kbtoyssni

Welcome! Don't worry too much about the mess ups. It takes a long time to figure this out and I'm sure you'll accidently gluten yourself a lot in the first few months. For my first gluten-free meal I had corn flakes. I was so pleased with myself for reading the labels and finding something without wheat. It wasn't until several days later that I realized they had barely malt in them.

I felt better within a few days. I had a few relapses, but I had a major feeling-better breakthrough at two months and another at eight months and now I feel fantastic. The time it takes you to get better will depend on how much damage you had to your intestines and also if you have other food intolerances. I was about 90% better a few months ago, figured out peanuts make me sick and now I'm probably 95% of the way to perfect health

I'm a working mom with two little boys and a very stressful job (middle school teacher). I barely have time to grade papers and do my laundry...how can I justify spending more time checking labels, let alone spending money on special groceries? Besides this, food=love in my family. We're Italian (HELLO CARBS!) and dinner is very important. Now I'm inconveniencing everyone with my special requirements. Some people are kind; some act as though you're making it up for attention. One of my co-workers actually said, "I think Celiac is the new fad disease...like Chronic Fatigue." Isn't that lovely?

Anyway, I need to get honest with myself. It sucks to have a special diet, but there are so many people who have to take meds their whole lives to regulate their conditions. I know that I feel better when I'm diligent and I pay for it when I cheat. I am SO glad that I found this board because dealing with this disease alone really SUCKS. I hope that you make peace with your diagnosis and feel better on a gluten-free diet.

Thanks for hearing me out...I look forward to checking in here frequently for support.

What you really don't have time for is being sick all the time. Your sons and your kids at school need you - they need you to be at 100% for them because they're relying on you. You're not inconveniencing everyone with your "special" diet. You will inconvenience them if you purposely eat gluten and get sick. You can take the time you usually waste being sick and use it to read labels instead. It does take a lot of time in the beginning to figure everything out, but things get much quicker. Now I don't spend any more time grocery shopping than I did pre-gluten-free.

I always say that I still eat everything I used to, I just have to be careful about what brands I get and make a few substitutes for things like bread, cakes, pasta, etc.

Congrats!

Welcome! A lot of people have an initial few days of feeling great because they've greatly reduced the amount of gluten in their diet, but it's nealy impossible to have found all the sources of gluten in your life in a few days. I'd be willing to bet there's some gluten sneaking in somewhere. Here are some ideas of places gluten could be sneaking in:

-Have you scrubed your kitchen down?

-Have you replaced wooden spoons and scratched pans and your toaster?

-Have you replaced old condiments like mayo and butter that may be contaminated. ?

-Have you checked if your pet's food has gluten?

-Have you replaced lipsticks/chapsticks because they may be contaminated?

-Have you checked your personal care products for gluten?

-Have you checked that all your medications are gluten-free?

-Don't lick stamps or envelopes - the glue may contain gluten.

Even if you have gotten rid of all the gluten in your life, it's likely that your intestines are still healing and you wil have days where you just don't feel well until they heal all the way. You may find that other food intolerances start showing up the longer you're gluten-free (if so, you had them before, it's just gluten was making you so sick that you didn't notice).

It will take time, but hang in there. You'll get better soon!

but, do i really need to make sure bathroom products don't have gluten in them? It's not like i'm ingesting that stuff? I don't understand how that could effect me?

Yes, you do need to use gluten-free personal care products. Have you ever accidently gotten shampoo in your mouth? When you put lotion on your hands, you will then touch everything in your house including things in your kitchen which makes it easy to accidently ingest some. Do you ever touch your hair or face during the day? This would have the same effect as using gluten-lotion. I also occasionally bite my nails or chew on a pen cap so if my personal care products had gluten I'd likely be ingesting them in these cases, too. It's more of a precaution to use gluten-free products. I don't think it's worth the risk to have any sources of gluten in my house.

If it's a denial thing, you might want to talk to a therapist. It is a major life change and that might help you deal with it.

You might also want to think about the effect this has on your family, friends and coworkers. Is it fair to your family when you're sick all the time and running to the bathroom? Sometimes it's easier to do it for someone else. It reminds me of all those stories of people who were overweight for years and finally lost it when they had kids because they wanted to live to see them grow up. For years they couldn't/didn't lose weight because it only affected themselves; as soon as it affected other people they lost the weight.

Yes, you need to be dilegent about keeping gluten out of your diet! What your doctor should have said was that you only have mild damage so far. Which means you're lucky - you caught it before you got really sick. I'm sure if you keep eating gluten you would keep wearing away more intestine and in a few years you would be very sick and, as your doctor would put it, have a "bad" case of celiac.

