Ten years ago, when I’d ask for something gluten free, I’d as well have ordered a plate of moon cheese. Even in London, hardly anyone knew what ‘coeliac’ was – hell, when the doctor told me I hadn’t a clue. He jotted down the Coeliac UK website on a sticky note and sent me on my way.
I’d been lucky – it takes the average person 13 YEARS to be diagnosed. So that’s 13 years of bloating, bad guts, insomnia, crap nails, anaemia etc etc. But my awesome doctor refused to palm me off with IBS or stress and sent me for blood tests and an endoscopy (which, if anyone has had one will agree, is not a fun way to spend an afternoon – a camera on a tube rammed down your throat into your beat-up stomach. It was the thickness of a fat Cumberland sausage – I had foolishly presumed it would be like gently swallowing a strawberry lace. No wonder I had to be pinned down by a nurse).
Back then, free-from aisles were not a thing. You bought GF biscuits at Holland and Barrett along with your mud mask and echinacea cream. You wouldn’t have bothered asking for GF bread or pasta at a restaurant, let alone a whole entire menu.
Therefore, it also is a viagra italy common disease in male diseases. Therefore, these two herbal pills are highly recommended to come out of cheap pill viagra sexual weakness naturally. Although tremendously good news in that more people are surviving beyond the diagnosis than ever before, the society warns pharmacy australia cialis that many survivors face medical and psychological needs that are not fulfilled. tadalafil cialis generika Any variations in penile arteries like reduction of diameter, hardening of walls etc may cause erectile dysfunction. But fast forward a decade, this Coeliac Awareness Week, and I’m amazed at the changes. I can’t remember the last time I got a blank face when I said I was coeliac.
But there is still room for change. ‘Coeliac’ is often just lumped in with your general gluten free diets. The kind my boyfriend’s dad now loosely follows after getting tummy issues… but he still won’t say no to a chocolate digestive. He’s not coeliac so doesn’t have to worry about gluten crumbs in the butter or whether chips have been cooked in the same fat as battered fish. Going (almost) gluten free is helping him and I’m glad of that but he is not in my category.
Many, many restaurants do not realise how ‘on it’ coeliacs need them to be. I still get staff telling me the heat from the oil will ‘kill off the gluten’. And there’s the classic not checking the stock cube for wheat or adding soy sauce. And if they gluten us it can make us really ill. A bread roll can make a grown man shit himself on a busy train. (That story from This Morning doctor – and fellow coeliac – Chris Steele has stuck with me, for some reason.)
But given the changes I’ve seen in 10 years and how the free-from conversation is ramping up, I reckon things are looking good.
Happy Coeliac Awareness, people.