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I've always gotten my mattress and pillow dust covers from National Allergy Supply: Open Original Shared Link

If he has lots of stuffed animals you can put them in the freezer for a few hours to kill the dust mites, too. It's easier than trying to wash them regularly in hot water.

The HEPA air purifier is a great idea. My brother has one. He even started bringing it to friends' houses for sleepovers because their houses would be much dustier and full of animal dander, and he was getting sick. I would also recommend a HEPA vacuum cleaner if you don't have one.

National Allergy has some great dust cloths, too. The dust really sticks so you don't have to worry about it flying up into the air. Keeping the number of knickknacks to a minimum helps with dusting. And remember to vacuum under the bed periodically! I always knew it was time to vac under the bed when I started waking up with a sore throat.

I'd guess that it was general CC from lots of people and lots of gluten. I don't eat food at parties for this reason unless I've taken it straight from the bag. And especially with your other intolerances, you have to be absolutely 100% sure of the ingredients before eating.

It depends on the person, but some people get variable symptoms. I feel slightly differently every time I get glutened so it's hard to track my reactions. Some people also can't tell the difference between a gluten reaction and a reaction to another food they're intolerant to, so if you accidentally ingested the other food, you might think it's gluten. Something to think about.

We have a large family and this is all new to us. Our kitchen is far from gluten free. In fact my wife is baking cookies now for her and the kids and just the aroma/smell/odors are closing up my sinuses and making me lightheaded.

If your wife is baking with wheat flour, that has an extremely high probablity of contaminating something. Flour gets in the air and settles on surfaces and it's nearly impossible to clean it up 100%. Maybe you could consider making all gluten-free cookies?

What about potato chips. The thing I miss most right now is potato chips. I have tried Cape Cod chips and they are Gluten Free, but they taste like crap. I love just plain old Lays Ridges/Ruffles, but I'm scared to try them.

I eat Lays all the time. I *think* this is one of the brands that people have had trouble with contamination, but I've never had trouble. Hopefully someone else can chime in here Oh, and I'm also a huge fan of Lays Stax!

I started out having mild symptoms. So mild that I didn't realize they were symptoms. I lived like that for probably eight years until I got REALLY sick. You may be lucky that you got your diagnosis before things got really bad for your daughter. I also found that when I went gluten-free, a lot of my symptoms that I didn't even realize were symptoms went away. I didn't know I was so sick until I was healthy again.

Yep, you'll probably test negative. Don't feel you have to go back on gluten for traditional medical testing. Dietary response is a perfectly reasonable method of diagnosis. Benefits of a traditional medical diagnosis would be for some people it's easier to stay on the diet if you have "proof". Or to convince family members if they're skeptical. It could be helpful for kids, too, with school issues. Negatives include difficulty getting private insurance if needed later in life. I diagnosed myself on dietary response because I wasn't willing to keeping making myself sick so I could do traditional testing. I wanted to get on with my life.

I don't think you need to worry about veggie contamination.

As for the separate utensils, I wouldn't worry about knives and forks too much. I would worry about sharing sponges, though - I'd get separate ones. And maybe hand towels, too, if there's lots of gluten-eaters around.

I'm sure you've read about this stuff already, but separate wooden spoons, toasters, and collenders I think are a necessity. I would also check any pet food and personal care products. This includes the gluten-eaters products. If your gluten eaters put gluten lotion on their hands, they can easily contaminate the whole house. There was someone on here whose non-gluten-free mother took care of the gluten-free kids for a weekend. She did great with the food, but everything was contaminated from her lotion. Do you have separate condiments that could get "double-dipped" and CCed? A good compromise is to get squeeze bottles of everything instead of open jars.

Unfortunately, there probably isn't a lot you can do now that she's glutened. Most of us just have to ride it out, and I think everyone has some comfort foods or techniques to make them feel better. Mine is sleeping a lot. And eating way too much cheese and milk. I'm not sure a hospital could do much, either, unless she's getting dehydrated.

You really need to take steps to make sure this doesn't happen again. It seems like she was doing just fine when it was just you living there. I'm a little unclear about where the roommates come from, but you need to get them to follow the house rules about gluten. If they can't stop contaminating things, you could say the whole house has to be gluten-free or not let them stay there anymore. You daughter's health has to be #1.

I don't even go in Dairy Queen anymore since I found out their ice creams contain wheat! That was my first clue I had a wheat problem because I always got stomach pain afterwards.

Woah, I never would have thought to ask about that. Thanks for sharing.

Not much to add, but I did want to say some sprinkles have gluten. I had to throw mine out when I went gluten-free. Can't remember the brand, but it was a pretty common one, but it did say wheat right on the label so it was easy to pick out.

Ice cream: most ice creams are gluten-free. Obviously ones like cookie dough aren't, but I've never seen an ice cream with gluten. Not to say they're not out there, but it should be easy for you to find one you can eat. Kemps has a gluten-free list on their website.

Taco Bell is terrible for gluten-free people. Not sure about Arby's meat, but most fast food makes me very nervous. Sometimes I get a milk shake. There's enough calories in them to keep me going, even though it is all sugar so not the best. Sometimes I bring some pasta and put it in a cup of hot water. It will pretty much cook after five minutes or so.

String cheese is great. I do mini bags of M&Ms for a small snack. Fruit. Pretzels. Chips (lays stax, corn chips, etc)

I go to a celiac walk every year and I save all the sample items I get for these types of trips. I leave some in my car all the time - I just have to remember to take the ones with chocolate out during the summer so they don't get all melty!

