Welcome to The Healthy Celiac Podcast—the go-to podcast for women with celiac disease! This podcast is designed to help you thrive beyond your diagnosis and embrace life to the fullest because you are so much more than just a woman with celiac disease.
Hosted by Certified Health Coach Belinda Whelan, who specializes in follow-up care for women with celiac disease, each episode is a blend of practical advice, personal stories, and expert interviews. Belinda shares valuable insights on everything from navigating a gluten free lifestyle to managing the emotional aspects of celiac disease.
Join me as we explore topics that empower you to take control of your health, and discover joy in every meal and moment. Tune in for practical advice and support as we navigate the challenges of celiac disease and empower you to live confidently.
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All right. Welcome back to this week's episode. Now, as you can probably tell by the title of this week's episode, we are talking about sex. So you may wanna pop in some headphones. If you've got little ears around or listen to this when they are not around, so let's get straight into it. So we have to be very careful with gluten. We all know that gluten free is a huge part of our lives and something that has been coming up more and more lately is the topic of semen and the topic of condoms and lubricant. So we're gonna be covering off those three things in today's episode. So bit of a fun one, and all I can hear in my head, if you're an eighties, baby, you'll understand why. And it's a song by soul and pepper called. Let's talk about sex and I'm not gonna sing it because I can't sing. But just so you know, that's, what's in the back of my head at the moment. I could hear it. And I'm just trying to concentrate on what I need to talk about. So yeah, if you don't know that song, go look it up afterwards, salt and pepper. Let's talk about sex. It's a, um, fun one takes me back to my younger years and my mom used to cringe when I'd play that song, cuz I was way too young to be listening to that. But anyway. All right, so let's start with the first one. So the first one I wanna talk about is lubricant, depending on your situation, whether you use lubricant or you don't, then this may or may not be relevant to you. But for me personally, I've been making my own lubricant for years now because I've always opted for a natural solution to this issue. And I was buying one that was costing me around$30 a bottle. And I just found that it was rather on the expensive side. And when I looked at the ingredients, I had all of those in my cupboard and I could actually make it myself. So yeah, so now I make my own lubricant and it's completely safe and it's completely free of any nasties. And of course there's no gluten in it. Now, if you would like this recipe, you can find it on my website, which is Belinda wheelin.com. And you'll find that amongst all my DIY recipes on there. So the thing with lubricants that you must be aware of as well is if you are using an oil based lubricant, which is the one that's on my blog is you aren't able to actually use those with condoms. So you need to use a water based lubricant. Now some lubricants have gluten in them and some do not. So some are labeling them now as gluten-free, it's become quite a sales point. Obviously we all know why, um, people that are jumping on the gluten-free bandwagon and you might be thinking, well, why the heck am I gonna have lubricant in my mouth<laugh> or ingesting it? Well, it's not so much for that, that I wanna talk about. It's more for people that have got allergies as far as if they have a topical reaction. So yes, you can have celiac disease, but you can also react to it on your skin. So some people have it topically and that's where that allergy side of things comes into it, where you have that, the rash or the pain that you actually can't touch any gluten. So you definitely don't wanna have that down there in your nether regions. Do you ladies or even gentlemen, if you're listening to this, if, if that's your issue as well,<laugh> so very important to make sure that you are using something natural, gluten free, something that's safe for you and something that's not putting any nasties down there. So as well as being gluten free, I do highly recommend that you look for something that is safe because there's a lot of really, really toxic, toxic lubricants out there. And the last place that we wanna be putting, things like that is near our genitals. That is just scary, scary, scary, how quickly that absorbs into our body, right? So I hope that covers off that one. The next one is condoms. So condoms are actually one of the things that fall under, um, their, their medical devices as such. And they're not food. Obviously we don't eat condoms. Some people do put them in their mouths, but we don't eat them. We don't consume them. So they are not regulated the same way that food is. So they don't, they don't have to actually disclose what is on or in condoms. And the problem with condoms doesn't lie with the actual condom itself. It's the lubricant that's on them. And because many emulsifiers and stabilizers and things like that are usually made up with some type of gluten. There is the concern that there's a possibility of gluten being on the lubricant that's on condoms. So if you have found yourself, I don't know, maybe reacting down in that area or you've got any type of unexplained rash or anything that you just can't put your finger on. It could be that you are using a condom. That's got a lubricant with gluten on it and you are reacting to that. Now I don't think you need, if you are, you know, if you are into oral sex, I don't think you need to stress too much that you would be ingesting enough gluten to do any harm to your digestive tract. However, saying that we don't know that we, I can't say that definitively, however, it's very unlikely that the small, tiny, tiny amount of gluten that's maybe in that would do damage. But again, there's not enough studies. There's no scientific data to back this that I've been able to find. So if you are concerned, I would say, go for one of those gluten free brands, look for them online. You'll find there's a, there's quite a few of them popping up around the place. Now they're becoming more and more easier to find. So that might be something that's worth looking into. But if in general, you're not having any issues and you're finding that you feel good and you're fine. It's probably not a problem. Okay. All right. The next one is semen. And this is, this is a question that does get asked quite often and it's nothing to be embarrassed about because I, I personally think it is a, a legitimate question. And it's basically is there gluten in semen? And if you know much about bodily fluids, then that's a, that's a really legitimate, I think mature question to ask. It's not silly by any means. And the reason that we can get a little bit confused with what is in se is because we know about breast milk. We know that when we consume certain things, it passes through in breast milk. So you may be thinking, wow, does the same thing happen with salmon? Well, it's very different because breast milk is designed to feed a baby and breast milk has the goodness and the nutrients of the food. And basically everything that, that mother has consumed passes through the breast milk to sustain that baby and to feed that vape, to, to grow and develop. Whereas semen is very different and semen is not designed to feed anyone<laugh> as such. It, it's got a very different purpose. And obviously if you are swallowing semen for, you know, whatever reason, then<laugh>, this is going down another route that I thought it was going to, um, not pun intended, but having said that if you do swallow semen, there's no reason to be stressed that your partner has consumed gluten and that it's going to pass through you into you from that Siemens. So let's roll that one out. That's one that you don't need to stress about. Um, but again, having said that there is not a lot of information about that. There's no scientific data, but from what I can come up with and what I've been able to discover, it's something that we don't need to stress about this episode. I just wanted to shed some light on these topics and just share with you because these are things that we think about and you may not have ever thought about them and it's just bringing awareness to you. So again, I, I think this has been a fun episode to record, and I appreciate you tuning in and I hope you learned something. And obviously if you've got any questions or any feedback or any stories, even I'd love to hear
Speaker 2:
From you, if you are using a gluten-free condom for this reason, again, let me know. I'd love to hear from you and your perspective on it. So that's pretty much all I've got for you guys this week. This is just a super quick fun episode. And go ahead, get on iTunes and look up Salton pepper. And let me know what you think of the song. If you've never heard it before. All right. Have a great week. And I will talk with you next week. Take care.
