kbtoyssni

This church group I'm a part of is planning on cooking breakfast at this local nursery. It's a place parents can drop their kids for free if there's a family emergency. I really want to help out, but all of a sudden I'm envisioning pancakes and cereal and messy toddlers and help! Does anyone have any ideas on how to help out and not be freaking out the whole time about gluten???

Congrats!

I'm number 136 on the waiting list at the library. It's going to be a long time before I get my hands on this book

Good for you! Good luck with everything. Tomorrow's going to be so nice when you wake up to a nice new place sans roomie!

lol. I guess if someone just has a wheat allergy, they could eat all the rye they want.

Congrats to Maddie! And how ironic that a jump roping event to combat heart disease is rewarded with junk food.

Pantene is gluten-free. Whether or not it's good to use is another story. I find that a lot of the cheaper shampoos are the gluten-free ones, but they also contain a lot of wax as a "filler" that coats the hair. My hair dresser recommended trying to get a shampoo that doesn't have wax.

I've been having breakage right around where my ponytail holders go recently. Hair dresser says I put my hair ties too tight, and I should try scrunchies (yikes - I can't be seen in public in a scrunchie!!!) The thing is that I've always put my hair in a ponytail a lot, and I never had trouble until recently.

As for deciphering labels, most have wheat or oats in parentheses after the more scientific name. Avenin is the fancy name for oats. Triticale is a fancy name for wheat.

You can cheat if you want your life to go back to the way it was last week. If you want to keep your new-found health, you have to stay gluten-free for the rest of your life.

BUT - you will find alternatives to your old favorite foods. I can't think of anything I used to eat that I can't find a good gluten-free substitute for. Well, except maybe those soft pretzels you get at baseball games, but I can live without them

None of those foods jump out at me as being not-gluten-free, although I'm not familiar with a lot of the brands you posted. I'm guessing it's because you're so new to gluten-free. You gut is irritated so for a while you might feel sick even when you don't eat gluten.

The dairy could easily be the culprit - many people have trouble digesting dairy while they're healing. Lactose is digested by the tips of your villi so if your villi are worn down, you'll have trouble with this digestion until you heal.

There's also a number of gluten-free substitute products. It seems like many people have trouble with those at first, too, which is unfortunate because it's early on in the diet that people most rely on these products. After a while you'll probably learn to "think outside the box" and start eating naturally gluten-free stuff instead of these substitutes. Not sure why people have problems intially - they're very dense and maybe that makes them hard to digest. I think grains in general might be harder to digest, too, and your gut certainly isn't working at full strength here.

The other thought I have is maybe one of your ingredients was contaminated prior to you going gluten-free or by a family member who didn't realize.

You've got the right idea. You have a positive blood test - that is an official diagnosis. The scope is an invasive procedure with some risk. I don't see a reason why you should have one if you can commit to the gluten-free diet without it. A positive scope will only re-prove she has celiac. A negative scope just means she doesn't have enough damage to her intestines yet (a good thing, IMO!) or the doc didn't do enough biopsies.

There's a lot of incorrect and outdated information in the medical community about this disease. Do your research and make your own decision. You may want to consider a different doctor for your daughter if this issue is always going to be a fight.

I would never eat a friend's cooking if I knew it contained gluten. When friends offer to cook for me, I either say I'll bring my own food or I go over and help them prepare the food. That way I can supervise. I've got great friends, though. They'll send me the menu and recipes, I can reply with the potential gluten trouble spots.

Ditto what Phyllis said. If I'm going to go to the effort and expense of taking a vacation, I want to enjoy myself. Eating gluten is a good way to guarantee I'm not going to enjoy myself. I'm going to have to find other ways to immerse myself in the culture.

You could google acronyms you don't know. I do it all the time, and google's always got an answer for me!

Yep and it makes my pocketbook thicker since i grow wheat lol.

paula

You grow wheat???? lol That's worse than me taking my celiac mother to the Minneapolis Mill City Museum to learn about this history of wheat flour production in the area [bTW, I actually do recommend the museum. Just stay out of the baking room and the "flour explosion" demo.]

The doctor told me that I only need to eat gluten for 2 or 3 days before taking the tests. Does this sound right?

No, that sounds completely wrong. The several estimates I've seen are you have to be eating about four servings of gluten for 3-6 months to get a positive. But if you've been gluten-free for a while, even that might not be long enough to damage your intestines enough to get a positive biopsy. You will irritate your intestines in 2-3 days, but you will not be able to wear away at the villi enough to show on a scope. If you're doing a blood test, you have to build up enough antibodies in your intestines and then have enough of them start leaking out of the gut into the blood stream to get a positive. Many of us were sick for years and still didn't get a positive blood test or scope. I had mild symptoms for nearly ten years and was very, very sick for 7-8 months and didn't get a positive blood test.

Maybe. It depends. There's a number of possible reasons for still having D.

1. Some people take longer than heal than others. You may be one of those.

2. You're not truly gluten-free. It's really hard to figure out all the sources of gluten in your life and eliminate them. We're talking wooden spoons, toaster, collenders, dog food, all your makeup, the lotions of everyone you live with, all the condiments you used pre-gluten-free, lipsticks used pre-gluten-free, etc.

