Travels With My Celia(c)

 

I've put up some notes that will form my book called "Travels With My Celia(c)" on the Internet. If anybody wants to have a look, feel free.

View the Book as a PDF File

Jay Rayner

 

Jay Rayner is an ill-informed food columnist on the Guardian.

So I wrote this letter to the Editor.

I've given up buying the paper.

Jay Rayner’s blog on food intolerances is a disgrace and about as unscientifically correct as you can get.

I’m a sixty year old coeliac who was diagnosed a few years ago, and my life has been totally changed as a result. No more chronic dandruff, bad skin, gallstones, joint pains, migraines, mild depression, excessive tiredness, the runs and wind.

Did I make that all up? Was it a fad?

Studies show that one in a hundred of the UK population are coeliacs. If more were properly diagnosed and went on a gluten-free diet, many more people would be able to take a full part in society. They would also not be such a drain on the NHS, with problems like depression and arthritis, which can appear because of gluten in the diet.

Your paper, should be promoting good health care, not allowing columnists to use it as a mouthpiece for their quack science.

This was one of the best replies to his article.

I think the weasley squirming of Mr Rayner has come a little too late. I had eplilepsy in my teens but thankfully I haven't had a seizure for about 14 years. The point of bringing that up is: do you think I imagined it or that I was possessed by the devil? They were brutal seizures and they happened. So has Coeliac Disease.

I was diagnosed about two months ago and had to leave my full-time job (in journalism) and ended up being a total wreck in terms of physical health. Mentally, I'm as chipper as ever but it's dim-witted, demented and ill-educated tosspots like you that cause the prejudice that some colieacs suffer when they go to bars, restaurants and the like. You are extremely dangerous.

Perhaps you have climbed down but ill-educated cowards usually back track when they realise they have been rumbled. You are one.

The Cinderella Allergy

 

I read with interest the front page article in The Times on allergy sufferers with interest.

But as a coeliac, or someone allergic to the gluten in wheat, barley and rye, I am totally surprised at the omission of any mention of this allergy. According to statistics compiled by Nottingham University it affects about one in a hundred of the population of the United Kingdom. They also said that diagnosed coeliacs are at a lower risk of getting cancer as opposed to the general population.

Perhaps it has acquired this Cinderella status, because once diagnosed, sufferers generally lose all of those awful symptoms, like migraines, wind, chronic dandruff, diarrhoea, joint pains, infertility in women, mild depression etc. that they’ve endured for years. With the exception of the odd check-up and injection, you are not a heavy drain on the NHS. Some might argue that because coeliac disease shows itself in very peculiar and almost unrelated places, diagnosis saves money by cutting unnecessary visits to the doctor and mis-prescribing of drugs.

But at least things are changing.

Some doctors are now looking to see if the migraines, joint pains or infertility are caused by the allergy.

We need much more of this all-round and open approach to health.

For instance could some of the well-publicised mystery illnesses and loss of form of some sportsmen, be down to undiagnosed coeliac disease? If you take the thousands of professional sportsmen and women in this country, it is surprising that only one is known to be a coeliac. On the law of averages there should be quite a lot more.

Food Safety - The Government View

 

I've just read some of this and it makes interesting reading. So next time a restaurant gives you a blank look when you ask if a dish contains gluten, you can tell them the Government advice.

Medical Books

 

I was in Waterstones and you obviously can see publishers priorities.

There were about twenty general books in their Health section on autism and Asbergers, fifteen on back pain, two on cancer and none on coeliac disease.

It sounds like they get their priorites right!