Poppi

I'm wondering if you are going to come back here complaining of symptoms. I don't think that you were stupid to gluten yourself on purpose. Since you don't have medical testing data to support eliminating gluten, it would seem the intelligent thing to do to be sure.

I agree with Skylark that if you can keep this up for a couple of weeks, get yourself tested. Is that how long a gluten challenge should be, experts? I've heart two slices of bread a day for two weeks.

It would be good to know for sure.

I was told 2-4 servings of high gluten foods for 3-4 months. I tried and lasted until lunch on the first day. Never again.

Well been off gluten for almost 2 months now... and guess what? I'm in no mood to continue.

My general attitude towards everyone is bad going to worse.

So I've taken a step in keeping my sanity in check: Back to the food I love.

Unless my children are diagnosed with Coeliac, I'm sticking to my decision.

I've lived with the pain most of my life, I can deal with it for the rest of it.

Loneferret, we have all felt like you do right now but you really need to take a look at this decision.

It's hard. Really hard. I sat in the car and cried the other day because my one safe takeout restaurant was closed and I was hungry and exhausted and didn't want to go home and cook a gluten free meal for 7 people but I did it anyway. Because my health is not just important to me, it's important to my kids.

Why would you condemn yourself to a lifetime of pain because you miss bread and beer (or whatever it is you are missing)? Over the course of your life the pain can (and will) get worse. You could suffer serious nerve damage, multiple types of digestive system cancers, depression, chronic pain, fatigue and more other health problems than I can list right now.

Your kids deserve better. Your wife deserves better.

I am the only confirmed celiac in the family and all 7 of us eat gluten free. My house is a completely gluten free zone because it makes my life easier and when I am healthy I can better care for the needs of the whole family.

Are you the main income earner for your family? If you had to go on disability how would your family get by? This is a real possibility. I am 35 and have osteoarthritis in my feet and extensive nerve damage in my neck and back from celiac. I will never be able to earn a full time income.

Plan on growing old with your wife? Want to do it with an ostomy bag?

I'm sorry if this all sounds harsh but this is the reality. This disease kills you slowly. Eating gluten is just not worth it.

I will add to the scary pep talk.

Looking back now I know I have had celiac since I was a small child. Undiagnosed for 34 years. I have been absolutely religious about the gluten free diet for almost 6 months now and my life is so much better, I feel amazing! I can walk past a bakery or my old favourite restaurants with barely a pang. It's not always easy, I found myself out and about with the family the other day, starving and unable to find anything safe to eat and that was very upsetting but it was the result of poor planning on my part, food spontaneity is a thing of the past.

That was the good part, here's the crappy part.

Celiac has left me with:

Almost no cartilage in my toes, my pain level has dropped by at least 90% since going gluten-free but I will need several surgeries on my feet in my lifetime to fuse joints.

Extensive nerve damage in my neck and upper back. I have very painful physio visits once a week where I have needles inserted into the tightened muscle bands in an attempt to alleviate the constant pain and restore my range of motion. It hurts, it's expensive and it will never give me a normal neck and back, just make it less painful to do normal tasks.

An unfinished biochemistry/environmental science degree because I was so distracted, sick and exhausted when I was in college, now that I have 3 kids I will likely never finish that degree. My oldest starts college in 2 years so his education is more important.

A high risk of digestive system cancers. My grandfather (who we now are positive suffers from undiagnosed celiac - he's 90) has had bowel cancer, stomach cancer, bladder cancer and pancreatic cancer. I am scared that this will be my future.

3 miscarriages, horrible and dangerous high risk pregnancies and infertility. My body killed three babies because of this disease. I am so lucky and blessed to have my three children but the three I lost broke my heart. I think about them every day and wish I had been diagnosed before I tried to start a family. Even though we were successful in having kids the years of infertility and loss were more horrible than I care to describe right now. If you ever want to have a family you need to take this seriously.

My life is amazing now but I lost a lot to this disease. I consider myself lucky though, there are so many people on this forum who have suffered much more terribly than I have. You don't want to be one of them.

I wouldn't worry about this either.

In fact the celiac support group a friend of mine goes to swears you can put old non stick pans on the stove, boil a vinegar/water mixture in them and give them a good scrub to remove gluten contamination. I chose to give away all my old pots and replace them with new but if I had a newer pot/pan that had been very temporarily contaminated (1 gluten grilled cheese cooked on it by accident or something) I would try this out.

About 2-3 hours after a glutening I get this sudden emotional dive, I feel hopeless and weepy

Tummy gurgling starts shorty after

fatigue hits around the same time, is pretty intense for the first few days and then slowly lifts over the next 10 days

The next morning I usually have a few bouts of D, followed by a week or so of C

The nausea, joint pain, headaches and depression usually hit full force about 12-24 hours after the glutening and last a week or two

The back pain is by far my worst symptom and can last 2-4 weeks. The first 10 days is really awful and then it slowly gets better. I am starting physio on my back tomorrow morning with the hopes that a stronger back might help alleviate some of the pain, it can't hurt.