3. You have other food intolerances that are noticeable now that gluten is out of your diet.

No experience with this drug, but if it makes you feel sick, I wouldn't take it. Maybe talk to your pharmacist about stopping and if you're supposed to wean yourself off it if you don't want to talk to your doc. I'm also going to echo your statement that if you're scared to tell your doc about this, you need to put finding a new doc at the top of your To Do List. As you go gluten-free your body will be absorbing more drug so often the dosages that you used to take can be decreased as you go gluten-free.

Congrats to your daughter on getting into such a great school! That's quite an achievement. That said, I know nothing about 504 plans Hopefully someone who knows something about them will reply soon.

If you know the parents, it might be worth it to ask them about meal times before babysitting. My parents used to go to the theater once a month when I was a kid. They would always feed me before the sitter came over. If the kids are going to eat while you're there, could you talk to the parents about you making something gluten-free? Or you might even be able to have the kids over to your house instead.

I'm pretty sure my parents used sitters who were their friends' children. That way they knew the sitters a little already and always knew that if something went wrong the sitter would call their parents who were friends of the family.

Do you play any sports? Coaching little kids sports is often a well paying, fun job.

I also enjoy it more. Before I used to make very plain, quick meals. Now I am much more creative with my food and want to spend more time cooking. I also love the challenge of making super good food. I even have dinner parties 2-3 times a year, plus I make dinner for a friend or two more frequently. I love to bake, and I love the satisfaction of making a cake that gluten-eaters still like when they can't tell that it's gluten free. So many people talk about the diet being so difficult and the food tasting bad, that I like to prove them wrong. I'm also more focused on making good tasting healthy meals. My spice collection has multiplied since going gluten-free.

Now, if you're talking about eating out and the joys in that, I do understand that. I often go for something very basic, not willing to get more adventurous because it's too much hassle to start asking more than a few questions about the food. That's why I do my own dinner parties.

My favorite cookbook is "The Gluten Free Gourmet". I haven't found a bad recipe in it! I'd also recommend you check out the local library. It's likely they have some gluten free cookbooks so you can at least check out some of the recipes before buying. If you like the recipes, it's a lot cheaper to make copies or write them out rather than buying the book, too.

I believe that gluten intolerance is a spectrum. You start out intolerant and do more and more damage until you finally reach full-blown celiac. You will spare your daughter from a lifetime of health problems with you commit to going gluten-free now. You don't want her to get to the celiac stage - by that time she'll be very very sick and that can't be good for a growing body.

Since she's mostly gluten-free, it's going to be hard to get a positive result from a blood test or scope. I personally don't think it's worth it to keep eating gluten just for a positive test, especially since she obviously feels rotten when eating gluten. I think you need to fully commit to the diet. It seems like she's softof kindof almost gluten-free but if she has a bit of gluten, well, no big deal, yada yada. You have to make the full commitment to going gluten-free. If your daughter needs a positive medical test to commit to this, I'd recommend enterolab. They can test for gluten intolerance for a year after going gluten-free, plus they can detect intolerance long before blood tests can.

Sounds like your daughter's biggest temptation is sweets. Why not get a cookbook and the two of you can start trying to make gluten-free sweets together. Try "The Gluten Free Gourmet" cookbook - I have never made a bad cake from that book.

I love how these parents are so concerned about their children's diet/health and then they take them to McDonald's.

Good point! Let's look at the big picture here, folks!

I would eat before you go. Or bring your own food. Or stop going. Or start doing events that don't involve food.

I wish I could give you better advise, but it sounds like these are people who aren't making any effort to understand and trying to educate them is just going to be one frustration after another. It's not worth the extra stress in your life.

Here is a list of places within ten miles of where I live that you can buy the new pill: Open Original Shared Link In the Mrs. Green's add it says it is not FDA approved yet but I would give it a try. I'm kind of surprised most people are so reluctant to even try it. I would not go off the diet 100% but I would at least have one day a week where I would take the pill and enjoy some regular food. I got to admit I really miss real Italian and Chinese food. The Italian substitutes aren't that bad but there is nothing like the real thing. I also guess it depends on the person though. I never had any of the symptoms of Celiac, only when I had accidental gluten after being on the diet was I affected and that was mostly through alcohol. I think the best thing is for each person to talk it over with there doctor and see where their gluten levels are before they start the pill and where they are and how they feel one month later. It will work for some and probably fail for some others. I think this is a good break through.

We just had a thread on the product in your link recently. It's the digestive enzyme Gluten Digest. This pill is not seeking FDA approval and is different than AT-1001.

I'm one of those who is not planning on trying AT-1001. I am always very nervous about side effects and ever since my run-in with celiac a few years ago I'm trying not to take drugs and other things that could be potentially toxic to my body. I also will not deviate from the gluten-free diet, pill or no pill, so there's very little benefit in this for me. I do see a benefit in taking it when I go to restaurants because of the risk of CC even when ordering a gluten-free meal, and maybe eventually I will start taking them for this situation. It's going to be a while before I decide to take that step, though.