out gluten, then do it. Just make sure to get all the nutrients you need. Which, seriously, isn't all that hard. Especially if you don't have Celiacs and just an intolerance - it means that a little cross contamination here and there isn't going to make you as drastically ill as those with Celiacs.0 -
It's very strange that people have been eating Wheat and Gluten products for thousands of years and only in the past 10 years or so has everyone and there dog suddenly become intolerant.
In the last 10 years there has been more medical focus on the issue, but most importantly it is now much cheaper to do the specific blood analysis that is required to diagnose it. This has increased the number of people diagnosed and then following a gluten-free diet for medical reasons, and that has also increased the number of people who are voluntarily eradicating gluten from their diets.0 -
He is a rheumatologist not a dietician. Any doctor who advises a restrictive diet like this without cause needs to go brush up on their nutrition skills.
That's a pretty ignorant thing to say. The rheumatologist obviously had a reason for telling the OP to avoid gluten. All physicians know that most blood tests have significant false positive and false negative rates. It is possible to make a diagnosis based on history and/or clinical findings.0 -
Going Gluten free is a fad and eventually people will figure out Gluten is not the devil it is made out to be. I have a friend who is Gluten free because she has MS. I know other people that go Gluten free because it is the in thing to do right now I'm of the mindset that if it bothers you don't eat it and if it doesn't then don't bother with over priced foods. 0
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It's very strange that people have been eating Wheat and Gluten products for thousands of years and only in the past 10 years or so has everyone and there dog suddenly become intolerant.
Funny you say that...my dog is allergic to wheat. Never would have imagined.
Feeding vegetables to a carnovore is inefficient at best, and fairly damaging, but profitable.
Actually dogs are omnivorous carnivores and can digest carbs easier than say cats who are stricter carnivores.
As for the increase in intolerance's/allergies I think there have been studies showing a correlation with GM, processed chemical and insecticide increase.0 -
He is a rheumatologist not a dietician. Any doctor who advises a restrictive diet like this without cause needs to go brush up on their nutrition skills.
It annoys me when I see that doctors have said this sort of thing. I have a sister with Celiac Disease and know how hard it is for her to maintain that diet while getting essential nutrients. I have also given nutrition education to trainee doctors and where I come from they get a total of 20 hours of nutrition instruction during all their medical training. Most of them are 18 and don't even bother listening because nutrition is seen as the easy subject in comparison to all the rest of the stuff they have to learn... and knowing the effort they put into learning about nutrition I would never take nutrition advice from a doctor unless I knew they really had done their research.
Don't forget, doctors are just as susceptible to all fads as any other member of the population, and in my opinion they let that overrule good medical practice in some cases.
Unless you react to gluten don't go on a gluten-free diet. And if you do have a medical reason not to eat it (even if you don't have Celiac) please get the help of a dietician rather than trying to do it on your own.
Gluten intolerance and inflammation is being studied within the rheumatology field as it relates to treatment of RA and other rheumatological disorders. Not a lot is known about it right now.
I'm certainly not a doctor, and of course doctors don't know everything, but I'm willing to give the benefit in this circumstance. Cutting out gluten isn't exactly harmful to someone. (well, it might be emotionally scarring to never eat good bread again)
A dietitian is likely to help a person with setting up a diet to make them lose weight, feel better, etc., but dietitians aren't immunologists. Some rheumatologists are immunologists or work closely with them.
From a nutritional point of view it is harmful to eradicate entire food groups from the diet for no medical reason, without ensuring that that patient is capable of going out on their own and achieving that diet. People following strict gluten-free diets often struggle to get sufficient amounts of all essential amino acids if they are not eating a varied diet that can compensate for the foods they cannot eat any more. Dieticians are not doctors but their work goes far beyond just weight loss, there are many who work closely with people with medical conditions that prevent them from being able to eat what they want.
Dieticians certainly aren't immunologists, and don't have the knowledge to try to treat someone with immunological problems in a medical way. In the same way most doctors do not have the specialist knowledge to plan an appropriate diet for someone with a medical condition. This is why doctors frequently refer patients to dieticians if they have issues that require special diets, and dieticians refer patients to doctors if they suspect there is a medical issue that needs to be dealt with.
If the rheumatologist had a reason to advise the patient to cut out gluten they should have ensured that that patient a) knew why and b) was supported to still be able to achieve a nutritionally adequate diet (e.g. get someone involved who can work with the patient to achieve such a diet).0 -
It's very strange that people have been eating Wheat and Gluten products for thousands of years and only in the past 10 years or so has everyone and there dog suddenly become intolerant.
