celiac
Posted By: need advice on 2008-04-15
In Reply to: I have to take care of myself and learned this the hard way sm - Lyndia
my daughter is 23 and has celiac disease - she says the same thing you did - food is difficult to find and expensive - so she just doesn't follow the diet at all. I'm worried she will have lots of problems down the road but she won't listen.
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Full blown celiac here sm
If I eat wheat or oatmeal (I can't have rye or barley either, but it usually isn't something I am exposed to) I feel like I can't breathe for a couple of hours, my belly bloats up, I start tooting like a banchi and then I can't leave the house until all diarrhea leaves me. It is TMI, but celiac stools are yellow to chalky gray, even white, NOT normal and are extremely foul as well.
What this can do to you is make you anemic. You can have malnutrition from never being able to absorb the good stuff in your food. You might be either very thin or rather overweight, but you always feel horrible, no energy, tired. Food never makes you feel better, no matter how hungry you are and how much/little you eat.
Celiac sprue is considered an autoimmune at this point. The body can't digest the gluten (a type of protein) in wheat, barley or rye. Oatmeal has gluten, but it is chemically different from the others mentioned here. Some celiacs can eat it, some cannot; I cannot. You can't eat any Quaker products because they are all severely cross contaminated and will make you sick. What happens when you eat gluten all the time, is that the villi in the intestines flatten and/or fall off. Their surfaces exchange nutrients from the gut into the body. If they are not present or not functional, it dimishes absorption by 80%. On the other hand, celiacs who go on a gut healing diet will have their villi return to a healthy state (about 90% of celiacs recover the lining of the gut).
If you have another AI, you have to know that celiac likes to piggyback with other AI disorders, particularly SLE and Sjorgen's. Also, it is believed that 2/3 of celiacs are concurrently lactose intolerant and/or allergic to dairy. It is estimated that in the US about 1:150 people is a celiac, whereas 1:4500 will be diagnosed during their lifetime.
Never fear, however...gone are the days of rice cakes and hard rice bread! There are many many books on making gluten free bread with bean and alternative grain flours. There is plenty on the internet too. The best book I can recommend is "The Allergy Survival Guide" by Melina, Stepaniak and Aronson. It is everything free...no animal products, eggs, dairy, nuts, fish, shellfish, wheat, yeast, soy...and the recipes are DIVINE.
The best part is that since going on a GF diet last summer I rarely have a day when I am tired and feel crappy, as long as I behave. I have lost about 40 lbs with no effort, unless you call eating fruit, veggies, soy and beans constantly in as large a quantity as I like, an effort. I have been able to add some GF desserts back into my diet and not gain weight. I also have SLE and I am on 7.5 mg of prednisone every day (weaning to 5 mg). Despite doing a 2-month loading dose of prednisone to get the SLE under control last summer, I dropped 18 lbs the first month on it and another 10 the next month and we all know what pred can do to your waistline.
I'll go and make my polenta crust pizza for supper and enjoy the fact that I won't feel sick after I eat and it will taste wonderful.
I have some good books actually and she might find help for celiac sm
I have Bette Hagman's bread book. I have made cornbread (as good as the real thing or better), Boston brown bread (heavy, but wonderful toasted with jelly on it) and a garbanzo and sorghum bread (YUK). The biscuits were so-so. The muffins were a disaster, but I think I know why. Now, her pizza crust from her French Bread Mix (you make it yourself) is absolutely TO DIE FOR. It is better than the real thing to me. I had no idea what it was like to enjoy a veggie pizza with a chewy crust without hurting when it hit my stomach and then all the way through. It was PAINLESS and WONDERFUL!!!
I love the Food Allergy Survival Guide which is free of animal products, dairy, nuts, peanuts, soy, wheat and I don't know what all free. Stuff in there is a mixed bag. Some of it is lovely, some is heavy and icky like vegetarian/vegan food in the 1970s and 1980s, so gross.
Because my celiac piggybacks with lupus, it is imperative to follow the diet as strictly as possible. Lupus had blown my iron binding capacity so I run around anemic if I don't take daily iron. I have to be on steriods which will compromise my bones, so I have to take calcium and vitamin D. Celiac, untreated, flattens your intestinal villi if they don't fall off to start with. Now, 90% of celiacs can regain them if they watch what they do. Without villi you risk malnutrition and certainly anemia, brittle bones, canker sores and every sort of ailment related to vitamins and minerals. I am in a risky position if I don't watch it because the dangerous consequences of both my AI diseases overlap.
I have lost a much needed 40# or so since I started steriods (prednisone) and a celiac diet. I had been feeling better, but I think I must have had a dietary indiscretion (like too much protein for about 5 days running) and indulged in things that were no-nos. I am paying for it. I can't wait to get back to where I feel good.
Longer nights of rest, back on iron pills, strict celiac and vegetarian eating, no eggs and cheese no more than once a week...I'll get better. It is no fun being such a pain in my own patooty!
Check out celiac disease from gluten allergy
Many times it is mistaken for IBS - my grandson is being tested for this by GI doctor on the ball!
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