Thanksgiving and Celiac Disease

I'm facing my second Thanksgiving living with Celiac Disease. I guess I should say ...knowing I have it and living with it! Last year wasn't so bad because my husband helped me prepare almost everything gluten free since we had dinner for family at our place.

This year is going to be a little bit difficult since we've accepted a dinner invite at a dear friend's house. I know I am going to be making gluten free pumpkin pie and we are bring turkey.

I also found a good suggestion to bring my own gluten free salad dressing at healthy-family.org where you can read their "Top 10 Celiac Survival Tips for the Holidays".

Happy Thanksgiving and healthy eating!

Video: Celiac Disease and Gluten Free Foods

Starbucks is listening to customers about gluten free issues!

Take some time to read the comments about gluten free issues at the link below. The comments in orange are from Starbucks with some ideas that they may be announcing soon for customers with gluten free needs! Hats off to them for listening to their customers! Starbucks

Alternative flour made from chia seeds is an option for celiac sufferers

ORLANDO, Fla., Oct. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Nuchia
Foods Corporation announced today that its
Chia Seed Flour is certified gluten-free, perfect
for people with Celiac disease or anyone looking
for healthy holiday recipes. The flour, made from
chia seeds, is an alternative to highly
processed wheat flour.

"Nuchia Foods' alternative flour can replace
wheat flour one-to-one in most recipes," said
Homer Hartage. "It brings good taste back for
those with Celiac, but the whole family can
enjoy this. Our flour is rich in omega-3 fatty
acids, proteins, calcium and fiber. What's more,
it tastes good."

Original Chia Seed Flour can be used to create
gluten-free recipes. Each serving delivers powerful
antioxidants and vitamins, along with a full day's supply of
omega-3 fatty acids, 9.4 grams of fiber and a wide variety
of naturally occurring minerals like biotin, calcium,
phosphorus, magnesium, manganese, copper, niacin, and
zinc. That high omega-3 content and fiber mean Chia Seed
Flour can promote a healthy heart, weight loss and
offer relief to those suffering from arthritis and osteoporosis.

Talking about traditional recipes, some of the foods that
have been made using Chia Seed Flour include a Louisiana
Chicken Gumbo Guinness Beer Soup with a roux base, a
holiday favorite -- red velvet cake, cookies, fruit cobblers,
frostings and rich chocolate brownies to die for. It can
also be used in raw cooking, added to smoothies and as
a thickener in a wide variety of dishes. In each recipe Chia
Seed Flour was used as alternative flour to highly processed
wheat flour.

Though the history of chia seeds shows that it was a staple
of the Aztec and Mayan diets, the small desert grain called
chia is now better known as the "hair" of a popular line of
terra cotta pet figurines. But it turns out chia is actually
packed with vital nutrients -- and, thanks to Nuchia Foods
Corporation, chia seeds are now available again as an
alternative flour to health- and taste-conscious consumers.

Jan Matsuno, Director of Commercialization at the Center for
Culinary Development, said, "Who knew the seeds used to grow
'hair' on those funny Chia pets is actually super-nutritious?
Nuchia Foods Corporation has developed a process to produce
Chia Seed Flour which performs similarly to bleached wheat flour,
but provide a full day's supply of omega-3 fatty
acids, 9.4 grams of fiber, and a wide range of vitamins,
minerals and antioxidants -- all gluten-free! Move over Spelt
and Quinoa, Chia is here!"

Homer L. Hartage, president and CEO of Nuchia Foods
Corporation, is a graduate of Seton Hall University. Hartage
frequently holds product demonstrations on the use of their
alternative flour and is available for lectures and seminars.
Nuchia Foods Corporation is certified gluten-free by
the Gluten Free Certification Organization.

