This post is designed to lead on from 'Diagnosis of coeliac disease' so you should read that first.
Having received the results of my Coeliac test, the news
slowly began to sink in. I gave up gluten more or less straight away, before I went
to the follow up appointment or saw the dietician. At first I didn’t take it
all that seriously, which was a bit of a mistake. I used the same toaster for
my gluten free bread as for normal bread, and shared jars of spread with gluten
crumbs. I did check ingredients lists for gluten but sometimes I bent the rules
somewhat. For example, I was on a journey somewhere and I wanted one of those
little packs of sushi for lunch, it said it had wheat in it from the soy sauce.
I bought it anyway and just didn’t use the soy sauce, when really the sushi
itself could have had soy sauce in it.
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| Dirty gluten crumbs |
The hardest thing to give up were bread and beer. Bread was
difficult because my mum was just starting to get good at baking and I couldn’t
eat her bread anymore. We went on a gluten free artisan baking course to try
and learn how to make nice gluten free bread. However, the course seemed to be
more focused on avoiding additives and using natural ingredients than producing
decent bread. If you remove gluten from bread, which normally relies on this
for structure, texture and is essentially what makes bread bread, you’ve got to
replace it with something. Usually this is xanthan gum, guar gum, chia seeds or
egg. Some of the bread we made tasted quite nice, but they didn’t really hang
together.
Giving up beer was hard because I was an ale drinker. I used
to drink cider but I would often end up coughing with an itchy throat and being
sick, I realised this was because I was allergic to apples and so I was left with
alcoholic ginger beer as my thirst quenching beer-like drink. However, I don’t
think alcoholic ginger beer is a session drink. For a long time I mainly drank
wine in pubs, or wine spritzers in the summer. In summer 2014, I decided that
my quality of life would increase a lot of I were able to drink cider. I take
anti histamines everyday anyway, so I thought it wouldn’t be too bad, and it
wasn’t. It did make my mouth a bit itchy at first, and I started off by just
drinking half pints, and trying out perrys first, because I’ve always been less
affected by pears than apples. Now I can drink cider with no problems at all.
I think having started being a bit slack made it more
difficult to adjust to being gluten free. I visited the dietician who emphasised
how important it is to be properly 100% gluten free if I want my insides to get
better, even when I’m not having symptoms.
Now I have my own toaster, which I’ve written on with a
sharpie:
I’ve also used toastabags when I’ve been on holiday, but at
home it’s easiest just to have my own toaster since they’re only £5 from a
supermarket. I also have put ‘GF’ labels on my jars of things that might end up
being contaminated:
My lovely flatmate at uni was so understanding that he even
put this label on one of his jars when we both had the same pesto:
I always clean up crumbs before I cook now. I do feel better
than I did when I was eating gluten- the main thing is that I get ill a lot
less often and when I do get ill I get better a lot quicker. My advice to newly
diagnosed coeliacs would be to take the gluten free diet seriously from the
offset. Try to learn how to explain the disease and answer questions that you
will inevitably get:
So what is coeliac disease, is it an allergy or something?
It’s not an allergy or intolerance, but an autoimmune disease where the
presence of gluten in the diet triggers the immune system to attack healthy
tissues in the body. This causes damage to the digestive system, which can cause
diarrhoea and vomiting.
If you eat this (holds up piece of bread, for example), will
you have to go to a and e? No, but I will feel pretty ill for the next couple
of days and it will effect me for several months.
If it’s not that serious, why don’t you just try a sip of my
beer? Or a corner of this biscuit? Because even a little bit will still make me
ill!
Oh my (friend/aunt/brother) is gluten free, but they know
their threshold so they can eat like one sandwich a week or a pint every other
day or something… Some people with intolerances are able to tolerate a certain
amount of gluten without any ill effects, it’s different for Coeliacs, even a
small amount of gluten will damage my insides.
Good luck!