Although you may not feel symptoms, eating gluten will lead to health complications down the road. Things like cancer, other autoimmune disorders, neurological problems, etc. You may even find that you do have some symptoms and don't realize it because it seems normal to you.

Gluten free isn't so bad. It's a lot of information at first, but after a few months you'll have the diet down and it won't be so hard.

I've been poring through as many of the threads and posts as I possibly can in the past few days, but my eyes are getting tired!! I've learned a lot from the posts but didn't want to ask anything that's already on...but I'm a newbie so I'm going to ask anyway! I've seen it mentioned about people using gluten-free personal care products; I don't remember ever seeing anything like that - where can I find them? (Stores? Internet? I didn't know that there was gluten-free toothpaste!!!!)

Also...do you really have to use different silverware and cuttingboards? Pots I can understand...this is all still new and tough to navigate sometimes! Please help! Thanks a million!

I use mainstreet personal care products - you just have to read the labels. I use Colgate toothpaste. I know aquafresh is also gluten-free. Sensodyne is NOT.

I use thermasilk shampoo/conditioner. Suave is also gluten-free. Aveeno is NOT and I don't think biolage is, either. I find that the more expensive shampoos are the ones with gluten because they're using oats and wheat and all this supposedly good natural stuff.

I'm sure if you do a search here on the different brands of makeup and personal care product you use, someone will have posted whether or not they're gluten-free.

You'll want to replace anything in the kitchen that's wooden because gluten can easily get into the cracks as well as scratched pans. I don't know if you share a kitchen with gluten-eaters, but if so you'll definitely want your own toaster. I would also recommend your own cutting board and pans due to scratching, but you should be fine sharing everything else (as long as it gets washed well!)

We had snow here in Minneapolis today, too! It makes me so excited about the upcoming snowboarding season! Most of my coworkers were all grumpy about the snow, but I love it.

That is too funny! Thanks for posting. As much as I complain about doctors being incompetent today, I should really be thankful for what IS known about this disease now.

I feel like you're feeling this way without knowing why. If you know why, it might help you deal with it.

-Would you rather that your in-laws make one meal that just happens to be gluten-free?

-Would you rather bring your own meal? Maybe because you're scared of cross-contamination or because you feel guilty that they're going to all that extra effort for you?

-Do you feel guilty that they make you special food and you don't eat it all?

If you can figure out why this is frustrating you so much, you will probably be able to talk to them about how you feel and maybe change the situation to what would be best for you. But to do that, you have to know what you want.

I don't have any suggestions for you, but I hope you find out the root of your problem and start feeling better soon.

Welcome! And congrats on finally getting a diagnosis. Seriously, getting a diagnosis was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I noticed you talked about depression. I used to have depression that went away once I went gluten-free. So you may find that you start to feel better the longer you're gluten-free, too.

Start out with really simple foods: fruits, veggies, rice, meat (make sure chicken/turkey don't contain broth!). Then slowly add in foods as you research their "safe-ness". It will take a while to figure out what brands are ok and what brands aren't. You won't be able to figure it out in a day. I'm still learning and I've been gluten-free for 13 months.

Then I'd replace any wooden spoons and cutting boards and badly scratched pans. And get a new toaster. Label all the condiments in your fridge with your husband's name and get new ones for yourself - the open ones are likely contaminated with crumbs. (If your husband is willing to be careful of cross-contamination, eventually you can have one of each condiment, but it's silly to throw away everything you have now if he can still eat it).

The third thing I'd do is start reading the labels on your personal care products. And get new lipsticks/chapsticks - they can contain crumbs of gluten.

Some candy corn is gluten-free. I think the Wal-Mart brand is ok.

Good luck, and ask any questions you need to. It's a big life change, but it's 110% worth it.

I've been gluten-free for thirteen months. Besides the initial few months where I accidently glutened myself A LOT, I think I've been glutened 2 or 3 times since May. So I guess that's once every two months or so. Which sounds really bad! Yikes, I need to be more careful. One was from a restaurant. Right now I feel like I've been glutened but I'm not 100% sure because I don't know what it could be from.

1. How long have you known you

Have you ever asked the people around you if they notice a difference in you if you eat gluten? You may have symptoms that you don't even realize. If so, it might be easier for you to be gluten-free for other people. I just figured out that peanuts make me sick. I love peanuts and for a while I definitely considered not giving them up. But then I thought about all the people who have to deal with me everyday. It's not fair to my family, friends and coworkers if I am grumpy, tired, brain fogged, complaining about stomach pain, etc all the time when I have complete control over whether or not I have symptoms. Even if you don't have symptoms right now, is it fair to yourself and your family/friends when you get cancer or other autoimmune diseases later in life just because you don't want to give up gluten?