Contact:

Shani Beaux
Nuchia Foods Corporation
5603 Commerce Drive, Unit 1
Orlando, Florida 32839
407-857-2320 ext 103
sbeau@nuchiafoods.com
http://www.nuchiafoods.com

This release was issued through eReleases(TM). For more information,
visit http://www.ereleases.com

SOURCE Nuchia Foods Corporation

More information about chia seeds and flour is available at
the Green Chefs: Daily Obsessions blog

October: National Celiac Disease Awareness Month

Celiac disease affects an estimated two million Americans and makes them unable to tolerate the protein gluten, found in wheat, rye, and barley. David Elliott, MD, PhD, director of the celiac and inflammatory bowel disease clinic at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, talks about celiac disease:

What happens with celiac disease? What does it do to the body?

Let me first state that celiac disease is actually fairly common. We think about one in every 150 people or so has celiac disease and most of these people are completely unaware that they have the disease. That’s why it’s really important to get these messages out.

A person with celiac disease develops intestinal inflammation, which is like a rash that involves the lining of the intestine. When they eat anything containing wheat, rye, barley, or, for some people, oats, this rash damages the cells that line the intestine and causes problems ranging from bloating and abdominal pain to severe diarrhea and wasting illness.

What causes celiac disease?

Celiac disease occurs when a person’s immune system reacts to proteins—what we call gluten—present in wheat, rye, barley, and, for some people, oats. The immune system acts as if the cereal grains are dangerous pathogens and tries to rid the body of them. In performing this attack, the immune system damages the tissues that make up the intestine.

Is someone born with celiac disease? Is it genetic?

People are not born with celiac disease, but it does have a very strong genetic component. It tends to run in families. What happens is normal variance of certain genes that help control the immune response are required for a person to develop celiac disease. But most people with those gene variations actually don’t develop celiac disease. There’s no genetic test that will help diagnose celiac disease, but we’re investigating closely to see what genes are involved in contributing risk for celiac disease.

What are the classic and typical symptoms of celiac disease?

The classic symptoms of celiac disease are profound diarrhea and wasting illness; however, the classic symptoms are really quite rare. Most people don’t have that. The typical symptoms of celiac disease are bloating, abdominal pain, irritable bowel-type symptoms, and fatigue. Some of the signs, or some of the problems that people have if they have celiac disease, are unexplained anemia, thinning of the bone (something that we call osteomalacia), and a mild irritation of the liver. Another one of the classic symptoms of celiac disease is something called dermatitis herpetiformis, which is a skin rash that’s intensely itchy and develops in some people with celiac disease.

If celiac disease is not diagnosed, what long-term conditions can develop?

There’s a whole spectrum of illnesses that can develop. Most of the illnesses occur due to longstanding, low-grade malabsorption of key nutrients. So for example, anemia develops because a person doesn’t absorb enough iron; bones get thin because they don’t absorb enough vitamin D and calcium. If it’s untreated for long periods of time, one of the main concerns that we have is that a person can actually cause permanent damage to the lining of the intestine and develop what we call refractory sprue. That is when even when you remove gluten, then they don’t bounce back and it can proceed, causing intestinal lymphoma or cancer of the immune system that normally polices that intestine.

If someone experiences these symptoms, how is celiac disease diagnosed?

If a person wants to be tested for celiac disease, they can start off with a very simple blood test that looks for an antibody called anti-tissue transglutaminase, which develops in some people with celiac disease. Most people with celiac disease will have an antibody against tissue transglutaminase, so they can do a screening test for that. If a person has that antibody, then we would normally go ahead and do a biopsy of their small bowel to confirm that they have celiac disease. There are rare people who don’t develop that antibody, so on occasion we’ll go down and do a biopsy of the small bowel to make sure that a person doesn’t have celiac disease even if they’re antibody negative.

How is celiac disease treated?

The main treatment is strict avoidance of any food that contains gluten: so avoidance of any food that contains wheat, rye, barley, and, for some people, oats. To help people avoid those foods, we give them dietary training—they meet with nutritionists. There are new food laws out now so that most food products are labeled if they contain wheat, rye, or barley gluten, and that’s getting better and better over time. Now that we know celiac disease is fairly common, manufacturers are making many more gluten-free products, so the diet is no longer as restrictive as it used to be.

