allergic to gluten/wheat?

Ok so I’ve come to find out that I’m allergic to gluten or wheat or maybe both. I get really bad stomach aches and i can tell that my body doesn’t digest these things well. Also, all my joints swell up and it really hurts. Anyways, the point is, what do I eat instead of breads and things, and what else but flour can I use in other recipes? Does all flour produce gluten?

Yeah I dunno anything… please help. I’m not 100% raw by a long shot so cooked vegan suggestions would be fine too.

Comments

  • I have had allergies to gluten and wheat. If you go into any worth while health food store they have plenty of gluten free options. I normally shop at wild oats

    When I was eating cooked food, I found many raw flours to bake with. Look for buckwheat waffles and rice/potato pizza crust! There are also rice noodles that help with the pasta cravings. I didnt miss bread after the frist couple of weeks, so I didnt worry about that too much. If you miss it a lot, there are gluten free breads, they dont taste very well though.

    It looks like you live in Seattle so you should have a Wild Oats or something similiar. They have gluten free cookies that taste amazing, and gluten free cereal that tastes exactly like cap’n crunch!

    All this stuff above is vegan. If you arent vegan, or just veggie or a meat eater, it is much easier to be gluten free. But even when I was vegan, you do crave certain foods, but with a little creativity you can make anything gluten free!

  • If your allergy was not wheat and not gluten, as it is in my case, I will suggest you to use Spet flour which is amaizing and lighter to diggest than wheat. Buckwheat and rice flour are indeed the onces I know used very often in gluten free bread recipes. Cornmeal is another one. I missed bread for a while. In my Natural Hygiene course they explained that one of the reaons why people find it hard to give up bread is the following. Yeast produces alcohol in the liver in our bodies. So, when you are eating bread everything, they say it is equivalent to been drinking a small amount of alcohol everyday. if you eat bread everday and more than once, you will miss it, according to this, because your body will be alsking for the alcohol he got used to, but after a while, the craving does go away. I do not eat bread anymore, I do not miss it, and when I do (for emotional reasons :-), because my allergy is wheat, I use spelt and I prepare wraps with no yeat or sourdough added to it. I do agree that the wheat free bread are not so tasty.

  • About four months ago, I was diagnosed with wheat/gluten allergies. Google “celiac” and you will find excellent websites for foods to avoid.

    You do start missing bread physically, but I still occassionally have “emotional” cravings for it.

    The good news is the difference in my health since I quit all the glutens is nothing short of miraculous! My nasal allergies (debilitating before) have all but disappeared and the constant bloat is also gone. I lost four inches in my middle within two weeks…god knows what was hanging around in there.

    Corn is an excellent substitute, and rice substitutes for pasta are also very good. For me, spelt gives me the same problems as wheat, but experiment.

    Also know that most soy sauce and soy type sauces have wheat. It is hidden everywhere, so be vigilant and learn the code words.

    You’ll feel so much better that it’s worth it.

  • alpdesignsalpdesigns Raw Newbie

    There are lots of raw bread recipes on this site and the Internet that use seeds as the “flour”. Millet and quinoa are gluten-free and both sprout when raw. Buckwheat is another gluten-free grain that’s good sprouted. All three are acid forming, so eat them in moderation. Wheat has been out of my diet for several years as gluten slows down or halts digestion. I stay away from corn since it’s also indigestible and rice is difficult to sprout. I posted instructions (with photos) on this site on how to sprout brown rice.

  • lstorzlstorz Raw Superstar

    Welcome to my world! I was diagnosed with allergies to gluten, oats, buckwheat, cane sugar, all dairy, and other assorted things in April… which led me eventually to discovering raw foods.

    The transition will be slow. Know that. Looking back, I can appreciate how much change my body was going through. It took about 2-3 months to really fully shift my diet. Your cravings for wheat will actually go away once you start to follow an allergy-free diet.

    Be careful with wheat substitutions. I started eating a lot of rice products, like rice bread and such, and I overdid it and figured out that I am sensitive to rice and corn. I can eat them, but only every 4 days.