My knit night has been meeting at a Starbucks over the summer while our favourite (and gluten-free friendly) coffee shop is closed for the summer. This place has been really good about letting me see the ingredients and now I know I can have a caramel macchiato, a chai latte or a vanilla latte hot or iced so I'm happy. Plus there is always the Passion Tea Lemonade to fall back on if I don't feel like tea or coffee. The lack of treats is sad but pretty soon I will be back at my favourite coffee place which stocks yummy goodies from the Silly Yak bakery.

When I was down in San Diego a couple of weeks ago I fell in love with the Cool Lime Refresher. I wish we had those in Canada...soooooo good.

last time I got a banana split blizzard from the DQ close to us the manager made it, brought out unopened packages of toppings and mixed it up at a machine they have in the back that is only used to make blizzards for people with food allergies/intolerances and is well cleaned in between.

I won't go in if it's busy though, I like to catch them when I'm the only customer waiting so I know they will take their time. We always get birthday cakes from there and so far they've done a great job for us.

I'll add another voice to that call for new friends.

Even one good friend would be better than a whole bunch of "friends" who don't respect you.

My advice to you in no specific order would be:

1. Counselling to deal with both the depression surrounding your celiac and the drinking.

2. Possibly treatment for the alcohol abuse, if you are drinking a lot because it's the only thing that makes you happy then you have a problem. This piece of advice comes from 8 1/2 years of sobriety. Life without drugs and alcohol is great. I did it and you can too.

3. New friends. It's hard to make new friends but perhaps a Celiac support group, a sports club, dance/language/art/fitness classes at the rec centre would be a good place to start.

4. Find ways to make yourself happy that don't involve food or booze. Hobbies are therapeutic and satisfying. I knit, spin, kayak, read, garden, take care of my chickens and bake.

5. Make a plan. Get online and get on the phone and find restaurants in your area that either have gluten free menus or have confirmed with you online that they can come up with gluten free foods. It's nice to walk into a restaurant with friends and be able to order a good meal.

6. Find at least one supportive person in your life and lean on them. Whether it's your wife, child, parent, grandparent, friend, neighbour, counselor... everyone needs someone who really understands them.

Good luck, we're all behind you. Hope things get better soon.

Are things better with your family? I remember reading how unsupportive they were being and felt so bad for you. I hope that has changed.

Good luck, hope you get some results you can work with.

I have been considering doing a challenge myself but I can't bring myself to do it. I tried twice and never lasted past the first day.

Thanks for thinking of me.

I also ordered a bunch of stuff off Amazon and brought back a 45 pound box of gluten free food as checked baggage. A few bottles of amazing balsamic vinegar from a little store in SD, 12 pounds of Pamela's pancake mix (my kids' favourite but expensive here), gluten free worchestershire sauce, Udi's granola, 250 individual pouches of gluten free tamari so I can go out for sushi and some other stuff. The TSA cut my box open and repacked it less than carefully and one of the bags of pancake mix split open but other than that it all survived.

Gluten intolerance and Celiac are not allergies. You are not allergic to wheat, your body has an autoimmune reaction to the gluten protein found in wheat, barley, rye etc. Now, obviously this means you can't eat wheat, allergic or not.

Allergy means that your body initiates an anaphylactic or histamine reaction to a substance.

Autoimmune means your immune system attacks your own body in various ways when confronted with a substance. Antihistamines and Epipens will not help you in this instance. On the other hand, your throat isn't likely to close up either.

Clear as mud?

And my mom has a soy allergy and her #1 symptom is joint pain.

I only like the chocolate Lara bars.

Honestly I carry Isa Genix bars everywhere with me. The forum won't let me type it as one word because it thinks I'm trying to sell them to you. Yes, it's a network marketing company but the protein shakes and bars are my lifeline when I travel.

I just got home from 6 days at a convention in San Diego and I had a wonderful time. I was really worried about eating well down there so I went down well armed with GoPicnic Humus and Cracker meals and lots of protein shake pouches and meal replacement bars (from a brand which is apparently a lame advertisement when mentioned here. )

I was with my mom who is also gluten free which was nice.

I did have a shake for breakfast every morning because it was definitely hard to find safe breakfast but we were also just a 10 minute walk away from a Ralphs's so we loaded up the hotel fridge with yogurt, fruit, juice and snacks.

I had 3 wonderful meals at Roy's. The have a great gluten free menu, the filet mignon with mashed potatoes and demi glace was to die for and I finished off each of those three meals with a gluten free chocolate souffle.

We also ate at Joe's Crab shack which has a great gluten free menu and several other places which didn't have gluten-free menus but did their very best to help me out even if it just meant that I ate ceviche with tortilla chips and maybe a plate of mussels steamed with butter and wine.

Also had a wonderful meal in the nice restaurant beside the visitor center in Balboa park before going to the zoo. They had many gluten-free options on the menu.

