After watching my wife waste away to almost nothing (~80 lbs) on two separate occasions, unable to eat for six months both times, fed TPN via a PICC line into her heart from a backpack she carried around everywhere, and the specialists still can’t figure it out.
Her gastro specialist simply said that she had avoided gluten so long that the tests for celiac disease would not show anything, but in order for the test to be useful she would need to start eating gluten again. He said that her diet seems to be working for her, so it may be better to let sleeping dogs lie. And I’m fine with that. She has been eating normally since 2013
Although the widespread avoidance of gluten is an insult to science, unlike say, the anti-vax crowd, the benefits have been good. Now Celiacs have a wide variety of gluten free products to choose from. So hypochondriacs, keep it up!
My wife considers herself non-celiac gluten intolerant, and had been eating gluten free for over 7 years. Not a fad for her, she hates to do it, and is well educated and works in medical field. She did take a test for celiac that came up negative, but going off gluten correlated with solving pretty significant gastro intestinal issues, especially severe acid reflux she used to be medicated for. Also, possibly coincidental, after years of infertility and failed treatment of that, after going off gluten she managed to produce two kids.
There are more tests she could take for celiac or gluten sensitivity, but they require eating gluten. So we just make it work.
We do still find the fad anti-gluten dieters very annoying, and often see the only reduce their gluten intake. My wife sometimes tells people she is celiac to avoid the associations.
Uh oh. Is this in any way related to Celiac, though? My mother had Celiac diagnosed by biopsy, and while I don’t have as bad reactions to anything as she does gluten, the lists of what foods aren’t problematic are pretty close to what doesn’t cause me any discomfort. I’m curious because a minor skin condition I have has a risk factor of close relatives with psoriasis which I do have, so clearly some conditions are similar enough to pop up like that.
But anyway, I like the gluten-free nutters. They certainly make it easier for Mom to eat the things they’ve created a market for.
I agree. My husband puts himself on limited carbs and limited dairy every so often because of his IBD. The IBD immediately calms down. If he cheats even a little bit the IBD returns with full force. It’s not pretty.
Ideally, IMO, he should be on a lifelong limited carb/dairy diet. He’d never be able to sustain it over the long term, though.
Yesterday I saw one of the most ridiculous “gluten-free” labels yet - on a bottle of shampoo! Because you sure don’t want to get gluten in your hair!!!
After seeing that, my husband decided that when he has his next engineering design review meeting, he’ll include a slide saying his electronics tray is gluten free.
Damn right you don’t, if you have celiac. Especially if you’re a kid, and likely to swallow some of the rinse water or put your hands in your mouth after handling the shampoo, or get residue from your hair on the hands.
I don’t understand why gluten free shampoo gets so much derision. Gluten is quite commonly in shampoo.
Nope, and it doesn’t address the headaches, skin issues, other things people blame on gluten. It addresses the IBS/IBD/gassiness issues people with non-celiac wheat sensitivity experience. i.e. most people know beans as the musical fruit - cabbage causes gas as well. Most people know that some foods make them gassy - or if not them, they know not to sit next to Uncle Al after he eats sauerkraut. For some people, wheat is on that list. (On the other hand, the body is all interconnected, and as someone who suffers from serious headaches, a night spent in gastrointestinal distress instead of comfortable sleep might be the trigger for the headache.)
What I don’t get is why anyone cares what someone else eats or doesn’t eat. If I think that I feel better not eating wheat, how does that have any affect on your life? Now, I agree that cooking for someone who brings their dietary issues into your home in confrontational or rude manner is annoying, been there done that - but that isn’t the diet, its the person. Most people I know with dietary restrictions (whether its gluten or kosher or vegan) do a pretty good job of taking care of themselves in a polite manner (I’m vegetarian, should I bring my own dish to share?).
I know someone whose child is a holy terror, and the more out of control she gets, the more food the mother eliminates from the child’s diet, because she thinks food = behavior. It couldn’t possibly be because the mother never disciplines or sets limits for the kid. Nope. Must be gluten. The poor kid can’t eat sugar (but she can eat honey, which just shows how ignorant the mother is), dairy, gluten, peanuts, and a couple of other things. The mother also believes in homeopathy.
I predict this kid is going to learn to smuggle Ding-Dongs by age 9, and become extremely skilled at getting all the forbidden foods with the mother none the wiser by age 12 (the kid is actually pretty bright). Having this underground railroad in place with make it very easy for her to use it for drugs when she’s in high school, if she so chooses.
Here’s an alternate theory, just to show how much it might not be the aspartame (I am not claiming this is true, just making an example of an alternate theory): soda (cola, anyway) can interfere with vitamin absorption, and someone eating a diet that is marginal to begin with, then consuming that much cola can end up with a vitamin deficiency. A combination of A and thiamine deficiency could result in the kind of vision loss you describe, but it would be fixable if it hadn’t gone on too long.
If this was a teenager, well, they are notorious for bad diets, and it’s also possible she wasn’t eating enough on purpose because she was trying to lose weight, and was deliberately filling up on diet soda to keep from feeling hungry.
I have no knowledge of the situation, and this could be totally wrong, but it’s more likely, IMO, than “Aspartame is evil!”