    There are SO MANY other things to eat besides wheat!!! I am not fully raw, so sometimes I eat rice, corn (think tortillas), millet, quinoa, tapioca flour, amaranth, potatoes, and beans. Those seem to satisfy any starchy needs for me. If you are just gluten/wheat allergic and not allergic to sugar, then you have a ton of options. In Whole Foods, they mark gluten-free products with special signs. The Whole Foods website also has a good list of all of their grains and it says which have gluten and which don’t: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/recipes/tips_gr…

    The key is variety. Try not to eat all corn products or all rice products, or you risk developping an allergy to those. Mix it up. Plan to spend an hour or so in Whold Foods or Wild Oats looking at products, choosing things to try, and reading labels. You will become an expert label reader.

    Always ask about soy sauce. I buy Tamari sauce and I take it with me if I need to. I just got back from a trip to Japan, and I can’t tell you how many conversations I had with waiters about how they had no idea that wheat was in soy sauce.

    If you’re travelling, here’s a website with cards in different languages to explain your allergy: http://www.celiactravel.com/gluten-free-cards It’s handy in English, too, if you don’t feel comfortable explaining it yet to waiters.

    You probably know this, but be careful of anything with malt or barley. Be careful in vegetarian restaurants, because meat substitutes like seitan are made of wheat.

    I have found that I do very well in Mexican restaurants, Japanese restaurants, and raw foods restaurants. Vegetarian restaurants can be trickier for me actually.

    Really, the market for gluten-free products has seemed to really exploded recently. It just takes time to get used to it all.

    I’ve really gone on for a long time…. I have more info if you want it. Finding out I had allergies precipitated a lot of huge changes in my life. Trust me, once you begin to see how good you feel without it, you will hardly miss it.

  • Wow. You seem very well informed Istorz. So I am going to ask you a question.

    I diagnosed myself with gluten allergies. I didnt have enough money for a doctor so I didnt go into gluten free very well. I replaced almost everything I was eating with rice and rice products, and started getting sick from rice. After eating gluten free for months I never felt any better, probably because of the rice.

    I have been raw for 7 months now and feel amazing. I have indulged here and there, mostly with chips and salsa.

    Anyways. I am going to Portland for 4 days with my girlfriend, and decided I am going to indulge while I am up there also. I want to remain gluten free, but like I said, I dont know if I am even gluten intolerant cause I never checked it out. But I was a burrito when Im up there so bad.

    What do you think?

  • lstorzlstorz Raw Superstar

    Jkd—I’m still pretty new to the whole allergy thing, but I’ve learned so much about food just in a few months.

    How did you self-diagnose that you have gluten allergies? What kind of symptoms did you have?

    Allergies are so idiosyncratic that, really, your own self-observation is the best indicator. Personally, I would be careful of indulging. Decide what is really worth it and maybe have just a little bit. After being off of wheat for 4 months, I thought that my body would have detoxed enough to handle a little wheat. So I ate some of my favorite Indian bread at a restaurant. The thing is, though, that because I had detoxed, my body reacted even more strongly to the wheat—or I guess that my body wasn’t being bombarded constantly with “poison” that I could actually isolate the food allergy. Well…. after eating the bread, I felt very uncomfortably full that night and the next day, I was in the middle of a class and actually had to leave because I was in so much pain and thought I was going to throw up. After that, I think I took the whole allergy thing a lot more seriously.

    The basic rule for any food is that it takes 4 days to work its way out of your system. So—since I’m borderline allergic to rice and corn, I can only eat each of those twice a week at most. Basically, I save those for eating out.

    I went off my diet a little in Japan to eat some of my favorite sweets… I paid for it two days later with a raging migraine. For me now, the decision is always about whether it’s worth it to indulge and, logistically, whether I have time to feel really bad for the next few days and then go back through a mini-detox period.

    It’s obviously entirely up to you. But, since you will be with your girlfriend, and I’m assuming that you want to feel good and enjoy the trip, then my advice is to indulge in small amounts and cautiously. However, if you’ve been raw for 7 months, your body may rebel against the indulging….. hmmm… define “indulging”? Nowadays, I think that fruit-sweetened soy ice cream is indulging! ;) How times have changed….

    Also, you really might want to get your allergies tested to have a thorough analysis. When I was tested, I was off the charts allergic to some things that I had no idea about—like mixed feathers…. and I was sleeping with a down comforter every night.

    I had my allergies tested with an electric conductance method which tests your meridians in your body. It’s excellent, and it can identify which meridians are affected by which allergens (ex: my central nervous system is affected by alcohol—when I drink alcohol, I wake up the next morning with numb hands).

    Good luck! Please let me know if you have any other questions…. Have fun with your girlfriend!

