Worried!

[caek-is-a-lie]

I've done so well over the last couple of months, but tonight I made dinner and afterwards I wanted more, so I cooked more and put it on what I thought was my plate because it was exactly where I put my plate. But while I was eating it I picked off what looked like bread or egg. Weird, right? Turns out my boyfriend put his used plate on top of mine and I ate off of it for seconds!! He had his burger on bread and that's what I ate off of. I'm horrified! I didn't eat the big piece of bread leftover but I ate off a gluten plate. I'm so worried I'll get sick tomorrow and won't be able to work. It's terrible!! What can I do? Even if I puked I'd still get sick tomorrow. I guess I have to resign myself to the suffering. I just can't take it. I'm going to have seizures and paralysis and GI problems. What can I do?? I will NEVER eat off a used plate again if I can't trust my own boyfriend.

[ang1e0251]

I hope today finds you well. If you are reacting, I hope it's mild. You know slip ups are going to happen, you may as well get used to the idea. We can't be perfect 24/7. Your boyfriend didn't put his plate their thinking to sabotage you, he was just laying his plate down. It's true you alone are responsible for checking your plates, foods, implements, spices and medicines. Sometimes that really sucks but that is the celiac life. Accept that sometimes things happen and do the best you can.

That may not be a nice rosy answer but it is just how we live. We do our best to stay gluten-free and when there's a slip we get mad and rant a bit then deal with the symptoms and live on, having learned another lesson in our personal care.

Be well and again I hope your exposure was minimal and symptoms mild.

[zero]

Most celiacs can tolerate exposure to 30 mg of gluten per day without any long term effects. That is about a pinch or so of flour. So the way I look at it, if I can't see anything on the plate, spoon, pan, ... then it is good enough.

[CeliacMom2008]

Zero,

Where did you find the information on 30 mg per day? I've never been able to find a specific amount like that before.

[zero]

Zero,

Where did you find the information on 30 mg per day? I've never been able to find a specific amount like that before.

"The gluten-free diet in Finland is considered to have up to 30 mg of gluten per day (a slice of regular bread has 2.25 grams). In a recent Finnish study, all celiacs on this diet improved and showed a normal longevity without an increased risk of cancer."

from "Celiac Disease A Hidden Epidemic" by Green and Jones. IMHO this should be required reading for all celiacs.

[caek-is-a-lie]

Thanks for your replies. My reaction was very mild and over by noon today. I know my boyfriend wasn't trying to hurt me or anything. I just have to be so careful and I wasn't paying attention. It was totally my fault. I just got emotional about it.

I know accidents will happen but I hate them so much I really go out of my way to avoid them. I don't know how I get away with as much as I do (and by that, I mean trying to do anything considered 'normal' like eating out...lol) It scares me when I try a slice of cheese at the grocery store free samples table without checking the ingredients, or pick up a plate I thought was mine and find out it's not. It's sometimes hard to understand why I'll have more reaction from a buffet table where I only ate the cheese and fruit than I do from eating off my boyfriend's bread crumb plate. Such is life with gluten intolerance I guess.

[Tallforagirl]

Most celiacs can tolerate exposure to 30 mg of gluten per day without any long term effects. That is about a pinch or so of flour. So the way I look at it, if I can't see anything on the plate, spoon, pan, ... then it is good enough.

It's good to hear someone make this point. There seems to be a lot of hysteria around the ingestion of microscopic amounts of gluten, and while this might be reasonable for those who are very sensitive, for the rest of us (probably the majority of Celiacs), if we do our best to be vigilant about CC, and not go around deliberately eating gluten, then we'll be just fine.

I'm glad you feel better caek!

[CeliacMom2008]

I'm adding this reply not because I want to start a debate on the acceptable levels of gluten consumption, but because I worry about newbies doing a search and pulling up this thread. I believe everyone needs to decide for themselves what level of gluten they find acceptable in their diet. The following article gives some insight into this question.

https://www.celiac.com/articles/21655/1/How...ease/Page1.html

This article ultimately recommends less than 6 mg per day. Hopefully this helps others in deciding how careful they need to be.

[Tallforagirl]

I'm adding this reply not because I want to start a debate on the acceptable levels of gluten consumption, but because I worry about newbies doing a search and pulling up this thread. I believe everyone needs to decide for themselves what level of gluten they find acceptable in their diet. The following article gives some insight into this question.

https://www.celiac.com/articles/21655/1/How...ease/Page1.html

This article ultimately recommends less than 6 mg per day. Hopefully this helps others in deciding how careful they need to be.

What concerns me is that there seems to be a very vocal group of people on this board who greet every newbie with a great long list of things they would never have thought they needed to worry about: telling them to chuck out all their old pots and pans, check the ingredients in their shampoo, lotion etc. I've even seen someone say that bandaids are unsafe!

Obviously as you go along you're going to find out how sensitive you are, and act accordingly. I just worry that the newbies are being whipped into a state of paranoia when they need not be. If they're not symptomatic at all it could even put them off trying to stick with the gluten-free lifestyle, because people make it sound like it's so complicated and difficult to achieve.

[zero]

I'm adding this reply not because I want to start a debate on the acceptable levels of gluten consumption, but because I worry about newbies doing a search and pulling up this thread. I believe everyone needs to decide for themselves what level of gluten they find acceptable in their diet. The following article gives some insight into this question.

https://www.celiac.com/articles/21655/1/How...ease/Page1.html

This article ultimately recommends less than 6 mg per day. Hopefully this helps others in deciding how careful they need to be.

Thank you for the link. I don't see anything overtly contradictory in any of these studies other than reflecting the difficulty in studying this type of thing and the variability of individuals. I think the more science and the less folklore the better. The goal should always be ingesting 0 mg of gluten. But if you tell someone they need to never ingest any gluten then you are setting them up for a lot of anxiety. Everything looks like a potential source of poison. I have been there and it helped me to have the knowledge of what and how much gluten I am really up against. I can see it, I can hold it, and then I will wash my hands and go on with my life.

I am glad your feeling better caek_is_a_lie. When I get glutened it can be anything from a non-event to messing me up for a couple of days.

[TES]

I think it might be zero tolerance for people, healing. I did it again! Yesterday, I wasn't home and I used a can opener to open my gluten free food, not thinking about the can opener contaminating food. Today, I am paying for that, symptoms not near as bad, but I do have symptoms. Bummer!