Sacrament lore

[clackamascoug]

I had a companion on my mission who had celiac disease. Considering it was Italy, he basically only ate polenta. He wasn't a happy camper, or at least his intestines weren't.

My oldest son came down with Crohn's Disease on his mission in Ogden. He was in the hospital for a while, and had the best local doctor's money didn't have to buy. 10 years later it affects his daily life.

[Eddie]

Ditto, but we just use Rice Chex.

This is what we do too.

[Surfah]

We had a family where the wife had celiac disease. She would get deathly ill from gluten. She was so sensitive that a kiss from her husband after he had eaten a sandwich put her in the hospital. Anyway, she had her own sacrament (rice cake) she brought that couldn't be near any of the bread. We would keep it in a plastic bag on its own washed tray. Unlike the fake celiacs in the ward who have us break rice cakes for them on the same trays with bread.

I felt bad for the husband. He basically adopted her diet because it was such a hassle to segregate everything in their kitchen. I was their home teacher for awhile and I'd take him out to dinner for a normal meal once a month or so. He usually picked Italian because he missed pasta and pizza.

[woot]

Sure if somebody has had small bowel biopsies and blood tests that confirm celiac disease and have been definitively diagnosed by a board-certified gastroenterologist with celiac disease then they have the real thing.

For every person who has the real disease there are ten people walking around saying they have "celiac" or "gluten-sensitivity" that are self-diagnosed, diagnosed by a clueless family doctor, or diagnosed by a chiropractor or naturopath (or for kids diagnosed by a crazy parent). These people are idiots or have idiots for parents.

I get that there's a lot of undue hype about gluten, but I really don't understand this point of view at all. If gluten causes debilitating GI issues, and avoiding gluten prevents said issues, couldn't it be argued that the idiot is the one who spends thousands of dollars getting one's intestines biopsied so they can be told to avoid gluten (or even worse, told that nothing was found)? Seems like a high price to pay for what is basically a "no really, I'm not just being trendy" certification.

This is somewhat personal for me. My wife got very sick while on an archaeological dig and didn't have access to healthcare. For several years after that, gluten gave her extreme GI issues. Recently, her ability to handle gluten has finally mostly returned. My guess is her microbiome got totally cleaned out and for some reason took years to be repopulated in a way conducive to gluten tolerance. Apparently the current internet orthodoxy is that she was faking the whole time. Because that makes sense.

[TripletDaddy]

Speaking of not making sense, I wonder what Is more likely: misdiagnosing yourself or having a severe food allergy that you didn't have previously and then you magically overcome it a few years later after your microbiome gets totally cleaned out and repopulated.

[Moliere]

Speaking of not making sense, I wonder what Is more likely: misdiagnosing yourself or having a severe food allergy that you didn't have previously and then you magically overcome it a few years later after your microbiome gets totally cleaned out and repopulated.

I've never wondered this, but I think I understand what you are saying.

[woot]

Speaking of not making sense, I wonder what Is more likely: misdiagnosing yourself or having a severe food allergy that you didn't have previously and then you magically overcome it a few years later after your microbiome gets totally cleaned out and repopulated.

The microbiome isn't magic. We just don't understand it very well.

My point stands. If there's a perfect correlation between extreme GI distress and recent gluten consumption, it's very likely to be causal. For the record, she visited a half dozen doctors and they all said the same thing -- there's no point in going through an intestinal biopsy when the results wouldn't change anything either way.