Gluten Free diet

That's good to know miep - thank you, I will try it...
It is true - I don't eat bread very often but every now and again - I really miss a bacon butty
I'm definitely not a fan of Genius bread!!

Sainsbury's sell GF sourdough bread and my best friend/carer who has had much relief from a GF diet (she suffers every time she eats wheat but is not coeliac) says it's delicious. Bread was the thing she missed most and the Schaer ciabatta rolls were previous favourites. She hates Genius bread!

Hi kittylester my point about celeb faddy diets is that gullible people without any symptoms imagine that, if someone famous has gone GF, it must be the right thing to do.

barmyoldbat my older sister and I are both on thyroxine, as was our mother before us, but neither of us has any symptoms of gluten intolerance. I'd never heard there was a connection until reading this thread. My younger sister has been gluten intolerant for many years. She believes this was caused by living on bread (bread making machine fans beware!) and pasta for a long time when she was very hard up. She is also on thyroxine but the hypothyroidism came much later.

The most useful thing I've learned from this thread is that my sister's diagnosis of not coeliac may well be the result of going gluten free before she was tested.

I am a celiac as,well for some 24 years,thank God for Doves farm flour really versatile .I was given a book by Phil Vickery and Jaime Olivers,New,book superfoods has some recipies,I usually substitute the flour with the Doves,Farm ones,.I have wonders about the thyroid one as I do suffer from thinning hair ,the up side is I feel more,fit than I did at 30.

Good point kitty.....

And, yes - there have been great improvements in what is now on offer when eating out - at least I can enjoy a pizza with the grand-girlies without pain or embarrassment

Well done to you Anya my friend - you have certainly researched hypothyroidism well and passed on useful information on this thread.

p.s. The Sourdough gluten-free bread I tried two days ago - a Warburton's product - has had no ill effects

Happy weekend all x x x

lizzypopbottle, I am grateful to the celebrities who have 'popularised' faddy gf diets as it has means that my very real problem is much easier to handle.

I am not a coeliac sufferer and I periodically try eating a small amount of gluten (last time I tried black pudding) and it can take me a week to fully recover.

Lots of restaurant chains are really good as far as gf offerings are concerned - Carluccios, tgifriday, pizza express etc and lots of chipshops have one day a week when they offer gf.

and very nice it is too, can you let me have the recipe!

Barmyoldbat one for you too gf

Ok, coeliac disease and an under active thyroid are both an auto immune disease, and so is type 1 diabetics, Pbc, and a couple of other diseases. They are caused by your body producing anti bodies against that area. So usually if you have an under active thyroid you could well be a coeliac or at least gluten intolerant. If you go gluten free before have the final test to diagnose the coeliace disease then it won't show. And I am sorry Anya but it's not a case of get on with it, coeliace disease can throw up all sorts of other problems and does need to be monitored. By the way I have 4 of the 7 auto immune diseases and have full checks twice a year which have saved me several problems

I had to investigate all this for my daughter re her hypothyroidism Jalima which is why I'm a tad touchy on the subject. She had two miscarriages after her first child was born and it was eventually discovered that these were caused by lack of thyroxin. You've never have guessed as she was stick-thin and she put her exhaustion down to having a toddler.,

Thanks for the flowers - here's a (GF of course!!.)

Pax and and we can agree to disagree
It's OK and I admit I am not the fount of all knowledge
I had not noticed before that there was a link to hypothyroidism on the coeliac website and thought it may be useful.

How could I know that I knew that until I'd read what you wrote Jalima but please don't take that to heart, you caught me at a bad moment and I apologise. It's just that there are one or two or more people on GN (not you usually) who like to teach people to suck eggs.

I take your point and I think you take mine, even if you don't necessarily agree with me.

Pax

Jalima - we know all this
Anya not everyone may know it and I was addressing my post to harrigran; if anyone else wished to read it they are welcome to but it was specifically addressed to someone - if you knew it all anyway, why bother to read it?

summit2016.foodrevolution.org/broadcasts/
Have a look at this summit. Lots of free info every day from 30 April till 8 May.

It's a good place to,learn about the food we eat.

Faddy not daddy!

I think some celebrities have a lot to answer for with their highly publicised daddy diets. Gwyneth Paltrow springs to mind. They go gluten free and vegetarian on a whim, the press make a big thing of it and some of us follow slavishly. They cut out whole food groups and often put their children's health at risk too. If you have a digestive problem, it's sensible to address it but if you cut out meat, dairy or gluten on a whim for a couple of years, then decide to start eating it again, your gut may well complain and then you'll be convinced you were right all along!

My DH was diagnosed with Celiac disease last year. He also has diabetes (LADA). We are coping well at home as we just replace normal bread with GF bread (the most palatable being the ciabetta rolls from the supermarket ). We live in the Highlands were access to a bigger range of GF breads is unavailable but there is an artisan baker here on Skye who bakes glorious GF bread - but 7 loaves costs us nearly £25 so we buy it, freeze it and he eats it for a treat! I've bought a book on baking GF bread and, as he's at home all day and I'm at work, I was hoping he'd set to and try & bake his own bread (he does cook) but he hasn't so far.

