An education about Celiac

My name is April and I have Celiac. (No there is no 12 step program for Celiac... Sometimes I wish there was!)

What is Celiac? It is an auto immune disease that 1 in every 133 people in the US have and most don't know it.

Basically, Celiac is an inability to tolerate gluten. What is gluten? Gluten is the main substance in almost every food on this planet. Gluten in found in wheat, barley and rye. If you start reading labels and do a little research, you will discover that it is harder to buy something without gluten than with it.

Some of the foods with gluten:
bread, cookies, cake, soy sauce, most commercially produced breakfast cereals, IHOP omelets (they put pancake batter in their omelets to make them fluffier), everything on the menu at Taco Bell (except Pintos and Cheese), pasta... Basically most of the food I have loved for the last 30 years.

What can you eat?
Vegetables, meat and fruit without restricted seasonings, flourless chocolate cake (it's awesome), rice pasta, corn pasta, rice, potatoes. And somedays it seems that is all I can eat!

What does it do?
Everyone is different. Some people get very sick, vomiting, diarrhea, etc. Some get a rash and others become very malnourished. I was lucky, if you can call it that. I became extremely anemic, but fortunately I was already being treated for anemia when my Celiac was discovered. Most people go from doctor to doctor for an average of 9 years before being diagnosed with Celiac.

Where can you learn more?
http://celiac.org/