This entry was posted on Friday, December 21st, 2007 at 12:04 am and is filed under Health. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I first learned about gluten when my niece was diagnosed with celiac, in early 2003. By the end of the year, half my family was gluten-free. Now, this was back in the days when they first realized how prevalent celiac disease actually is. I was working as a teacher’s aide in my kids’ school at the time, with 500 children in the school, and not one of them had been diagnosed with celiac. I used to walk around the yard wondering, which 4 or 5 kids here have celiac?
{Just for the record: my kids had all been tested for CD. They were the only ones in the school that knew for sure that they DIDN’T have it. But it obviously runs in our family, my father-in law has celiac, and my husband and most of our kids just feel profoundly better off gluten. And so a bakery is born.}
Anyway, when you approach a large group of people with the assumption that celiac disease is here, just waiting to be found, an amazing thing happens. Your eyes open up, and you see evidence of gluten intolerance everywhere.
This one had an unusual number of cavities as a child, and gets eczema, and breaks her arm every time she falls down. Ka-ching! This other one doesn’t seem to grow, he gets brain fog every afternoon after his sandwich, and his mother reports that he actually vomits after eating pizza or bagels & cream cheese, she thinks he’s lactose intolerant. Ka-ching ka-ching!!
In fact, you’ll start to try and filter the data — so many kids seem small, or complain of stomach-aches and diarrhea. It’s not possible that all of these people have celiac, which ones are most likely? Well, maybe if you pay more attention to trends in whole families…. So, that girl with the second broken arm this year, has a brother with ADHD; and come to think of it, the brother is kinda small…. And the number of kids you’d like to see get tested just grows….
Now when I get started (”They’ll find a gluten problem in that family one day, you mark my words!”), my kids laugh at me. “Imma,” they say, “you think everyone has celiac!”
We were in the car the other day and my daughter challenged me: “I bet you think that lady has a gluten problem!” she said, pointing to a random woman out the window. I peered over her to look.
“Well, you know Channa, look at the hunchback on that woman, she’s got terrible osteoporosis, and she looks only 50-ish. She should get tested!” And that just confirmed to them all that I’m hopeless.
January 3rd, 2008 at 7:03 am
Although I spend my days in a GF environment, I thought I would be the last to eliminate gluten from my own diet. Well, I have and WOW, what a difference it has made. Besides better digestion and a happier tummy, I think the biggest change is that I’m no longer “addicted” to simple carbohydrates. I used to get blood sugar “highs” and “lows” throughout the day and need something sweet after meals. Now that I no longer eat wheat bread, pasta, crackers, etc. these cravings have gone away. Hmm…? Either Sandee has brainwashed me
or there is something to this gluten free diet.