How It Feels To Be Diagnosed With Coeliac Disease

There’s nothing you can do to stop having Coeliac Disease. All you can do is fix up your diet. So, how does it feel to be newly diagnosed with a chronic autoimmune condition?

Fantastic, actually.

At least it was for me, at first.

I wasn’t upset, defeated, or heartbroken I was never going to sink my teeth into a sexy pastry ever again. The diagnosis came as both a blessing and a relief, if anything.

Were my life movie at that moment; the doctor uttering those two words would’ve been encircled by singing angels, the advice pamphlet would have shone gold and the satanic presence of gluten in my demolished intestine would have quivered in fear.

Finally someone had an answer – and I wasn’t being a frantic, bloated
hypochondriac.

Even so, that fabulous optimism soon faded during the first year: coming to terms with the stupid amount of foods containing (often pointless) gluten, checking and rechecking labels and Googling the life out of something before I dared eat it.

I was uneasy eating out, felt cheated by my shabby GF alternatives to my family’s scrumptious looking meals and I developed an obsession for cleanliness – monitoring everyone’s behaviour if food was involved for fear of being cross contaminated.

My own boyfriend felt like he’d cheated on me if he ate a normal burger (that gluten whore!).

I was scared – an innate survival reaction to something that can make you so very sick, and guess what? A lot of that hasn’t changed. Coeliac Disease comes with ups and downs: you can try your very hardest to be strict and the slightest of things can catch you out.

My first faux pas was mustard powder (cut with wheat, apparently), and I’ve been meticulously careful ever since.

You wanna know what the best thing about being Coeliac is, though? I learned just how crucial food was to our health. Obvious, right? Not really. 67% of men and 57% of women are overweight or obese in the UK, which we all know contributes to diabetes, cancer, heart disease and depression.

Funny, isn’t it, that there’s been a 400% increase in gluten sensitivity since 50 years ago? It’s ‘cause our diets are shocking – and gluten is in everything from baby food to coffee now.

 

Going gluten free and healing yourself with good food is the best thing you can ever do for yourself: you’ll be surprised how your tastebuds being to adapt to and crave real, whole foods (self-confessed sweet potato addict, over here).

Food can be the greatest medicine in the world, but it can also be the most vicious poison – and all the medical industry do is profit from pharmaceuticals once the damage is done. The only way to heal is to do it yourself – and I think that’s more empowering than any drug a GP can give you.

So what about you, fellow Coeliacs? How did you feel when you were first diagnosed with the autoimmune disease? Scared? Confused? Hungry? Feel free to share your stories, I’d love to hear them.