GF foods are available in supermarkets or online but most of it involves cakes or biscuits high in sugar so no good for diabetics (or anybody, really). And, it's expensive.

Eating out is hazardous! On a trip to England recently, NONE of the motorway service areas offer GF food in any shape or form. We luckily found a Sainsbury's in one of the service areas and we bought a packet of GF rolls (the last on the shelf) and some cold meat so DH was able to make something to eat. With him being diabetic he must eat regularly so by the time we found the rolls he was getting desperate.

We stayed in different places on our trip and although the hotels were able to offer a GF alternative, it was far too expensive to eat in the hotel restaurants all the time so we had to eat 'outside'. In Liverpool we found 1 place which offered a GF menu (Cafe Brusco on the Pier Head) but as we're in our late 60s and I have rheumatoid arthritis (what a pair we are!) it meant walking for miles to get back to that particular cafe for lunch or tea!

We went to Chester & York where we discovered Cafe Rouge who also offer a GF menu. Tasty!

But gone are the days we can pop into a local cafe for a cheap sandwich and a cup of tea. We spent a fortune on eating out and we won't be doing that again any time soon!

Happydais I don't understand when you say that you learnt from your naturopath/nutritionist that "all inflammation begins in the gut and when it builds up it settles in the weakest organ." Does that include the inflammation of a wound on the hand which has become infected with bacteria and is not healing properly? Of the throat when it is reacting to a virus infection and trying to get rid of it?

Inflammation is the result of body cells working hard to counter a problem. I don't see how inflammation in one place can have "settled there" from somewhere else as though it is a substance which has collected up somewhere and is coursing round the body.

I suspect your naturopath/nutritionist has a wish to blame everything on nutritional problems. I do hope he/she didn't also recommend colonic irrigation as the cure for all this "gut inflammation".

Yes, you are absolutely right goose - on both counts. They are for occasional consumption only

I think I am very fortunate to have a GP who suffers from IBS and is probably one of the few medics I have come across who both understands and follows a gluten-free and Fodmap diet....

We are all very different - I guess we just have to find what suits us and keep on reviewing the situation.....

there was a recent TV show where everyone was on a gluten free diet & some were given added gluten & others some gluten free additive, the results in both cases were identical showing the placebo effect of the diet, remember that a lot of gluten free stuff is higher in fat & sugar than ordinary stuff & are a lot more expensive.

I am not coeliac but I am intolerant to gluten. I have suffered with chronic IBS for more years than I care to remember. This condition has ruled my life and inhibited many activities. Around 18 months ago - after trying many so-called cures - I, again went gluten free and also began to follow a Fodmap eating plan. This was fully supported by my GP and directed under a Fodmap-trained Dietitian. You can google Fodmap - loads of information via the Internet. It is restrictive and inconvenient- but what a difference it has made to my life. Plus today - DH was shopping in Morrison's and came across a sourdough- gluten-free loaf ? It really tastes like 'proper' bread - I'll let you know tomorrow how it suits my 'individual' system ?? After trying many of the 'free-from' supermarket products - I am most impressed with the M&S range. Following a Fodmap diet excludes many things for me - onions, garlic, mushrooms just to start with.... BUT it works for me ? Good luck to everyone

You don't have to have an official diagnosis to eat GF so I don't get your point. It's not as if there's any medication you have to have prescribed. The 'cure' is in your own hands
Just pointing out that some people could put themselves on a restrictive diet without necessarily needing to because they think they have an intolerance to gluten - and in fact CD is an auto-immune disease. And in fact, without a correct diagnosis, they could have something else which would be missed because they think they have a problem with gf and don't go to the GP.

Besides which, there are people out there who do not understand that a coeliac could be very ill if they eat anything that is not gf - understanding is better these days but I have been with DD and heard the tuts and seen the eye-rolling and heard the remarks about 'fussiness'.

That is not the case with Gracesgran, I do understand that.
And I am not trying to tell granny how to suck eggs (although they are gf as far as I know).

As far as Thyroxine is concerned, from what I have read the US have approved the use of something called "Armour" which is derived from pigs, for some this seems to be more effective in treating the symptoms of an under active thyroid but it is far more expensive to produce than the synthetic Thyroxine that is prescribed in the UK. In any event it has not been approved by NICE, I gather the synthetic drug is cheap to produce, but from forums I have been on this subject it appears that many don't think it works very well for them.

I do think that GG

Jalima - we know all this

You don't have to have an official diagnosis to eat GF so I don't get your point. It's not as if there's any medication you have to have prescribed. The 'cure' is in your own hands.

I understand that Levothyroxine doesn't work for everyone Anya and that we (UK) seem to disregard this more than some other countries. Is it true that we only look at 3 tests while other countries look at 4?

Don't you feel they should be doing more about this as it seems to affect a large number of people - mainly women of course and I wonder if that is why.