Magazine's Article Concerning Gluten

[angelbender]

The Celiac Diet is a great diet! Why in fact, my Celiac Belly Bloat went down so fast in one week or so, that it was like a pants size. And now I need a tummy tuck (from the sag) along with my belly button lift that I was hoping for!

Okay, all joking aside. I went ahead and picked up the magazine. I was surprised (considering the

source, as you say) to find out just how much accurate info there was contained in it. And......shocked

that they even mentioned that gluten was in things other than breads and cookies.....they mentioned

that it can be in sauces and such, which most non-Celiacs would probably never think of.

My distress about this article matched a few others here.......while the info wasn't all that inaccurate,

I hate to have this issue treated as a voluntary diet issue. I have enough trouble getting through to my

mother.....she keeps saying,"Well, you know, after you've been on the diet awhile, you can cheat a little." And I tell her that no, I will never, ever ever ever get to cheat. That it's as bad as my father not taking his meds for his ulcerative colitis. (fyi: my mother is not blood related)

Anyhow, I still plan on writing to WW now that I've read the article and suggest to them that perhaps

they can redo the article, but as a HEALTH article and with even more accurate info.

Now I have to go and make some money to afford that tummy tuck and belly button lift, lol Angel

[marciab]

I haven't read this yet, but my sister just called me this morning to tell me about the article. She knows I am gluten free and that I have made some major improvements. So while she knows gluten was the cause of my problems, this article really helped her get a better understanding of what all gluten can do ...

I was quite impressed with what she quoted.

"Gluten can cause miscarriages, difficulty thinking, moods swings, tingling in the legs, etc "

And she read me a reference to "Zonulin allowing food particles to enter the blood stream and causing immune system damage ... "

The article also told people to go to the glutenfreeforum for information. And a website called avoidgluten ...

So, I'm happy with this article. It helped my sister understand where I am coming from and gives her an article she can pass on to her kids ... Most of my family have severe food allergies.

Every little bit of info builds on a person's knowledge base. This can only be a good thing ...

Marcia

[Eriella]

I agree, the article can be both good and bad. The good news is that when my mother read it, she really understood why I thought gluten has been making me sick. The bad news was the line that blood tests only work in advance cases. Yeah... after 2 weeks of me begging for tests from my GI to confirm the diagnosis so I can have food to eat at school, that really went over well. It made her, and the rest of my family, believe that it was better to just go off of gluten if it is making you sick, which is problematic if you need a diagnosis in order to get the cafeteria to make food that you can eat, and that I was just overreacting by demanding a test. I am so happy I got tested the day before the article hit the newsstand. Now it is just up to getting the results back...

[GFAngel]

I read the article and was kinda taken aback at what could be misconsrued given the lack of information.

Here's my story: After my thryoid was dx hypo 11 yrs ago, somehow I found someone who gave me a book (because we were researching how to help our "not quite right" kids, The 20-Day Rejuvenation Diet by Jeffrey Bland, PhD. I learned about transfats, free radicals, wheat and sugar: so I went wheat and sugar free and started walking an hour a day. I lost 20 lbs in a month. I'm obese btw. I pretty much was gluten-free as I had no idea about baking with alternate flours and could only find rice crackers at Costco (thank goodness). But doing that diet alone was tough (nobody I knew ate this way), we moved to AK, I stressed and went back to eating "normal." Fastforward 10-11 years through multiple and worsening health issues and I get the celiac dx. What a missed opportunity for me to have been diagnosed! I KNOW I've had this my entire life ... and I did not have GI pains ...

And after dx, I gained 20 lbs. before stopping and really looking at what I was eating (a lot of yogurt?) and turned to veggies/fruit and lean proteins and tons of exercise to LOSE weight. As I was not 100% healed yet, I found this extremely difficult! I did not eat a ton of gluten-free alternate foods either.

I hope people visit celiac.com to learn more, is all I can say.

(My DD is a mini-me pre-dx: tired all the time, etc. (thyroid is fine). I have her blood tested and biopsied: negative. I test her via enterolab: positive to gluten, casein, soy and 2 genes for celiac.

Here's a question I haven't seen much about: when I talked to her pediatric gastroenterologist (she had the test at age 17), I asked him if she should go gluten-free anyway. He said no: that if someone goes gluten-free who doesn't need to, and then eats gluten, that person could have anaplylactic shock. Anybody know about this?