I have just received some test results from my doctor and it appears that I have a severe gluten allergy. My doctor’s recommendation is that I immediately begin a gluten free diet to avoid any long term damage in my intestines. Does anyone have any advice for someone starting a gluten free lifestyle? Obviously I realize that I have a major shift occurring in my life right now but I am excited to be able to race to my full potential in 2012. Any helpful hints or insights would be greatly appreciated.
You will find that gluten is in a TON of things. Become a label reader. The worst thing is that soy sauce is on the list! you can get gluten free tamari now at a lot of places but not at most sushi bars. I bring my own and the chefs know it and respect it.
I live and train as a GF athlete. If you have any specific questions or need any help navigating the waters, feel free to shoot me an email.
Personally I have become a high carb paleo athlete and its working super for me.
My approach to this matter is rather extreme, but it really works and lets you learn you body really well.
My wife is very gluten intolerant, when she made the switch to gluten free she was still having reactions from time to time even though she only at “Gluten free” stuff, rice and veggies and beans. Finally we went to a natural doctor (way more expensive, but when you are dealing with the problems she was you will try anything) and the doctor let us know that cross contamination is extremly common among grains and the only way to be relly sure was to basically go on a Paleo style diet for a while and then every once in a while experiment with adding some things back in. The reason for this is that right now you are probably dealing with so much residual inflammation and other side effects that you won’t tell if some thing reacts with you because you will just percieve it as “normal”. By going on absolutly no grains for a few months (from her experiance you need at least three to full reset you system, and a good probiotic in the meantime) when you do reintroduce something you will tell in short time if it reacts to you. With her we discovered that she reacts to sorgum, spelt, buckwheat, and all of the common glutenous grains… but she can handle rice, quiona, amaranth and small amounts of organic corn (the non-organic will react if in a quanity above a tablespoon or so).
Good luck to you and feel free to ask any questions!
Check out the Danna Korn books. We started with the Wheat-Free, Worry-Free 8 years ago. It’s an easy read and very informative. Some of the other books she’s had a hand in are at http://www.amazon.com/Danna-Korn/e/B001H6IBBQ. Also, check out www.celiac.com for info and a great forum. Good luck. It’s definitely doable and only seems like a ton of work at first.
Different things. Either way READ LABELS on everything you buy.
Watch for ingredients that contain wheat/gluten that don’t always list “wheat” as part of that ingredient. For example, soy sauce is made with wheat and is used in other sauces such as teriyaki. Some teriyaki sauces just list soy sauce as an ingredient but does not break down the soy sauce ingredients.
Eating out sucks. Don’t trust that waiters understand your issue. Wife has been served salad with croutons after explaining she can’t have wheat. Remember, it’s NOT the waiter’s fault. Most people just don’t know this stuff (you yourself are asking for help - always remember that). French fries don’t have gluten but what else goes in the deep frier? Chicken fingers? What’s that breaded with? Watch out!
Some restaurants use fillers in their meat. What is it? I read a news story a while back that said the meat in a Taco Bell taco can be as much as 30% wheat.
Lots of mexican food is gluten free. Obviously you can’t have flour tortillas but corn tortillas are (usually) ok.
Don’t waste your money on over priced “gluten free” products that have always been so. I’ve seen “gluten free” olive oil for triple the price of other brands. Olive oil does not contain gluten. Never has.
Gluten free dessert products (cookies) are, for the most part, complete crap. Taste like stale ass. Buy some g-free flour and make your own cookies. Wife makes chocolate chip cookies using the recipe on the chip bag. She subs only the flour. Fantastic cookies! G-free cookies from Whole Foods? Ass.
Watch out when taking advice from the “gluten intolerant” or “gluten sensitive” crowd. These people (for the most part) do not have an actual disease that will kill them if they consume gluten. It’s not the same as celiac or gluten allergy.
You are about to embark on a journey that doesn’t end. Good luck.
The main things to avoid, of course, are wheat, barley, rye, spelt, kamut, triticale, and maybe oats. I guess the jury is out on oats. Of course these things and purified gluten are often in many premade foods. Gluten free products often contain spelt if they are at all bread like. Spelt is a relative of wheat and contains gluten that is slightly different. Many people with gluten sensitivity are able to take in spelt and kamut (another wheat relative) but it really depends on your individual case.