I make those "magic peanut butter cookies" for longer trips - like flying to england. They're the ones made of just PB, egg, sugar and vanilla. I make them with sunflower seed butter because I'm also allergic to peanuts. They travel ok (they do get a bit crumbly, so take them in a tupperware instead of a ziploc bag), but they last a few weeks and don't get stale. Again, it's high sugar, but I use them if I'm really hungry and have nothing. They seem to take the edge off really well.

If you have a cooler, cold pizza is good.

Maybe you could compare the labels of the two types of bread for things like vitamins. Not sure how you'd compare the benefits of things like whole grain vs not, though.

I add ground flax seed to a lot of stuff. You could try that in place of wheat germ.

I use corn chips in place of crackers a lot, too. I like chips and cheese, chips and egg salad, chips and salsa, chips and taco meat with salad.

My mum used to do the hotdogs in a thermos of boiling water, too, and they were great!

How about cold pasta? I really like cold spaghetti or cold spaghetti pie (put cooked noodles and sauce with cheese on top in the oven and bake). Or quiche is good cold, too.

String cheese.

Oh, wait, I just realized you don't do cheese. Please ignore the cheese-related suggestions I love cheese and I figured I'd leave them in case some other mother stumbles across this thread.

Jello. Pudding (which I guess also has dairy, yikes!) I make it myself in those mini-tupperware with lids. It's way cheaper and more environmentally friendly!

Does she like Clementine oranges? I always think they're a fun way to sneak fruit into a diet - regular oranges and apples just don't have the same fun factor!

Now that I'm older I eat a salad everyday (although I can't imagine a kid liking that much) and something warmed up. Sometimes I throw in a small piece of candy - mini candy canes work well this time of year.

I hate to drag up such an old thread, but I wanted to add my experience with Don Pablo's today. I wanted the chicken taco salad using corn chips. They cook their chicken with soy sauce (yikes, really? soy sauce isn't even mexican!), and they add flour to the shredded cheese to keep it from sticking. They can prepare both without the soy sauce and flour, but it's something to be aware of. I've usually done ok at Don Pablo's, but I'm not sure I'd go again based on today's experience and all the strange places they use gluten.

I agree with Hathor. You probably have relatives who have the genes and the disease either hasn't been triggered yet or isn't bad enough to show up on a blood test yet.

I wouldn't keep going to the doctor if what they're doing for you isn't helping. It's a waste of your time, money, and health. I might go in one more time, insist they test for DH, and walk out if they won't. You're obviously pretty convinced it's DH, so why keeping postponing your health?

1. Should I avoid dairy for a little while?

Dairy (lactose) is digested by the tips of your villi so if you have a lot of villi damage it may be difficult to digest until you heal. It's really up to you, but it can't hurt.

2. Is soy okay or not okay? I've heard conflicting info on that.

Soy is ok unless you have a soy intolerance. I would give it a few months and if you don't feel better, then consider eliminating soy. Of course, there are always studies showing soy in general isn't good to consume, but I haven't done much research on that.

Oh, also I was going to ask, how long does it typically take to feel better? I read on this forum that some people don't see full effects for several months?

Again, this really depends. I felt better almost immediately with full recovery taking six months (this was mostly from loss of strength from being in bed for so long). Some people take a long time to get better. These are usually the people who have had undiagnosed celiac for years and thus have a lot of villi damage or those who have other food intolerances in addition to celiac.

I also wanted to ask about the Ore-Ida Fries--that might be worth a specific post to alert others! Do ALL their fries contain unlisted gluten???

The Crisper fries are not on Ore Ida's gluten-free list: Open Original Shared Link

I have no idea what the packaging says. I do eat Ore Ida's other gluten-free fries with no problems.

Ditto what everyone else said - if you eat even a little bit of gluten, you won't ever heal. There's no point in not going fully gluten-free because you're still going to have all the medical issues associated with eating gluten. And not everyone has worse symptoms after going gluten-free. My symptoms are much less after two years gluten-free.

I also like to rotate probiotics. I read an article in Prevention (very mainstream health magazine) that our gut probiotic make-up is very individual, like a fingerprint, so it is better to replenish it with as many different strains as possible. If you just stick to the most popular, acidophilis, and your gut mainly contained something else, you'll actually end up a little imbalanced,not at your ideal make-up.

I didn't realize there were other probiotics than acidophilis. Do you mind explaining more about other types of probiotics?

I would guess it's from the non-gluten-free pasta. Maybe you should start buying only gluten-free pasta to avoid the possibility of CC.

I guess there's two issues here. This first is, do you have celiac? If so, I would absolutely go gluten-free for the health of the baby. Testing is going to be difficult with you being mostly gluten-free, but the fact that you can't go more than 3-4 days without gluten sounds almost like a celiac addiction to me.

The other issue is whether you eating gluten will affect whether the baby will develop celiac. I'm not sure about this one. It seems like if the baby is going to get celiac, there isn't much you can do about it.

And, just to give you another opinion, I'd say stay out of Uptown -- it's full of poseurs and trustfund babies. The cool parts of Minneapolis are the riverfront and Northeast Minneapolis (just across the river from downtown)!

I would disagree with you! I love uptown, and I'm not a fan of northeast at all

If you've been gluten-free for a while, eating four pieces of bread the day before a scope isn't going to get you a positive result. I've read different thoughts on how much gluten you have to eat to get a positive test, but most say 4 servings a day for at least 3-6 months to even hope to get a positive. Since you've been gluten-free for nine months, I'd guess that your villi are mostly healed and would take a long time of eating gluten to show the kind of villi damage you'd see in a scope. Do you feel at all better? I see no reason to do this just for your doctor's curiosity.

I'm not 100% sure about the suet, but some bird seed does have wheat, but you can find stuff without it. I'm not familiar with brands, though. I'm not sure if you get the kind with seed in it.