What are the positive aspects of a Co... - Gluten Free Guerr...
What are the positive aspects of a Coeliac / GFD lifestyle for you? [multiple choice]
FionaGFGAdministrator108 VotersPlease select all that apply:
Are you mad... There is no positive aspect!!!
It has ruined my life and I'm afraid any 'happy clappy' looking on the bright side is just foolish and misplaced.
Hey the circus, it will get better I promise, you just have to cut out all foods that contain gluten, and then you start to feel healthy, its a great diet, yes o.k. you feel down, and perhas feel as if you stand on your own butyou don't. just think you have one of the diets that is so healthy, and its a life style change, try and look at the benifits, not the downside, will be thinking of you and wishing you well. 
Hi, how long have you been coeliac? I totally empathise with you, it is a hard diet to stick to. Eating out is a nightmare. Going to people's homes creates lots of difficulties. The cost of GF food is too high. I hate it when other people think I am just a fussy eater. I absolutely hate it if I ingest even the smallest amount of gluten, being sick for 48 hours is not nice. To look on the bright side, if you are to have something wrong then you could do a lot worse. I am coeliac now for 24 years and just wish I could eat normally.
How long have you been gf, TheCircus? I've been on a GF diet for almost 3-4 years. I'm also watching my carbs. since I have diabetes, as well. I'm type 1.
After researching it's history, causes, effects, and preventive measures to care for my celiac family, I now have a better understanding of what food and lifestyle has done to my own body. For most of my life I always been watchful of my health but these changes made to improve my Celiac Family's life gave me the emphasis I needed to keep myself on a better healthful lifestyle track.
I don't always feel positive about it, but I try to remember that I have a life-altering illness that can be fixed by not eating toast (and some other stuff that made me feel poorly). That makes me feel like one of the luckiest people around?
I caught a radio interview with a clearly very intelligent man last week that had parkinson's disease....having CD doesn't even hold a match to that, never mind a candle!
I allow myself a blooming good sulk for twenty minutes every Friday evening, although I usually get bored after ten minutes and wander off to do something else
Its great that you all fell so well. My blood test says no gluten in my diet and i'm still very ill over two years later not all coeliacs make a full recovery.
I really do feel for you, I was really poorly for about eight weeks......but started to improve instantly on changing my diet. I guess it's difficult to appreciate it from a different perspective.
What has your medical advice been like, have you found that helpful?
Hi Vince, If you have had coeliac disease over quite a few years, especially if you have been diagnosed late, then it does take much longer for the villi to recover. Normally villi are born, grow - a time when they may become thick or thin, then they perish and die - all within a spate of three days. So it is a natural course of events to keep producing new ones. For coeliacs they part of the intestine where most of the villi reside, which is mostly on the ileum (the third part of the small intestine), a perfect velvet of several million villi - once damaged they cannot grow back in perfect form - sometimes for quite a while - but it will become healthy and normal once again.
The main thing to speed it on its way and not to cause further damage is to make sure that you are not taking in unexpected gluten from sources that you may not know about. Sadly, some of the coeliac sites promote products that contain up to 20ppm of gluten in their guidelines of a healthy coeliac diet and the problem with that is any amount of gluten causes the villi to perish and/or prevent them from becoming whole again. The 20ppm gluten will also not show up in your blood tests, or so I am led to believe. As gluten is poison to us then it makes sense for us to completely rule out ingesting any. So I would advise that you check to see whether any of the food that you have contains any form of Codex wheat starch, check for maltodextrin, etc, malted cereals and beer all have small amounts of barley gluten in them, wine can also have gluten in it, soy sauce, any form of cooking sauce, oats not only contain avenin but even those that are listed as pure oats or washed oats or gluten free are harvested usually by the same combines as wheat and barley so will have small amounts of gluten because they will, I believe, only guarantee upto 20ppm gluten rather than containing no gluten. Many coeliacs also have issues with the avenin which is a sort of oat gluten as well. Chocolate may contain wheat and wheat starch and so may other forms of sweets, Yoghurts unless they are plain may contain wheat starch or maltodextrin, etc. There is also the dreaded cross-contamination issue or sharing t-towels, cutlery, etc .. that we all have to be wary about - I tend to rinse before I use things especially if I've had a spoon resting on the work surface ..
If there are any food items that you are not sure about then perhaps pop them in the questions section and hopefully someone will have some experience in whether they are likely to be a problem.
I hope that is a little help.
I also feel for you Vince as after 15yrs I am still not well. I am now considering leaving dairy out of my diet and maybe going on an exclusion diet to see which other foods have an effect. My thyroid after a 2 year fight with my gp was found to be underactive and getting the correct balance has taken 5 years. I have recently pushed for tests for vit D as I knew I was always down in the winter months. On top of this they have now diagnosed me with fibromyalgia. All of these are to do with the autoimmune system and obviously having suffered from coeliacs all my life, though I was in my 40s when diagnosed (once again I had to fight to get tested), it makes me wonder how many vitamins and minerals, I, like many others, have not absorbed in the past and is having an impact now. I was found to be low on vit D and now taking supplements. Not all of it is related to coeliacs but what annoys me is the fact that many people just think you're being fussy over food and seeking attention. You know your own body and know when something is not right but it gets harder trying to explain this to a gp.
I am not sure but I never felt ill so having to adhere to a GF diet seems very frustrating, being coeliac was picked up as a by-product of another test. Really nice food contains gluten, so completely agree with Elizida, It is rubbish! But also not the end of the world.
