“Gluten is highly pervasive in the Western diet and environment and can be found in unexpected places, such as medications or dietary supplements. [….] Furthermore, as gluten is so widely present in the food industry, a GFD may lead to low fiber intake or nutritional deficiencies.” https://loom.ly/dUMB3ig

A great article laying out the land of celiac disease research talks about how difficult a gluten free diet is to maintain. They are right, it is hard to make a gluten free diet work in modern society.

But what I think the article fails to grasp is that our lives are consumed with maintaining the diet. We alter our lives so much to cater to a gluten free diet. Fear of unexplained or unknown gluten exposure causes many to avoid things they once enjoyed – family gatherings, travel, meals outside the home, and more.

Immediate impacts of unknown gluten exposure are widely varied, so much so, any blip in health causes gluten to be blamed. An escalating fear cycle is created because we have no idea if we got glutened from doing something. The thought process goes – well, I got sick doing X, so I can’t do X anymore and eventually, lives become smaller and smaller due to fears of gluten exposure.

Fears of additional autoimmune diseases and celiac-related cancers are often quoted as reasons to not make ANY mistake in your gluten free diet. “Zero gluten” is the impossible standard people attempt to achieve proposed by many on social media.

I take a more tempered approach to my gluten free diet. I make the best decisions I can at the time based on my experience living with celiac disease for over 10 years. I know my gluten reactions, precisely. In the beginning, I didn’t have this confidence. If you talk with people who have had celiac disease prior to 2000, they have this confidence too. They lived without all of the gluten free items in grocery stores we have today.

My point in all of this is – I want doctors and researchers to understanding living with celiac disease is mentally exhausting. I want patients to know smart people are working hard on a solution.

#celiac #glutenfree #celiacdisease #coeliac #celiacawareness #gluten #allergy #glutensensitive