Good luck to you Hoopla. It’s difficult at first but then it becomes almost second nature.
I don’t have Celiac’s either but am still gluten-sensitive. The nutritionist thinks it has more to do with yeast than gluten but I steer clear just because it is easier to follow the rule rather than guess and guess wrong.
Welcome to the club, hoopla. Have you noticed any difference in the way you feel since going gluten-free?
I actually didn’t notice a difference until I slipped up and ate some gluten. Then I realized how bad gluten made me feel. I’m one of the “lucky” people who has a big reaction. It keeps me from being temped to eat the wrong thing.
I have slipped back into old ways a couple of times because the food was tempting. I get a minor gut ache that is easy to ignore. But suddenly one morning, I had a huge backache. A backache the doc and I used to attribute to my scoliosis. No, it’s my gut complaining about the wrong food that it is trying to digest.
Staying away from gluten cured me of chronic back pain. That makes it worth my while to steer clear from the sammies and pasta right there.
You don’t eat the same things every day; the coeliacs I know would have “intermitent troubles” which miraculously went away once they got diagnosed. From thinking “I just have a weak tummy” to “ohmygod, all I had to do was avoid a handful of things!”
It’s more than a handful because so many things carry wheat flour, but still a lot easier than IBS. My mother was misdiagnosed with IBS for years* and the diet was a complete pain in the ass for everybody.
I’ve known coealiacs who dealt with it quite easily; families and friends of coeliacs who more often than not manage to prepare the same meal for everybody (rather than rice noodles for the coeliac and regular ones for the rest); and had a boss who made of it a much bigger deal that it had to be. Instead of saying “I can’t have sauces thickened with flour” she’d say “oh my god, I can not have any sauces! :smack:<— angsty smiley”; she was stunned to find out that most sauces do not, in fact and if cooked properly, have flour (they should be thickened by letting them simmer in a pot that’s not covered tightly, not by adding flour). I’m no baker, but the few things I know how to bake use maize flour: no need to bake two different cakes and track which one is which. Some ingredients are cheaper than the “regular” ones, so my take on those is to use the cheaper kind which everybody can have, rather than the more expensive one that some people have troubles with.
The worst problem is food prepared outside the house, which applies to any dietary constrains.
Do try to go gluten-free for a while anyway, despite the negative test. I may not be allergic to cod or mustard (apparently it’s not a histaminic process), but eating cod or mustard leaves me unable to breathe, so fuck histamines if you know what I mean. There are many food-related issues for which the best diagnostic tool is eliminating the culprit from the diet.
I’ve been eating gluten-free for almost two years now. Grain-free, really–rhubarbarin and I have very similar diets. It’s worth a shot to try–my gastrointestinal issues have cleared up almost entirely, provided I’m careful about what I eat. If I’m not careful and inadvertently eat something bad, whoa Nelly.
I also have a ton of great recipes for substitutes, including a pizza crust that is out of this world.
As I said upthread, I tested negative for celiac, though the two times I’ve been back to the doctor since she’s said that she suspects celiac and I have to point out that I’ve had the blood test.
I decided, on a lark after a brutal week of IBS problems that I would try dropping gluten and seeing what happened. I started on Sunday afternoon.
A couple of things seem important:
I’m in a very low-stress period of my life right now. I’m off work for a couple of weeks and don’t go back to school until the end of August.
I’m off birth control for the first time in a few years and have been for about a month, though my initial flare up of IBS was over 5 years ago and I was off BCP for about six months a few years back and the IBS didn’t go away. Still, I’m older now and hormonally probably a bit wacky.
I am the most suggestible person in the history of people. Double-blind studies were invented for people like me.
Those things being said, I’ve tried getting rid of all gluten and otherwise eating whatever looked good, including stuff I can’t generally eat (like onions, peppers, vegetables, and Zankou Chicken’s amazing garlic paste).
And I’ve been fine. No IBS flare ups. I don’t generally go this long between, especially not with the irritants I’ve been eating.
So, I’m going to stay on it for a while longer, then I’m going to go back off it and see what happens. Then I’m going to go to a gut doctor and see what happens there.
I had broccoli and cauliflower today. I just had salsa for the first time in years (other than just a tiny taste). I don’t normally get to eat these things, so if this is a placebo, it’s my favorite placebo ever. (I am definitely not ruling out placebo!)
Right, but remember what I posted way back then - the reason I don’t put my daughter back on gluten to have her tested is that the tests we currently have for gluten intolerance and Celiac disease are notoriously high in false negatives.
You say placebo, I say enjoy the greater range of foods you can suddenly enjoy when you cut out gluten. If we could bottle that effect, you’d take it as a pill to get rid of your IBS, right? So enjoy it for free! 
