Opening Pandora's Box

I usually only write blog entry each day, but today I wanted to post about this item as well.
From today I need to reintroduce some gluten containing foods, so that when my celiac testing kit arrives, my blood will contain the traces of these proteins. Then I will be able to do the test immediately. However I am afraid that this will indeed open Pandora's box and the old cravings will slip in again.
Just thinking about it is making me uneasy. After all the great progress I have made on a gluten free diet, why go backward? I guess it is because I had a postitive Iga antibody test done once before and my doctor told me to ignore it. Now I want to know the truth. Is it CD or just gluten intolerance, which the test will not show? If the test is negative, then I will continue to avoid grains like wheat, barley and rye, just as I am doing now. As the kit is coming from our Southern Hemisphere neighbour, New Zealand, it should arrive within the next few days. I want to get it over and done as quickly as possible, and with the least amount of pain.
After the gastric distress I suffered last week, I am not looking forward to it at all.

Celiac Testing Kit?

My dietary misdemeanor on Wednesday is still causing me gastric distress. Only this time it is so painful I have had to take pain relievers. I read about a Bio Card Celiac Testing Kit on the ETL Forum, so I have ordered one from a supplier in NZ. I have had a negative blood test before, but later I was told that for this to show any useful results, one has to have eaten some foods containing gluten prior to the test for the protein to show up in the blood. Of course this makes sense to me when I stop to think about this. As I had abstained from grains for a good two weeks before the bloodwork was done. It seems a good idea to retest. The best course of action would be a to have a biopsy done as this would show CD even while avoiding gluten and is 100% accurate. However I would rather not have this procedure if it's not needed, as it is expensive even with private health insurance. So I think this cheaper option will be useful in my case.
My doctor suggested that I might actually have a gluten intolerance instead. Her advise was to immediately go on a gluten free diet and to carefully monitor my results from gluten avoidance. She also suggested that because so many additives are added to grains, flours and breads today, maybe it is a reaction to any one of these, that is causing me the bloating and other problems.
I shall just have to wait and see. On a brighter note it is good that just by avoiding certain foods I can be and remain symptom free. In reality it is just so hard to buy food outside the home that is completely gluten free.
Once foods was good, clean and pure. Now there is so much tinkering and 'improving' done to the food supply, that simply eating any product can indeed be life threatening.
Most health conscious people spend a great deal of time trying to decipher food labels. These are often misleading and in the some cases, deceptive.
If I am having trouble with compliance at sixty six. Then my heart goes out to all the small children with severe food allergies, that have to face even greater difficulties every day of their lives. For them, the world is truly a hostile environment.

Sadly Gluten Free

It's a sad thing, but now I find I have to avoid foods containing gluten if I want my digestive woes to go away. For years I have been addicted to bakery goods. I adored anything that contained copious amounts of flour, especially bread. To me, there is no better aroma than the smell of fresh bread baking in an oven. I am drawn to baker's shops and those quaint dark little cake shops in St Kilda, ( a suburb of Melbourne) Somehow I never associated the bloating and burping with bread. I think I never wanted to. I did have a blood test done once and it came back clear. However everytime I eat anything with flour in, the same set of symptoms kick in.
My doctor suggested staying away from bread if I thought it was the culprit. Later another doctor told me that I have a cluster of illnesses now thought to be associated with gluten intolerance; asthma, osteoporosis, migraines and constipation that together suggest a gluten problem. I do not think I have celiac Disease though as this causes other more noticable problems.
Sometimes I just wonder if it is the wheat that we now grow for milling. When I was a kid I often stayed on a wheat and sheep farm in the Western Australian wheatbelt town of Koorda. There the wheat was so high that it came up to my chin as I ran through it. Now it would hardly reach my knees and no, it's not because I have grown. Wheat varieties are now shorter and they are higher in protein too. When I was a kid there where very few additives added to bread dough. Now flour is just one of ten or more ingredients listed on the label. Improvers, acidifers, finishing agents, added gluten, preservatives, all ensure allergy prone people have at least a few problems with eating bread.
In the 1940's and 1950's bread got stale and could only be used for toast the second day. Now here, some bakers only bake once a week and bread sold in this state, actually comes from Victoria.
Sometimes a gluten problem can be funny. A couple of months ago, my daughter Aly and I were having tea in Sizzlers. After carefully scrutinizing the salad bar menu, I selected some pumpkin soup for a starter. I only took a few spoonfuls when I realised that it was made from a packet mix and not from fresh ingredients. A short time later I burped very loudly. A little boy, around six years old looked at me with admiration and said "that was a big mans burp". His mother was horrified, but I thought it was funny. Here is this sixty six year old woman emitting burps that make our kids proud. My grandson Nathan thinks its cool. It is probably the only thing about me that is!