Does treatment involve medication or is it strictly diet?

We try to treat a person with diet alone as much as possible because that really helps resolve any of the problems. On occasion, we’ll have to treat a person with medications to help combat the symptoms, for example, or help them rebuild bone. But we try very hard to treat them with diet alone.

Can celiac disease be cured?

It depends on what you mean by cure. If a person has celiac disease, they don’t outgrow it; there’s no way to really cure them of it easily. But if a person’s on a strict gluten-free diet, after they’ve been on it for a couple years, they’re perfectly normal and we can’t even tell medically that they have celiac disease. They have normal life spans, normal everything as long as they maintain a gluten-free diet. From UI Health Care

Blue cheese we can enjoy!

About 4 months ago, I found out that blue cheese has gluten in it because it is somehow made with bread. I was not happy. I felt I had managed to eat gluten free only to find out I was eating it in one of my favorite salad toppings about every other day.

Well, I just now stumbled across a post from about a year ago at Sure Foods Living that lists several brands of blue cheese that are not made with gluten. Tomorrow when I go grocery shopping, I will be taking this list with me!

Meet Sage Donnelly! Young celiac & diabetes hero!

I just found this great blog from a link on Twitter and read about this great young lady named Sage Donnelly. She's involved in a lot of great things including the upcoming Reno Juvenile Diabetes Research Fund Walk for the Cure on Sunday, October 12th at the University of Nevada, Reno campus on the main quad. Go to her blog and donate for the cure!

Sage just found out she has Celiac Disease. I wish her the best and lots of good meals!

Outback Steakhouse Gluten Alert

Outback Steakhouse cross contamination issues

Happy Labor Day!

Starbuck's Vivanno drinks are gluten free but ...

the protein powder is processed on machines that also process wheat. The suggestion I got was to not have the protein powder added.

That's what I was told today at a Reno, Nevada Starbucks. The Vivanno protein shakes came out well over a month or so ago and I immediately sent an inquiry to Starbucks' website in order to find out about the gluten content after not finding anyone in store who knew. Weeks later, I never got a response.

Well, today I know and, at least, Starbucks has begun educating their in-store employees about "gluten" in their products.

Receive a free Triumph Dining Card to help raise money for Celiac Awareness!

Triumph Dining is giving away FREE American Dining Cards until the end of August. There’s absolutely no purchase necessary. Your readers can simply visit our site to participate and get a free dining card.

The purpose of this give-away is to raise money for Celiac Disease Awareness. If 15,000 people to sign up for free dining cards, Triumph Dining will make a $10,000 donation in support of a national celiac disease awareness campaign. When we hit our goal, we'll ask you and the gluten free community to help us decide which non-profit(s) receives the donation.

We’re trying to build awareness on two fronts: With 15,000 more dining cards on the street, we’ll be educating more restaurants about the gluten free diet faster. And, with $10,000 funding behind a national campaign, we can diagnose and educate more Celiacs.


The FREE dining card offer is available at the Triumph Dining's site and we’ll be posting regular progress reports on our Triumph Dining blog.

Gluten-free food shopping online

It has certainly been great to have a large new Whole Foods in Reno to shop. The store is gorgeous and the employees seem to like working there!

However, the gluten-free foods available are limited so I am in the process of placing an order with The Gluten Free Mall.

I've been looking for a pasta fagioli dinner mix that I bought at Wild Oats before it became Whole Foods that was quick and delicious from The Gluten-Free Pantry. I haven't been able to find it since at any store in Reno. I'm also looking at placing an order from GlutenFree.com.

I am always looking for quick ways to get meals fixed in the evening after I get home from work and, right now, I am cooking for one as I also recover from my total hip replacement surgery and easy works best right now!

If I can find some of the items I want at these two sites, I'm thinking of taking copies from the web up to Whole Foods to see if they would consider putting them in stock at their local store. Something tells me I may have some luck with that!

