Cant believe I'm this sensative

[beentrying2quit]

For the most part I've done a good job of eliminating gluten from my diet.  Each Sunday night we have family and friends over for a cookout and have been doing this for several years..even in the winter.  This past Sunday a friend brought Strawberry Shortcake and I could not resist.  This is no joke...I took one bite which had very little of the cake and the past two days has been heII for me.  Anxiety, gas, stomach pain, hands tingling, etc.  Could I be that sensative to this cra p?

[GoingToMakeIt]

Yes. I have found the longer I am away, the stronger the reactions if I intake any gluten.
Have you tried the product Glutenzyme? I have had a bit of success with it. It is not recommended for celiacs, though.

[KAnnDo]

I'm not at all surprised that one bite of gluten containing cake would get you!  Celiacs are very sensitive to very small amounts of gluten, which becomes more obvious after being gluten free for a while.  My dietitian told me that this is because, while eating gluten, cellacs build up a sort of tolerance to the "poison" so they don't react as strongly as they do after they are gluten free.  However, that so called tolerance to the poison (gluten) does not mean that it is doing any less damage to the body.

I finally achieved a few symptom free weeks last summer after about a year of working to eliminate all gluten from my diet.  Then there was a family emergency that put me under a lot of stress for a few days.  After the emergency passed, I took only one half of a Xanax pill (a very small pill) to help relax my muscles and help me get a good night of sleep.  Instead I got a full blown celiac reaction with anxiety, gas, and pressure and burning in my abdomen.  Xanax was listed as GF on some Internet sites, so I did not call the manufacturer before using it, and I had not used it since I was diagnosed with celiac disease.  I call Pfizer and asked them if they put gluten in Xanax as a filler, and they told me that there was purposely added gluten in it.  It took a week for the symptoms to start to subside, and another week for them to go away completely.  

A friend with celiac disease told me she got very sick from just using a toaster for her gluten free bread at someone else's home, where the toaster had been used for regular bread - just some contamination with crumbs were enough to do it.  

This is why it is very important to not only inquire of manufacturers of food, prescription drugs, vitamins, or anything you consume even in very tiny quantities whether they add gluten to the product, and also, if the product is produced were it can in anyway be cross contaminated by other products containing gluten.  Even wheat flour in the air can be a problem.  I got glutened once from the dust of flour being stirred into gravy in a pot in the same vicinity as some of my gluten free food.

So yes, one bite of cake IS a BIG dose of poison!

A while back you asked me for breakfast food suggestions.  I hope you found my answer and are enjoying some new things to eat.  Clan Thompson's newsletter recently announced that General Mills is now making gluten free Rice Checks.  But be sure that you don't get an old box that has malt from barley as an ingredient.  The new ones have a gluten free label on the front.  I found some at Wal-Mart the other day, and they taste better than other gluten free dry cereals I have found so far.  Also, they are fortified, which does not seem to be common for many gluten free products made from grains.

[PrincessKatie]

A crum can make me sick for days. So can eating things that touched gluten or were fried in the same oil as gluten.

[cubblebubble]

After my hospital stay and all that fun, I hadn't had any gluten for at least a few weeks. My poor boyfriend was in denial and insisted it couldn't be true eventually he convinced me to eat a forkfull of chocolate cake  It literally burned the entire way down my throat. So yep you can be just that sensitive!

Oh and be careful sharing cooking surfaces that gluten was prepared on. I had a waffle iron I was using to make waffles for me and for the man. I was deathly sick the next time I made waffles for me since I evidently didn't get it perfectly clean!

I gave up on fried things long ago.. though chick-fil-a is supposed to have gluten free waffle fries :)

kitty