Tag Archives: Gluten Sensitivity

Is Lady Gaga Going Gluten Free For Her Health??

According to a news release on MSN.com, Stefani Germanotta (a.k.a. Lady Gaga) is the newest celebrity to say she’s going gluten-free. She made the announcement on the latest leg of her ‘Born This Way Ball’ tour.

She is described as doing so in order to “make sure she is in the best shape for the grueling workout.”

Then the article drops a bombshell… “Her aim is to drop 10 lbs in a month.”

This is where celiac disease experts, bloggers and media know-it-alls usually start lobbing grenades.

Why the Big Deal?

Celiac disease and gluten sensitivity are serious medical conditions that require a gluten-free diet. Many people diagnosed with one or both disorders chafe at the fact that they cannot eat what they want. While a diagnosis is important, medical professionals and the media emphatically make the groundless claim that the gluten-free diet can be bad for your health unless you are medically diagnosed with celiac disease or gluten sensitivity.

Lady Gaga is reported to have neither celiac disease nor gluten sensitivity in the MSN article. The article emphasizes her aim to use the diet to get Read More »

Is Food That Contains Gluten Really Gluten-Free?

Domino’s Pizza recently announced it would offer gluten-free pizza for gluten sensitive customers. Domino’s made it clear that the pizzas used a gluten-free crust, but are manufactured using the same equipment as the other gluten-containing foods and are not safe for people with celiac disease.

Domino’s worked with the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness (NFCA) and received the NFCA’s new, and now suspended, “Amber Designation.” This designation was to tell people that although the ingredients are gluten-free, the product cannot claim that cross contamination does not occur. The “Amber Designation” differed from the NFCA’s existing “Green Designation,” which tells the customer that the product is tested to less than 10 parts per million of gluten. “Amber” was basically a caution sign.

What Did Gluten-Free Watchdog Organizations Say?

• The Gluten Intolerance Group (GIG) and other organizations called for a recall of the NFCA’s “Amber Designation.”
• The North American Society for the Study of Celiac Disease commented on Domino’s Pizza ‘Gluten-Free’ Crust Announcement as follows,

Read More »

Just last week BioLineRx, a biopharmaceutical development company announced successful pre-clinical testing of a potentially revolutionary treatment for celiac disease.  This new treatment may help celiac disease patients reduce their gluten toxins to create an overall healthy body for all celiac disease patients.

Jerusalem, Israel – February 21, 2012 – BioLineRx (NASDAQ: BLRX; TASE: BLRX), a biopharmaceutical development company, announced the publication of pre-clinical results demonstrating that BL-7010, an orally available treatment for celiac disease, reduces gluten toxicity (the negative effect of gluten on the patient’s body). The research was published in the February edition of Gastroenterology.

The findings indicate that BL-7010 (previously called P(HEMA-co-SS)) reduces digestion of wheat gluten, thereby decreasing its Read More »

We asked people on on the Glutenfreeworks Twitter account how they felt about whether finding out earlier about their gluten sensitivity or celiac disease would have affected their lives.

Here is what they said.

Do you think your life would have been different if you had known about gluten at an early age???

@Glutenfreeworks incredibly. My senior year of high school probably wouldn’t be going so poorly if I had…. Read More »

It is well documented that only a small minority of those with celiac disease are successfully diagnosed in a medical setting.

Gluten sensitivity, which we based on medical research and proposed in Recognizing Celiac Disease in 2007,  has only recently been accepted as a true medical condition. So we decided to hold an informal survey to see just how people are becoming gluten-free? How are they finding out that gluten sensitivity or celiac disease are the cause of their health problems and are doctors diagnosing them or are they figuring it out on their own?

We posted this question to our GlutenFreeWorks Facebook friends and here are their answers. Were YOU diagnosed by a doctor? Leave your comments below! Read More »



They make great stuffing!

I can’t believe that it is almost Thanksgiving! Where has this year gone to, or this month further more lol The fall is flying by, and I must say I’m loving it since I love the holidays. This is the first year that I will not be participating in the traditional Thanksgiving meal with family, as my Mother and I will be venturing to NYC for the week!

I did though, however, prepare for this and the Christmas holiday meals by recreating my absolute favorite side dish. I thought my holidays would be ruined when I went gluten free and thought I’d never eat my Mother’s stuffing again! I’m pretty crafty, so I of course I found a way to avoid a major meltdown at the dinner table.

I knew a meltdown was certain to happen if I had to watch others eat stuffing in front of me, dun dun dun….so I found a gluten free stuffing mix and recreated Mom’s recipe, and it tastes exactly the same! Read More »

Know the Symptoms of Nutrient Deficiencies so You Can Be Healthy!

The impact of nutritional deficiencies on health should be common knowledge among the medical professional community. All doctors, nurses and other medical professionals should be able to quickly and accurately identify and diagnose functional nutritional deficiencies in patients and correct those deficiencies. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

Medical teaching institutions do not focus on nutrition, so many medical professionals are not equipped to recognize the signs of nutritional deficiencies until the patient is extremely sick. In most cases, the patient is able to function, just not at his or her potential. He or she may have weight issues, skin, hair or Read More »

I have had the opportunity to connect with Dr. Stephen Wangen, the founder of the IBS Treatment Center in Seattle, WA.  Awhile back, at a CSA (Celiac Sprue Association) meeting I had the pleasure of helping Dr. Wangen with his book signing.  He had flown in to Denver to speak on his books, Healthier Without Wheat and Irritable Bowel Syndrome Solution. There was a full audience of folks, just like you and I, who were able to ask personal questions and learn more about living with Celiac Disease, gluten intolerance, as well as exploring other areas such as food allergies.

Since that time, Dr. Wangen and I have had the chance to talk about what the IBS Treatment Center does to help people really understand their bodies and how food can be affecting them.  He explores the possibilities of Celiac Disease, gluten intolerance and food allergies and helps people to develop a healthier lifestyle tailored to their specific needs.  At the same time, Dr. Wangen has observed the emotional affects these conditions can have on people and understands that not feeling well emotionally has an affect on how people take care of their physical well being.  What makes his practice so fantastic is the positive nature.  Dr. Wangen helps people view the changes by looking at the benfits and the gains and focusing on what people can have, rather than on what they can’t.  Here is what Dr. Wangen had to say when I asked him about his own experiences. Read More »

In  Part 1 of this article about nutrient deficiencies in the gluten-free population, I posed four critiques and questions that I promised to answer in today’s part 2. Without further ado, here we go…

Critique #1 questioned the small sample size of the research. I can’t do anything about that, and there’s not much to be said about it, so let’s move on.

Next, I think it’s easiest to address critique #3: How did nutrient deficiencies in the gluten-free population compare to Americans as a whole? To answer that question, I pulled data regarding nationwide averages from the USDA’s Community Nutrition Mapping Project. If I amend yesterday’s table that showed the percent of the gluten-free population who are deficient in given nutrients, and add to it a column for the national averages, this is what you find:

These numbers change the perspective a bit, I think. It’s not simply that the gluten-free population is nutrient deficient. When you compare us to the national averages, it gets slightly more complex. In some cases, such as folate, riboflavin, thiamin, and iron, we’re two or more times as deficient (as a group) than the nation. However, in other cases, such as B12, B6, and calcium, we still have greater rates Read More »