Celiac Disease

That is your basic good news/bad news.

If I had to give up beer and Mexican food, I think I would wander off onto an ice flow (not that we have many of them in Tucson...)

We have local brewery here in DE that does a a gluton free beer, seasonally.
http://www.dogfish.com/brews-spirits/the-brews/seasonal-brews/tweasonale.htm

> You gotta be kidding, what a pain in the ..... I just was informed that I am gluten intolerant and have to revise my eating.... and no more beer.
> Biopsy confirmation so I figure it's accurate. Sure explains a whole bunch of things!! I had a couple of bad illnesses after christmas this year, turns out they were probably celiac crisis incidents.
>
> What a inconvenience...

Sorry to hear, but consider yourself lucky in that in recent years the diet world has jumped on the gluten free market thus expanding the amount of gluten free products available and awareness of the disease. My wife has it and was diagnosed in 2005. In 8 years I have seen a huge jump in products available at your local grocery store. She used to have to order almost all of her pasta products and other cooking ingredients online but now stores like Target and Safeway etc, carry not only gluten free products but the good brands of products. There are a lot of crappy GF replacements out there. There is a huge learning curve as you will find nearly everything has gluten or is made with one or two ingredients that have gluten. Soy sauce is a big example. Now you will be looking for gluten free tamari. Do yourself a favor and search for a gluten free bakery hopefully close buy. Beer replacements are available but pretty expensive. My wife has turned to Hard Ciders and Vino.

There are a lot of good websites and recipes online. Ultimately your body will thank you.
Cheers

What a shame. There goes 90 percent of the tasty food in the world. You can spray all sorts of coatings on a piece of cardboard but it'll never be as good as the real thing.

Not good news, but fortunately it is not fatal if you avoid the wheat. My wife has been on the gluten free for several years and now is also dairy free. I can tolerate the refined wheat flour in moderation, but probably should also go gluten-free. Two of our kids also have it. But like others have said, there is plenty of gluten-free food on the supermarket shelves and we are lucky to have a small gluten-free market nearby. Going gluten-free has made a huge difference in the positive for us. And you will get used to the 'strange' tastes. Good luck to you.

For us the really good news is that we will be in Palau for several months and get to eat the good island food.

Jerry

Been there. Son has it. Bards beer is good. Yeah, it's a pain at first, but lots of options that are good. Not the end of the world, although it may seem like it at first. Be aware that it is an autoimmune disease, which means you should be checked more often for cancers. They tend to go hand in hand. Lot of people getting this, must be something in the environment.

The local "Stop & Shop" has a section with organic, natural and gluten free products. I beleive they are in your neighboorhood as well so take a look and good luck.

Thanks y'all.

I'm glad that I wasn't aware of this 10 years ago. It's much easier to deal with it now. (Of course maybe it would have been better to know 10 years ago! I think that I developed this about 5 years ago though.) Kind of surprising how much stuff uses wheat, such as Altoids(?!)

It's really a matter of being very aware of whats going in the mouth. I have to develop a new habit to be very careful of food now. I am glad that I now know and hopefully will start to feel better in a few weeks. The damage can take years to correct, but if I am carful it will correct.

My questio is more about cross contamination. For instance, the local Mexican restaurant says that they fry the chips in oil that flour tortillas are fryed in and they would not recommend eating the corn chips. Can frying oil, really cross contaminate? What other aspects do I have to be concerned about? How about cutting boards? Will I get sick from just touching wheat products?

Yes, cross contamination is actually the larger problem. I have one bread machine that has never been used for any purpose other than gluten free. Also, have one of those microbial countertop cutting boards that is never used for anything else. Eating out is very difficult but getting better as more people and businesses get educated about it. Some products that are gluten free can not be labeled as such because they are packaged in the same facilities as stuff that is not GF. 20 years ago there was an international agreement to label GF products but the U.S. has not lived up to it as well as other countries.

If you have "Wegmans" grocery stores in your area, we have found they have the largest selection of GF. Bob's Red Mill and Hodgson have lots of stuff you can order online. We had GF lasagna (brown rice pasta) this week and trying GF reubens today for first time. Just in the last couple of years a whole lot more GF stuff has become available. We were never big on eating out or using prepackaged processed stuff anyway. But if you have been, you may need to learn to enjoy good home cooking from scratch ingredients. At the end of the day it's nice to turn on some good music, have a cocktail, and get your hands on some real dough:)

Hope you feel better soon!

This may be easier than I thought. I don't eat packaged foods and I'm used to doing the cooking at home.

I don't eat many snacks, but I did like sandwiches. I'm going to try making some gluten fre bread this weekend because I don't like the millet bread we got the other day.

I've tried a few gluten-free breads. Nothing compares to the real thing. I think the attitude has to be that it just isn't the same thing. For example; if your favorite fruit is oranges, so your search for an apple that tastes like an orange your search will be disappointing. You need to find an apple you like with out worrying about how closely it resembles an orange. (if that's a good analogy)

My doctor has recommended me not to eat any wheat. I was trying to get away with sprouted wheat, but she said that wasn't good either. I wonder if more of us don't have celiac disease than we think.

Eat mo' grits! 🙂

You need to get the card and keep it in your wallet. Start shopping at the high end grocery stores as they have gluten free food.

Liquor should be good to you. I understand your frustration. I developed an alergy to beer, but liquor is good to me.

I really like beer too. 🙁

> I wonder if more of us don't have celiac disease than we think

I believe the numbers are about 1 in every 100 people carry the disease but only about %10 percent of them if that, have been properly diagnosed.