Birth control pills can upset the flora in the stomach leading to candida overgrowth. Your symptoms could be caused by this.

Would this really happen within a few hours, though? Because that's how long it took me to start feeling sick. I do take acidopholis, so hopefully that will help with any stomach bacteria imbalance.

As you stated it can be a side effect. This last time I was on the pill it made my stomach upset.....it took about three months for my system to get used to taking it. I always felt nausus. I would tell your doc that the pill is making you sick and ask for a different script......there are quite a number of different pills out there. I hope you start feeling better soon.

It's just weird that I'm getting fatigue, joint pain and brain fog, too. And I have taken this pill before for probably a year with no problems. I guess things might be different now that I'm gluten-free, though. I'll give my doctor a call if I don't feel better in a day or two. Today I'm feeling a bit better, but still not 100%.

I was planning on doing this as well. Just haven't gotten the time to sit down and do it. I had one GI who should have caught it and if I sent him a letter I feel like it might be received as "you're incompetent". Which is true, but not the message I want to send

The other doctors I don't expect to recognize celiac. These are doctors like my ob/gyn and psycologists/psychiatrists. The symptoms I had were definitely gluten-related, but I don't expect a therapist to say "you're depressed, let's test for celiac". For these doctors, I'd like to treat it more as an educational things. Sort of a "thank you for helping me, I just found out the root cause and it's really common so maybe more of your patients have it".

I get joint pain and fatigue when I'm glutened, but I usually workout anyways. I have a lot of "scheduled" athletic activities as my social outlet: gymnastics, golf, rock climbing, etc, and I don't want to stay home and be a hermit just because I got glutened. I still struggle through. And struggle I do. I don't like to let on how badly I feel to other people, so I try to smile and not be too obvious that my joints are killing me and I'm dragging. I don't think it helps my symptoms, but it doesn't make them worse. Actually, depression is a symptom for me and keeping my social engagements helps with that.

I just started taking Apri birth control again on Sunday and ever since I have felt awful. Typical gluten symptoms - stomach pain, fatigue, joint pain, mild brain fog. This is the only thing that has changed in my diet in the last few days. I called the company to ask about gluten. The lady said it's gluten-free (which I agree with based on the ingredient statement), but that they do make a few drugs with gluten in them. When they make a new batch of drug, they clean and sterilize the drug-mixing-vats.

So, one question is: do you think there might be contamination? (I did start a new pack with a different expiration date today just in case I got one bad pack). I was on this drug a few months ago, and I was gluten free then, and it didn't bother me so I feel like it's probably ok.

My other thought is that it could just be the hormones bothering my stomach. It is listed as a side effect. But once again, I've never had problems with this pill before.

A third possibility is that I'm just having a few yucky stomach days, but I seem to have too many symptoms for there not to be a reason.

Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks!

Was the deli meat the kind they slice for you? If so, it's possible that it was contaminated. If any of the meats that are sold at the deli contain gluten, the slicer will be contaminated. What kind of meat was it? Chicken and turkey can contain broth to "plump" it up which has gluten.

I have horrible knees, too, and I love the elliptial. Get a great workout without any pounding.

I've also recently started rock climbing. Depending on how bad your knees are that might be ok. It's low impact, but you will need to be able to push up from a bent-knee position. I couldn't do it pre-knee surgery, but I can now.

My favorite sport is gymnastics. Kassiane - what level are you? I just started doing gymnastics again (I'm 24), except my best event is bars and my worst is floor! I watch gymnastics, coach gymnastics and do gymnastics.

I also bike, go rock climbing, ice skate, golf, water ski. And I want to start snowboarding this winter.

I love watching hockey. My favorite team is the Univeristy of Wisconsin - I went to school there.

I like to keep frozen peas and corn around for when I've run out of fresh veggies and don't have time to run to the store.

I'm also in love with corn tortillas. I buy packages of 36 for $1.16 at my local Cub foods. I use them in place of bread for sandwich-like wraps, for tacos, for quesedilas (which I make several times a week - I know it's not the healthiest to be frying cheese in tortillas all the time, but it's so quick and cheap).

Watch the store ads. Canned veggies go on sale a lot so stock up when they're cheap.

I would not make a second meal for your boyfriend. He can eat what you eat, gluten free won't hurt him, but having to cook a second meal is hurting you. It increases your risk of cross contamination plus it's just exhausting and will only lead to resentment. If he wants gluten-foods, he can make them himself.

If you're cooking, I'd recommend making more than you need for one night. Leftover rule when you work all day. I often make up enough rice to last me the entire week.