Medical advice we found what's wrong with you now sod off and we will do another gastro test just to see if you are cheating doh! what would be the point of cheating? its not worth it.
i havent found anything good about being a coeliac even though i stick to my diet 100% i still feel worn out all the time,
I must be a lucky coeliac, I was diagnosed at 16 months of age, (63 years ago) at that time things were still being tested, I could only eat energen rolls, there were no freefrom food, and they kept me on a banana diet as they believed that helped. At 12 I eat normally as they thought things were OK. I was rediagnosed at 40 when I was just labelled neurotic, as II never felt well but didn't actually show the normal signs. Anyway other than weight gain, I feel fantastic. We travel all over the world, and have had no problems. Make the most of things, as we have the little c and not the BIG C.
I LOVE being gluten free!!! At first it was such a hassle and I couldn't find hardly anything I could eat but now a year on, I know almost everything I can eat, I love all my meals, I feel healthy for the first time in years and I wouldn't eat gluten again if you paid me. They keep trying to make me eat gluten so I can have a biopsy but every time I try I feel so ill I vow to not eat it again and do without the biopsy. It does get better, believe me. Very scary at first but restaurants and takeaways are all becoming more gluten/coeliac aware and the choice of food is increasing all the time. Just give it time - I genuinely feel great, no more bloating, sickness, I am not dizzy anymore, my blurred vision has disappeared, hair stopped falling out, not tired all the time, all good
For me I don't think there is no positive side to having coeliac disease. I am pleased that I discovered what was causing me to have diarrhoea all the time so that I could do something about it but it has left me low in confidence that I will ever be able to go out for a day without being anxious about needing a loo. I was aware of all the rubbish that is put in processed food before, so it hasn't even brought me that revelation. Now I struggle to find things to eat, as I choose to be vegetarian (and have been for many years) and now cannot have wheat or lactose, I will never be happy eating out, although I wasn't big on it before, but from reading people's comments here I have decided that eating out is more than likely to cause me to be glutened, so I will avoid it. I still drool at the smell of crusty rolls, I had a dream last night that I ate one and woke up in a panic, and I have also dreamt of eating doughnuts too! I am learning slowly to cope with it but I doubt that I will ever see any benefit from having CD as it has more restrictions and limitations than it does positive aspects. I was diagnosed in April and am still losing weight, I am still trying to establish some kind of reasonable diet.
I am finding I am a lot more aware of what foods I am putting into my body, I have other health problems and I am becoming a lot more aware of how my body is reacting to various foods, milk seems to cause a mild allergic reaction and my most recent discovery is celery I was awake all night itching like I had fleas after I made a fresh juice and put celery and beetroot ad carrot and apple in it, then looking back had imilar milder reactions other times I ate the evil stick like vegtable, this is as well as sensitivity to gluten, it is a complete pain in the arse and I am spending my first night away from home at the weekend visiting hubbys friends so am panicking a bit, but another positive is that is has opened my world to a whole load of delightful and exciting new foods that I never ate before and I am enjoying cooking again, I have gone back to being vegetarian, believe me dairy and glutenf ree veggetarianism is interresting bordering on vegan, except eggies but I am loving it and feel better about what I am eating and how I am not encouraging the mistreatment of animals.
Totally agree with the circus. After years of stomache problems and misdiagnosis, since I was about 20, 41 now, I came across an article on the net. My doctor didn't want to get me tested and told me not to believe everything I read online but I insisted and he relented. When I went for my biopsy I was told the lining of my stomache was bald, bleeding and looked infected. 1 visit to the dietician, lots of grumbling from my doctor on how much my prescriptions cost the NHS and not to ask for anything but bread and mixes and then I'm forgotten. I've been gluten free since Jan 2011 and still feel I'll. I've got constant joint pains, I'm tired all the time and have lost soooo much hair over the last 7 years and it's still shedding. It's a good job my hair was thick or I'd be as bald as a coot by now. People seem to snigger when I ask if things have gluten in them when I'm out. Even members of my family still don't understand. They think I'm faddy and on "that funny diet". I was a chef but feel like my career has gone down the pan. To me, there are absolutely No positives to having this. May feel different in 20 years but I won't hold my breath. Sorry to be negative but, that's just the way I feel about it.
If I was relying on gluten free substitutes to try and continue with my diet looking like it was pre-diagnosis, it would have been a nightmare and I'd be really depressed about it.
What I did was make the decision that I wanted to be more naturally gluten free than go for all the substitutes (and lets face it, gluten free bread is never going to taste like the real stuff). I guess I was lucky in that I already really liked rice based ethnic foods (indian - yum!) and had already experimented with grains like quinoa, so that made it a bit easier.
It definitely takes time to change your food patterns, but I really don't find it a hassle eating out now. I don't always choose to eat out, almost always carry some kind of emergency food stash with me, and I often take my own lunches, etc, but actually I don't find it that much problem finding some kind of food I can eat - even if its only a salad, or fruit and cheese.
I think too the difference I noticed in how well I felt once I got established on a GF diet really helped make me realise that there is no way I want to eat gluten again.
having said that, I do occasionally have cravings for some things that you just can't make decent gluten free versions of. Hot cross buns, and yorkshire puddings. would be what I miss most, but its not a big deal now.
I agree with The Circus...it's very hard to think of much positive about having Coeliac which is why I only ticked the 'knowing you're trying to stave off cancers etc' line. Fortunately I love vegetables and naturally gluten free foods, although there are many glutinous ones I really miss. I agree about it being SO embarrassing having to 'make a fuss' when eating out or put people to extra trouble if you go to them for a meal, and also having to watch guests in your own house like a hawk so they don't put their knife into your jam without wiping it. LOL One of the things I used to so enjoy about travelling somewhere new was trying the local delicacies, which of course is now pretty much impossible. I also used to love making pastry and bread, scones and yorkshire pudding etc...none of which is really possible without gluten. I do feel better in myself of course, and I suppose it helps me resist junk food ...but that's about it.