The wheat we eat today is a farrrrrrr cry from the wheat our ancestors ate even a few hundred years ago. breeding practices and other twiddling has made todays farmed wheat about as close to stuff from a few hundred years ago as a pug is to a wolf. Barely recognizable as having come from the same ancestor.
Also, since everyone grew or hunted their own meat and vegetables, something like wheat bread, made from store-bought flour, was a treat, not 50-80% of their caloric intake, as it is in our wheat based diet today.0 -
My doctor said, "You are really your best laboratory and evidence; if what you're doing is making you feel better, then do it.
You actually have a doctor who is listening to you and discussing your health. That is always a positive thing. Many today just seem to, in my experience, talk at you about your health and do not listen to your concerns.
Whether you are allergic to something or not. If you feel better not eating, taking, or doing it. This is ultimately your decision. I try to believe in the inherent good of some people. They are always trying to make sure that others in these forums are not harming themselves or putting their long term goals of health in jeopardy. You will meet many people and get responses from many sides of the equation. It is, like the doctor above said, your body and you are the best evidence. I personally love bread and coffee however both make me overall miserable when ingested. I have learned that I just enjoy the taste of coffee, not so much the caffiene, and am happy with decaf. With bread the gluten free sandwich thins are satisfactory and I feel less bloaty and tired afterward. On a side note I also realized I can drink a quart of half&half and feel incredible during a workout. Cheese and whole milk made me feel lethargic. Almond milk was an ok substitute. I recently tried, and still have some, coconut milk. I felt empty and ravenous afterward. Yet, half & half , heavy cream, and full fat milk from the dairy farm nearby make me feel awake, alive, powerful and less sore. I have no explanation as to why. But right now. I like that feeling.
So I will enjoy my glass of cream when I workout.
Indeed we are our best laboratory. Do what makes you feel best. Doing things that make you feel negative will just make you unhappy and feel like giving up. Yet if the changes make you feel positive you will continue on your goal towards health.0 -
It's very strange that people have been eating Wheat and Gluten products for thousands of years and only in the past 10 years or so has everyone and there dog suddenly become intolerant.
Funny you say that...my dog is allergic to wheat. Never would have imagined.
Feeding vegetables to a carnovore is inefficient at best, and fairly damaging, but profitable.
Actually dogs are omnivorous carnivores and can digest carbs easier than say cats who are stricter carnivores.
As for the increase in intolerance's/allergies I think there have been studies showing a correlation with GM, processed chemical and insecticide increase.
No, dogs are carnivores, not omnivores. A carnovore does not become an omnivore because you can feed it vegetation and it does not die. Canis lupus familiaris is a carnivore and a subspecies of Canis lupus, also a carnivore.
Cats are obligate carnivores, so they lack the ability to synthesize some essential nutrients from vegetation matter, and so rely on animal protein for these. The most well known issue is taurine. Commercially manufactured cat chow which includes vegetation has taurine added artificially. There are even "vegetarian" chows with added synthetic taurine.
None of that changes the nature of the animal, nor is it healthy to feed an animal an improper diet. It's no more healthy than artificially increasting an element in the human diet and expecting no net change.0 -
OP, in regards to the weight loss and how you felt after removing gluten, how much gluten containing foods were you eating before? What did your diet mainly consist of?0
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You don't have to defend your choice. You are free to make your own choice for any reason you choose. And i there are consequences you are also free to experience them..
If you feel bad after eating gluten don't eat it. You could just be sensitive.
My favorite tasting crackers are gluten free, Interestingly enough.. they don't sit well in my tummy, so I don't eat them unless I go somewhere and they are staring at me demanding to get in my belly.0 -
Celiac or Coeliac diseas is NOT an auto-immune disease. It causes an immune response.0
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...If the rheumatologist had a reason to advise the patient to cut out gluten they should have ensured that that patient a) knew why and b) was supported to still be able to achieve a nutritionally adequate diet (e.g. get someone involved who can work with the patient to achieve such a diet).
I totally agree. I made an appointment with a new rheumatologist to replace my follow-up with this guy because I'm very unhappy with him. Even if he IS right about the things he says that I'm not so sure about, he doesn't adequately explain anything and his nurses make me think nursing school must be pretty easy because the one I talk to doesn't seem to understand how to explain anything. I don't mean to be mean it's just true.
I will however for the most part avoid gluten in my diet and eat more anti-inflammatory foods because really, I prefer lifestyle changes over more drugs. And really I'm not going to complain if it happens to help me lose weight 0
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