What Do You Think?

[wowzer]

I am a teller in a bank. I work the drive in most of the time. Every Monday I get to work in the lobby. We serve cookies and coffee. I even put that out every morning for this month. I'm careful to wash my hands after I put out the cookies. Of course the customers grab the cookies when they walk in the door. Some are munching while I am waiting on them. Could the customers be glutening me? Even at the drive in I have some customers eating there lunch as they come through, but at least they are holding on to a wrapper with their burger, so not quite as bad and less doing that. Most just talk on their cell phones. I do hand out dog biscuits, but I use a sandwich bag to grab it then wrap the biscuit in it. Some days I don't even hand out a biscuit. I'm to the point on Mondays, I try to find as many things to keep me out of the window to avoid as many customers as possible. I had a negative blood test, but found the gluten free diet to help me so much. I'm not sure if I should speak to my manager about this or what.

[Nantzie]

It's definitely possible. If you can get into the habit of washing your hands before you touch your mouth or face and before you touch your food, it makes living in the rest of the world much easier. Most people don't react to touching it, but I've heard that some do.

If you haven't already, you also need to check your cosmetics, nail polishes, lotions and shampoo and other haircare stuff. If you are anything like I used to be, work was the only time I ever wore makeup and did my hair.

Nancy

[Kellygirl]

It's definitely possible. If you can get into the habit of washing your hands before you touch your mouth or face and before you touch your food, it makes living in the rest of the world much easier. Most people don't react to touching it, but I've heard that some do.

If you haven't already, you also need to check your cosmetics, nail polishes, lotions and shampoo and other haircare stuff. If you are anything like I used to be, work was the only time I ever wore makeup and did my hair.

Nancy

Nancy,

Is changing body wash and make-up and all that jazz really necessary. I don't were lipstick and my hair never enters my mouth. Is this a think a person should consider if they don't feel better or is this standard practice. I haven't changed my body care routine at all, never really gave it a second thought. I also bake regular stuff for my nephews. Is this bad? One more question - Am currently looking at jobs in the restaurant feild - Is this a mistake?

Any thoughts or opinions are appreciated.

Thanks

Kelly

[Nantzie]

It's relatively common practice. It kind of depends on how you are. I never realized how much I always played with my hair and touched my face until I was trying not to gluten myself with cosmetic and hair stuff that I knew for sure had gluten. I was trying to hang on to a couple things. At the time, I realilzed that I was just not doing well with keeping it off my hands etc.

Shampoo and conditioner tend to be more problematic because it's almost impossible to keep the water off your lips when you shower. The spray gets everywhere. Anything that gets on your lips will get into your mouth, usually from the residue, for example from wheat-containing shampoo, drying on your lips. I absolutely have ALWAYS hated having water on my face, so I never would have believed I was getting water on my face, but it's just a little bit of spray. Personally I'm hypersensitive, and I react quickly, so it's much easier for me to pinpoint what I'm reacting to than some people.

Makeup - it would depend. If you don't wear anything on your lips it's less of a worry. Make sure you check lip balms if you wear them though. It depends how much you touch your face; rub your eye, scratch your nose, push the hair out of your face, etc.

Nail polish - I got glutened really bad from pink-and-white nails. I tried to ask the nail person about it, but I think maybe some language barriers got in the way. I was getting glutened almost every day while I had them, then when I stopped, the glutenings stopped. I know that there are also just regular nail polishes that have gluten. If you use your hands while you cook or put food in your mouth with your fingers and have gluten-containing nail polishes, you're going to gluten yourself. If you're really good about using utensils only, it might be something you can work around.

Baking for other people, you're risking a lot. If you're not being extremely careful, flour stays airborne and settles all over the place. So even if you don't get glutened by the actual baking, which is easy enough, you might get glutened later.

You might want to give yourself a break from some of this stuff just to evaluate how YOU react.

You're doing great to protect yourself from gluten while you're working, the dog biscuit baggie thing sounds exactly like what I would do.

You might want to make sure your lip balms, if any, nail polishes, shampoo and other haircare products are gluten-free and see if things improve.

Also, take a break from baking for your nephews for a few weeks. There are ways you can get around baking for gluten eaters; wear a dust mask if necessary, keep the flour dust at a minimum, keep dedicated work areas, put gluten-free cooking items in drawers and cabinets so it doesn't get any flour on it, wipe down counters and work surfaces after. There are a lot of people here with shared households that can give you advice on that.

Now that I've been gluten-free for a while, there's a lot of stuff I'd be comfortable with than I was able to deal with at first. Back when I started, just trying to figure out what I could and could not eat was stressful enough without adding conditioner that actually had wheat on the ingredient label into the mix.

Nancy

[wowzer]

I am careful about makeup, lotion etc. I was using a body wash that was making my rash worse. I discovered it had wheat in it. I made the lip bomb mistake the first month.