New To This

[SusanT]

Hi everyone --

Daughter, 17, has felt lousy and lousier since roughly the start of school in September. Thought it was "just" junior year anxieties with a high achieving kid but it got to be too incompatible with her personality. It finally occurred to one of us that she was experiencing many gluten-sensitive/celiac-type symptoms -- bad gastro-intestinal, relentless depression, weight loss, migraine, pallor, super fatigue. So she's trying to go gluten-free and is seeing results after just a week. Since we're so new at this, we've already glutinated her once by accident and maybe a second time yesterday. She bought choc. covered almonds with the following ingredients listed:

Milk chocolate (evaporated cane juice, cocoa butter, unsweetened chocolate, whole milk powder, soy lecithin, natural vanilla), almonds, pure food glaze.

So let me guess and then you experts tell me if I'm suspecting the most likely things -- the whole milk powder and/or the food glaze?

She's super on-the-go, a competitive gymnast with honors classes pretty much across the board. She's not a complainer and she's willing to take time to pull food together that won't make her sick. But, if anyone out there has late teens who need speedy food fixes now and then and can pass good Gluten-free ideas along, we would be very grateful.

Finally (really!), can we just assume that since Gluten-free eating seems to work we can just go on with that, or is there a really good reason to get tested anyway? It sounds like she may have to get sick again to be tested accurately and she really isn't interested in that!

Thank you for any help you can give --

Susan

[RiceGuy]

Welcome to the board, and congratulations on figuring out your daughter's health problems.

It sounds to me like you've found something that works. That's basically what I did as well. I haven't ever sought any "official" diagnosis, nor do I have plans on doing so. No matter what any tests might say, there's no way I'll ever ingest gluten again, period. Many folks feel more at ease with their dietary choice when they have such a diagnosis, so if she wants that I suppose it's a matter of personal choice. However, something tells me she won't want to go through the pain (and intestinal damage) just to be told what she already knows.

Your guess on the food glaze is what I'd think as well, unless of course her problems include candida. In that case the sugar content would be a problem, but I'm guessing other sweets have been tolerated or you'd have seen reactions before the chocolate bar.

Here's a recipe to duplicate mounds and almond joy bars:

Open Original Shared Link

HTH

[dally099]

hi there, well maybe this well help, it could be the soy lectin, i know that as of late i have a problem with soy and its deritatives (hope i spelt that right) and from what ive read on the site lots of people here have problems with soy and dairy. good luck!

[SusanT]

Wow -- Peter Paul and Mounds?! I know what we're doing this weekend! Thanks for the support --