  • lstorzlstorz Raw Superstar

    jkd— I just typed in “gluten-free in portland” and found this website: http://www.glutenfreeceliacweb.com/2007/01/20/g…

    Lots of good restaurants to choose from, and Bob’s Red Mill is from Portland! Very exciting!!!

    Also, this is the website of the place in Chicago where I got tested for allergies: www.wellnessofchicago.com. Maybe you could call them and see if they know anyone who does the testing where you live.

    P.S. Be careful if you indulge with sushi—not only does the commercial soy sauce have wheat in it, but they cook the rice with distilled white vinegar which has wheat and sugar in it.

  • Hey, thanks everyone for all the information. I suppose I’ll have to give up drinking too, i hadn’t thought of that yet. Anyways, its about time i really give the RAW diet a serious try.

  • This is a great topic. I’m also a Celiac/intolerance to gluten products. I have sort of diagnosed myself but not without the help of a naturopath. I was able to piggy back on my daughter’s visit, which was all I could afford and asked some questions. She gave me some information and suggested that I go on a gluten/wheat free diet. It was tremendously hard for me because almost everything that contains wheat is on my list of favorites.

    The other thing that I found out is that while we’re avoiding certain grains that there are other additives in foods that are derived from wheat that if you don’t know what they are and consume them you’ll have an episode. The other suggestion that was made to me was to cleanse often to revitalize my health and to cleanse my colon for better absorption of nutrients; which is also a problem that celiacs have in common. I probably had it when I was a little girl and looking back, I can kind of think to myself that is probably why I have scoliosis and was really skinny for 36 years of my life. I’m overweight now only because of a major illness and my body storing lots of fat because of it’s acidic state; thus my cleansing as well and raw food diet (60-70%).

    There are gluten free cookbooks and local support groups. I just joined one this years and will be going to my first meeting next month. I also know that this is intolerance is starting to become recognized more and the FDA is also taking a bigger interested in it; I’m sure for profit’s sake but I won’t go there. In addition there are also alot of cookbooks available that will provide you with wonderful recipes in addition to lots of information. I’m going to attach some foods to “avoid” from one of the books for those of you that don’t have this information readily available.

    BEVERAGES Postum, Ovaltine, beer, ale, gin, vodka, whiskey, some flavored and instant coffees, some herbal teas

    BREADS all breads with wheat, oats, rye and barley flours; all crackers, croutons, bread crumbs, wafers, biscuits, graham, soda or snack crackers and tortilla’s containing any of these flours.

    CEREALS All cereals containing the above grains (both grain and in flavorings, such as malt flavoring and malt syrup).

    DAIRY PRODUCTS malted milk, artificial cream (if not GF), some chocolate milk drinks, some commercials ice creams, some processed cheese spreads, flavored yogurt, some light and fat-free dairy products (containing gluten)

    DESSERTS All desserts containing the above flours; most commercial pudding mixes, ice cream cones and prepared cake mixes

    FATS some commercial salad dressings and mayonnaise

    FLOURS all with the avoided grains

    FRUITS AND JUICES any commercially canned fruit and the juices that’s contained

    MEATS, FISH, POULTRY AND EGGS Eggs in gluten-based sauces (most that have thickening agents), imitation seafood, prepared meats, some fish canned in HVP, self-basting turkeys injected with HVP

    PASTAS all containing the avoided flours; any canned pasta products

    SOUPS AND CHOWDERS most canned soups, most dehydrated soup mixes, bouillon and bouillon cubes containing HVP – whether they contain noodles and/or meat

    VEGETABLES all creamed, breaded and scalloped vegetables; canned baked beans and some prepared salad mixes

    SWEETS some commercial candies, cake decorations and icing sugar

    CONDIMENTS (SOME) curry powder, mixed spices, distilled vinegar, some ketchup, some prepared mustards, most soy sauces, some pepper with wheat added.

    distilled vinegars distilled from grains that are toxic to celiacs; corn grain vinegar is acceptable

    LAST NOTE: Although I know that we are all aspiring to GO RAW; some of us are not totally there yet and do still use these products. If your experiences in going partially raw and still eating some of these things has caused you to not feel well after eating them, you’re body is talking to you. Listen carefully. Try elimination diets to see what works for you. There are also allergy tests that can be done via stool samples and blood and are relatively inexpensive.

    That’s my two cents. To all of you sharing in this experience, LIVE LONG AND PROSPER!!

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