I am sure I’d test negative for Celiac, but I’m definitely gluten-sensitive. Since I cut it out of my diet, my digestion has been much, much better, and my skin has improved immensely. Also lost a lot of weight, but even if that went away, I’d keep the gluten-free diet. Cutting out wheat is hard at first, but once you’re used to it, it’s not a big deal at all. The last time I splurged and ate a regular brownie (Easter?) I felt like crap for a week and my skin broke out like crazy. That kind of reaction will make you think twice about eating “just this one thing.”
I started this diet reluctantly, but my health and body have improved SO much since I did 1.5 years ago I’d never consider eating “normally” again. I hope you have the same excellent results. Definitely give it an honest try–a full month, at least. Good luck!
CD is affecting my life because my son’s school lunch menu now how has a lot of ‘gluten-free’ options on it. Cute, but who the F wants to eat gluten-free grilled cheese? I think school lunches are bad for you anyway but it was supposed to be a “treat” for one day a week this year. Except…looking at the menu, he decided against it. Soy, gluten-free, sometimes dairy-free barfity barfness.
Some kids ruin all the fun.
(Yes, there was a wheat bread option, but the whole menu was a bad-for-you bore.)
For every wheat option, there’s a GF one. That’s great for the GF kids but I feel like ‘GF’ is usually paired with words like “organic”, “soy”, “natural” or other so-called “healthy” overpriced foods. I digress…sorry. His whole school menu is expensive and boasts things like soy chicken nuggets, bagels (HAH!), GF-breads, vegetable soups that are probably four days’ worth of salt content, and of COURSE the chocolate milk and cookie. I’m pretty sure those lunches average 2,000 calories a pop.
I personally feel like crap after eating wheat products but do it anyway because I’m addicted.
Again, sorry. Nothing pisses me off more than marketing ploys, and I happen to HATE GF manufactured foods. Udi’s is disgusting. I don’t care if it’s made down the street. They often sponsor stuff around here and people are like, “Ooh! Udi’s! I’m so trendy. Look at me choke down this granola.”
Isn’t a gastroscopy the definitive test? A physical examination of the state of the villi and what not. I had one that led to my diagnosis of coeliac disease, and then another after six months of GF, showing the recovery of the villi.
Yes. And since I am negative in the blood test, that shouldn’t be necessary to rule out celiac. As WhyNot says, the blood tests aren’t infallible, though.
If you are undergoing chemo or radiation, you may suffer symptoms similar to celiac per my friend’s oncologist. He’s got her on a gluten-free diet until two months after she finishes her chemo therapy. I’m curious to know how this works, but she was unable to explain it to me.
My fiancee isn’t a Celiac but she has been put on a gluten, dairy, soya and legume free diet for another reason by her doctors. It’s actually not that bad once you get used to it: most supermarkets these days carry various types of flours for gluten free diets, all have large sections dedicated to various dietary restrictions and nearly every restaurant will accommodate her by changing various ingredients around.
One thing though: the bread that you can buy in supermarkets is terrible. Gluten free bread full-stop is extremely hard to get right. My fiancee’s mum is a chef and she’s spent the last year trying to perfect a loaf that isn’t like a brick or like a savoury cake. If you do switch to gluten free make sure you get a bread maker and make the bread yourself.
Capt. she can just skip the bread altogether, which is mainly what I do.
Yes, I miss sandwiches (I pretty much use GF bread for toast only), but there’s lots of other options for lunch and I don’t really need all those carbs anyway when I can replace them with a sunny broccoli salad or soup and GF crackers.
I had the gastroscopy about 10 years ago, tested positive, and have been mostly gluten-free since then. I say “mostly” because, try as I might, there are situations where it’s pretty hard to be sure. My symptoms haven’t come back and my blood tests are fine so I’m not angsting about it.
Going gluten-free was tough at first. Nowadays it’s a lot easier; every supermarket I’ve been to, for years now, has had a gluten-free section. It’s more expensive, though; usually about twice as much or more. Quite a few choices for GF bread and pasta, and some brands are pretty good. Some pizza chains do GF pizzas. For some reason, GF pies are harder to find.
Biggest remaining problems:
[ul]
[li]Lunch at work. If I don’t bring my lunch in from home, my choices at local cafes and whatnot are pretty limited.[/li][li]Social gatherings (e.g. work functions). Usually there’s some fruit; otherwise, I generally have to go without.[/li][li]Travelling. It isn’t impossible to find gluten-free food at foreign restaurants, but if they speak a different language then it’s more complex, to say the least.[/li][/ul]