Why Gluten Free?
A few years back while on vacation, we were looking for a restaurant to stop for dinner. For our family, finding a dining establishment that serves safe food for me to eat can be a chore. We continued driving and eventually passed a restaurant with a sign that proudly announced in bold uppercase letters “Packed with Gluten”. I chuckled sheepishly. “I guess we won‘t eat there”, I announced.
I don‘t remember where we ultimately dined that day, but I will to my dying day remember that sign. I have celiac disease and the slightest bit of gluten wreaks havoc on my body. A sign stating “Packed with Gluten” might as well say, “Filled with Rat Poison” to me. Luckily, more restaurants than ever before offer gluten-free entrees.
As I have lived with this disease, I have felt it important to do my part to help raise awareness about it, primarily because of these statistics:
- Just under 1% of the US population has celiac disease – that’s 2 to 3 million people!
- Symptoms of the condition vary from person to person making it difficult to diagnose. This often means it can take YEARS for a diagnosis.
- 4 out of 5 who have celiac disease do not know they have it.
In short, there are a lot of people walking around with celiac disease damaging their bodies and they have no clue. I hope I can be a small part of helping them figure out what they have so they can take the only action that combats it – following a 100% gluten-free diet.
I am quite sure that I had celiac 15 years before getting any kind of “official” diagnosis because of some pretty strange symptoms that appeared along the way. For part of that time, I took Actenol, a drug primarily prescribed to post-menopausal women for treating osteoporosis. Whenever I picked it up at the pharmacy, they thought they made some kind of mistake. Why would a man of my young age take such a medication?
Thankfully, since learning I am celiac and going gluten free, my bones are strong WITHOUT prescriptions for osteoporosis. I can‘t help wanting to prevent others from going through the lengthy process I endured to get the diagnosis. This is why the focus on awareness here…
Speaking of awareness, these 20 facts about celiac disease are informative. The following 3 minute video segment from a newscast below is educational and conveys optimism from the South Dakota teen featured:
Reading through the list of 20 items and viewing the video snippet above is a great start at learning about celiac disease. If you would like to find out more, this link contains greater detail about the condition.