Your primary care physician

It was my primary care physician in Carson City who had the tenacity to keep testing to find out what was wrong with me when I first presented to her with an extreme case of anemia.

Jump over to the Heart Scan Blog to read a good commentary about the importance of your primary care doctor.

My celiac journey

It's been about 15 months ago now that I found out I have celiac disease and that followed 4 months of blood tests and finally a colonoscopy and endoscopy ordered by my very dedicated doctor, Andrea Weed, DO, in Carson City.

I first visited Dr. Weed to take care of a needed biopsy of one of my breast (negative) that I had left Elko knowing about. After running initial blood work on me, she sat me down and told me right off the bat that I had a genetic marker for stroke/heart attacks called lipoprotein-a but she told me we could work on that. At that time, she was more concerned about the sad shape of my red blood cells and what could be causing this.

I told her that I had suffered from anemia since I was in my teens and that I had been tested for leukemia and lymphoma because of it. The last time I had a doctor worry about it was about 4 years ago in Elko and she just put me on a daily iron pill and we forgot about it.

After my initial blood work, I was sent to a hemotologist who really didn't do anything but check my iron level every month until May. It never improved. They were discussing doing a transfusion but wanted to wait until I had the colonoscopy/endoscopy performed. Dr. Weed was worried that I had celiac disease or some other genetic blood disease, the name slips my mind.

After my tests result came back, I was told I probably had celiac disease because of the condition of my small intestines, the vili were flattened. The blood test I had taken to determine if I had celiac disease came back negative. I was handed a brochure for the Sierra Nevada Celiac Group and another one about what foods to stay away from and that was basically it. I left the GI Consultants office feeling overwhelmed. It was only gradually that I became grateful to have learned why I had been feeling like crap most of my life.

Over the past year, I've done alot of online reading and research on my own to learn about what I can and can't eat and why. It hasn't been easy. I have yet to make a Sierra Nevada Celiac Disease Group meeting and I hope to soon because I would love to learn more about where I can and can't eat in the Reno area. I also really want to meet someone with celiac disease face to face to talk about how they survive it.

As I have read and learned more about celiac disease, I realized that I had been dealing with years of stomach discomfort, migraines, allergies, anemia, skin rashes and other problems that were all related to the lack of vitamin and mineral absorption caused by this disease.


One of the biggest issues most likely connected in my case is the osteoarthritis I had developed in my right hip. The damage was so bad that I had a total hip replacement on Monday. I had needed it for about 10 years but somehow I felt that 40 was too young to have surgery like that. Today I am recovering and feeling pretty good so now I am wishing I had taken care of it sooner! My orthopedic surgeon is Dr. Shonnard. That's me four days after my hip surgery!

I will keep blogging as I learn more about where to shop to buy good food and where to eat out in the Reno area. I look forward to eventually meeting people here with celiac disease. I will keep learning!

"Study reveals piece in the celiac puzzle"

Maryland researchers have identified a key receptor in the intestine that can trigger celiac disease, and they hope their findings can be applied to other autoimmune disorders, such as Type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

Celiac disease is a digestive disorder that damages the small intestine and interferes with the absorption of nutrients from food. People with the condition cannot process a protein called gluten - most commonly found in grains such as wheat, rye and barley, but also found in medicines and vitamins.

Common in the general population, celiac disease affects an estimated 2 million Americans, or one out of 133 people, according to the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

In this month's issue of Gastroenterology, University of Maryland scientists wrote that gliadin, the toxic component of gluten for celiac patients, binds to an intestinal receptor called CXCR3. The receptor then releases the protein zonulin, which makes the intestine more permeable.

"We know a lot about celiac disease, but we never understood the question of how the protein gains access in the intestine," said Dr. Alessio Fasano, a gastroenterologist who directs the Center for Celiac Research at the University of Maryland and lead author of the study.

"Further study is needed, but this could allow us to intervene so that less zonulin is released, which may prevent the immune response altogether." Baltimore Sun