Gluten – Who Knew?

Until about four months ago, I didn’t even know what gluten was. I mean, I knew it was something in wheat, and I knew that health food stores seemed to stock things that were free from it. But it wasn’t until I got a call from my mother one day, announcing that my sister had finally found out what had been making her vaguely sick for years, and very sick for weeks, that I got a crash course in the ins and outs of gluten. My sister had been diagnosed with Celiac Disease, and I didn’t know it at the time, but my diet was about to change dramatically.

Celiac disease is best defined as a serious, genetic, gluten intolerance. Gluten, as it turns out, is not just in wheat, but also in barley, spelt and kamut, and is hidden in a LOT of processed foods under a hundred funny names (another good reason to avoid them). People with Celiac disease can’t digest gluten at all, and their bodies actually begin to destroy their small intestines in response to it. Over time, this leads to malabsorption of nutrients, as it’s the small intestine that’s responsible for taking the food that your stomach has broken down, and transporting the nutrients out into the bloodstream. “Classic” symptoms of celiac disease are diarrhea, weight loss, and bloating. However, the list of possible symptoms is enormous, and not all digestive related. Many people find that their fibromyalgia, their migraines, or their ADHD symptoms disappear once they remove gluten from their diet. To complicate things even further, a huge number of celiacs actually experience NO symptoms at all – even while their small intestines are being destroyed. It’s a complex disease.

Worst of all, most MDs in North America are totally clueless about it. The average Celiac waits 8-11 years for their diagnosis, often suffering badly in the meantime, often being prescribed drugs for other conditions (which frequently resolve as soon as the gluten problem is figured out).

Anyhow. If you’re interested in learning more about Celiac Disease, there’s a ton on the internet that will do a better job than me.*

Fast forward another couple months, and one of my brothers was diagnosed as well – ending years of digestive problems that he rarely even mentioned until they were gone. Clearly one or both of my parents is a carrier – it’s a genetic disease, after all. Which, of course, puts me and my other brother at risk. Unfortunately, diagnosis is far from a precise science. Bloodwork misses some 30% of celiacs, and intestinal biopsies are invasive and don’t always catch it either.

The long and the short of this is that though my bloodwork was not conclusive (a long story I won’t go into here), I decided to give the diet a try. My response was enough to convince me that while I may never get an “official” diagnosis (as the tests aren’t reliable once you’ve stopped eating gluten, and I don’t want to start again), I’m far better off without the stuff. I was really surprised by what a difference it made. I’m not really into describing the details of my digestion online, but suffice to say that a lot of things I used to take for granted have improved a great deal.

I’m not going to pretend that it’s not a pain in the ass... it totally is, at least when it comes to eating out. And I’m not going to pretend that I don’t miss a few things... because oh, how I would love to eat a big slice of pizza, or a Montreal bagel slathered in cream cheese. Some things can’t really be replicated gluten-free. But I’m rolling with it... and really, life is more than wheat. At least there's still chocolate. And avocado. And ice cream. And bacon. ;)

* If you’re interested in learning more, there are a whole host of gluten-free blogs online. I also recommend the Gluten-free Forum, which is a very active community of people obsessed with the topic of gluten. ;)