I think it wouldn’t be a bad idea depending on how savvy you are around food, to see a dietitian. See if your doctor can set something up for you.
Thank you all for the fast and incredibly helpful responses. I don’t know yet wether this is an issue of intolerance or celiac. I have a appointment with my primary care physician and he has ordered a colonoscopy to examine a tissue sample. The most frustrating part is that my wife and I are huge foodies. There are so many wonderful and amazing foods that I may not get to experience again. But I guess if it’s a toss up between soy sauce and going to the bathroom up to fifteen times a day I’ll make the necessary sacrifices. This will be an interesting new direction for my blog as well. Evolving into a triathlete over the past year and a half has been an inspiring transition. This new transition to a gluten free triathlete will no doubt be a worthy challenge on and off the course.
Hey Mark,
Kat Donatello here. I have a severe allergy…shoot me an email and we can talk. I teach Jeff’s patients how to shop and cook, and as you can therefore deduce Jeff’s practice focuses on this… Kat@pumpkinmantriathlon.com
Trust me…you will be fine after some adjustments and your performances are going to go thru the roof!
I too can help you learn how to cook and eat diffrently as to avoid reactions. We can get you feeling better than you ever have! Feel free to contact me directly.
I have just been diagnosed as being gluten sensitive. My main issue is asthma. Gluten appears to irritate my lungs. It’s not like I’m hyper-allergic to it; I will not go into Anaphylactic shock if I eat a piece of toast.
My question to the medical experts is - just how fanatical do I really need to be in getting glutens out of my diet? Yes, unfortunately, my bagel addiction is out. But there are a bizzilion food products that have or COULD have gluten (risk of cross-contamination during manufacturing, a la PowerBar).
Mercury is certainly something that one would not want in their diet, but if you eat fish, you’re getting some trace amount, like it or not.
So how crazy do I really need to be in going gluten-free?
You may get to the point when your healed gut (gluten is a potent gut irritant for most) becomes sensitive enough to gluten that a trace exposure causes an inflammatory reaction and pain. Over my 3 years of GF eating I went from being able to tolerate small bits of bread and lots of oatmeal to not being able to handle the trace amounts in Clif Bars and oats. This is actually a good thing as it means that the general inflammation in your gut has subsided. However if you want to maintain a bit of inflammation and hence your ability to eat small amounts of gluten, just include a little in your diet here and there. That approach wasn’t really worth for me as it is always hard to know the difference between a little and an aggravating amount.
Thanks for the inPut. I’ve only been GF for approx 3 weeks, and I understand this with be a Many Months in the Making change.
My gluten issue in NOT my gut, however. It’s asthma. I’m still doing a lot of research on the whole gluten issue. I was just reaching out to see if anybody here had info on gluten-free endurance nutrition.
First make sure you are getting an endoscopy as it is the upper intestine (duodenum/jejunum) where the damage occurs a colonoscopy will not diagnose celiac disease. Also DO NOT start a gluten free diet until AFTER the endoscopy as you do not want the damage to heal and have it come back negative and be diagnosed with gluten sensitivity as opposed to celiac as the level of strictness to the gluten free diet can be different with the two disorders.
How crazy you need to be will depend on a couple factors. First, whether you have celiac or a gluten intolerance. If you have not been tested for celiac disease you will want to get that done ASAP as eating small traces of gluten as a CD patient can cause major problems with co-morbidities down to road.
Assuming you have been tested for CD and those test have come back negative the strictness of your diet is completely up to you. With the very limited research and knowledge of gluten sensitivity everything points to is as being an acute reaction. There for the only “price you pay” for eating gluten is the symptoms you get (sounds like in your case asthma reaction) when you eat gluten. So basically you need to be as strict as you want to be. You do not necessarily have to completely eliminate gluten from your diet as CD patients do, it is trial and error to find the amount of gluten your body can handle without cause symptoms. In some patients this is trace amounts (like celiac) and in others it can be much more.