I had a great time, my back is a little sore but that's to be expected. I have traveled quite a bit over the past couple of weeks and have eaten at least 25 meals at restaurants so some cc is inevitable.

Just want to let anyone who is travelling to San Deigo and staying around the Gaslamp District or the Convention center that you will be well cared for.

Oh wow. That's scary.

We've had great experiences with our local DQ and I most definitely get sick at even slight cc so I know they've been good.

I wouldn't write them off entirely but definitely talk to the manager, our DQ takes allergy issues very seriously.

We are currently in the process of moving to Vancouver, and my twins birthdays are coming up and I was wondering if their are any Gluten-Free restaurants in Vancouver and also if there are Gluten-Free bakeries that I could buy a gluten-free cake from!!

Thanks so much

I just got back from a 4 day weekend in Vancouver with my hubby and we had a really good time.

We stayed close to downtown so most of the restaurants we went to were on or around Robson street.

The best 2 restaurants as far as food quality and knowledgeable staff were Joey's (Open Original Shared Link) and Noodle Box (Open Original Shared Link)

The Red Robin on Robson was great about feeding me. We had burgers on lettuce buns and fries from a dedicated fryer. Very knowledgeable and very friendly.

Panne Rizo (Open Original Shared Link) is a decent bakery for cookies and such, not sure about cakes. Choices (Open Original Shared Link) is great. They have a nice store with a good selection of gluten free baked goods and there is a stand alone gluten-free bakery location as well but we didn't go there. The downtown store even had a few fancy looking gluten-free birthday cakes in the freezer. They were around $25 but they looked really good.

We also went to Aphrodites in Kits for breakfast. The food was great but shockingly expensive. We ordered Eggs Bennie on gluten-free corn muffins, an omelet with gluten-free toast, one chai latte and a piece of gluten-free strawberry rhubard pie with ice cream to share and our bill with tax and a 15% tip was $72!! For breakfast!!

She probably just isn't very educated on the origins of her food. My husband is one of those people.

He thought oats came from wheat. I asked him to get some oat groats at the health food store and found him asking a very confused clerk where he could find the whole wheat oats.

You burn your toast and eat it anyway because those two tiny pieces of bread cost $1.50

What you might want to do to be on the safe side is maybe wear a mask when your feeding them so if that happens again you aren't breathing in the dust through your nose and mouth. Have a great time on your trips and happy birthday to you and your son in advance.

I will next time. I wasn't even feeding them, my oldest son takes care of that. I was making a repair to the shelf that holds their feeder inside the coop at night (we have raccoons so their food dispenser comes in at night and sits on a shelf in the coop.) All I managed to accomplish was spraining my thumb, spilling their food (well,Lily did that) and mildly glutening myself. The shelf is still broken but I'm not going int here again until after my vacation!

Hi everyone.

I took a bunch of digestive enzymes and a muscle relaxants and went to bed. Luckily I seem to have gotten away with it. My worst symptom of a reaction is 10-14 days of intense burning back pain so I am very happy and relieved that I didn't seem to react too badly. I'm a bit fatigued and my back doesn't feel great but that's okay, I can deal with that.

We are going over to Vancouver for 4 days (leaving tomorrow), then I'm home for 3 days during which I have to unpack, throw a birthday party for myself and my 16 year old son, do the laundry and repack and then I fly to San Diego for 6 days. So this would be a very bad time to get glutened.

I'm already so worried about eating in Vancouver because if something goes wrong then my trip to San Diego won't be as much fun. I'm also a bit panicky about eating in San Diego since I am flying and can't drag a cooler with me like I am to Vancouver.

I thought about making my own gluten free chicken feed but was told that a gluten free feed that is high enough in protein for the layers would be really expensive and there is nowhere local that I can even buy the individual components. All the feed/farm stores here sell premade feed and I sure can't afford to feed my chickens out of the bulk bins at the grocery store.

So I'm outside working on the chicken coop when my 2 year old drops the feeder right beside me.

POOF! Big cloud of chicken feed dust erupts right in my face. Couldn't help but inhale it.

I rushed over to the hose and hosed myself down. Washed my face, rinsed my mouth, washed my arms, came in and dumped all my clothes in the washer.

I am leaving for vacation in 3 days, my gluten reactions last up to 2 weeks. Please, please, please let me get off without a reaction just this one time.

Not sure how formal you are going but this is the cake I am making for making for my 35th birthday party next week.

Open Original Shared Link

It can be dressed up or down and it's cute.

I feel like I've been glutened if I drink coffee or have a coke. It lasts for about 4 hours for me.

I can handle all the tea I care to drink and the occasional decaf latte (small amount of decaf espresso LOTS of milk and some vanilla syrup).

I had a slurpee the other day and it was so nice on a hot day. I felt crappy half way through because it's been years since I dumped that much sugar in my bloodstream at one time but I didn't get glutened.

I'm sensitive to caffiene.

A cup of coffee makes me feel like I've been glutened for several hours as does a can of Coke.

I can handle decaf coffee in small doses and can somehow drink all the tea I like.