I was the first in my family to be diagnosed with Celiac Disease. Since my diagnosis, 4 of my relatives have also been diagnosed. Who can you help in your family to get diagnosed?
And if you need help to get your relatives to listen to you, send them the following episode to tune in to.
Episode 78 - Why Should Your Family Members be Tested for Celiac Disease?
Learn more about Ultimate Celiac System here
www.belindawhelan.com/ultimateceliacsystem
Join my free community and grab your copy of 11 Mistakes People Make Living Gluten Free here www.belindawhelan.myflodesk.com/11mistakes
Check out my Daily Health Tracker here
HEALTH TRACKER | The Healthy Celiac (belindawhelan.com)
And I would love to connect with you on Instagram thehealthyceliac
If you have a spare moment, please pop over to Apple Podcasts and leave me a review. Thank you!
Music Credit bensound.com
I was the first in my family to be diagnosed with Celiac Disease. Since my diagnosis, 4 of my relatives have also been diagnosed. Who can you help in your family to get diagnosed?
And if you need help to get your relatives to listen to you, send them the following episode to tune in to.
Episode 78 - Why Should Your Family Members be Tested for Celiac Disease?
Learn more about Ultimate Celiac System here
www.belindawhelan.com/ultimateceliacsystem
Join my free community and grab your copy of 11 Mistakes People Make Living Gluten Free here www.belindawhelan.myflodesk.com/11mistakes
Check out my Daily Health Tracker here
HEALTH TRACKER | The Healthy Celiac (belindawhelan.com)
And I would love to connect with you on Instagram thehealthyceliac
If you have a spare moment, please pop over to Apple Podcasts and leave me a review. Thank you!
Music Credit bensound.com
So I wanted to share a little bit of story time with you today about my celiac journey with my family. And I guess I want this episode to inspire you to talk to your family and to talk to your relatives that you may not have thought to have this discussion with them prior. So back in the day when I first got diagnosed with celiac disease, I was the first person in my family to be diagnosed with celiac disease. And I didn't really know anything about it prior to my diagnosis. And when I was given my diagnosis, I was actually relieved. So if you've listened to my whole story about my diagnosis, I was relieved to have an answer for why I was feeling so sick, because I just was struggling. Every single day you've probably got a similar story where you feel not yourself anymore, you feel, you know, all of these horrible symptoms and it was hard to get out of bed in the morning. And it's crazy to think that my own mom had felt like this her entire life. She had grown up with all of these problems and no one questioned it. She was a child of a family of eight and none of her siblings had anything going wrong with them like she did. She had really bad stomach pains and she was always really lethargic. And I look back on her life for her and think it's a little bit unfair that no one ever questioned what was wrong with her. No one ever took a step back and went, hang on, your brothers and sisters are all perfectly healthy and fine. Why are you different, Bonnie? Why are you not out there and playing and doing all the fun things that your siblings are doing? Why are you in your bedroom? Why did they think that it was okay for her to be huddled up in her bed with cramps and always feeling unwell? Why did they not question it? And it wasn't until I got diagnosed with celiac disease that my mom made a few comments to me that I questioned her health. It was me that questioned her health and thought, hang on a minute, I've got celiac disease and it's genetic. So maybe my mom has celiac disease. And so for me, questioning my very own mother, it took that step for her to go and get tested. It took for me her child to question her health, for her to go, hang on a minute. Yeah, this is not right. Maybe there is something wrong with me. And so, lo and behold, she went and got a celiac disease diagnosis and she was able to finally improve her health and move on and not suffer from these symptoms that she had struggled with her entire life. So how many people are in your family that could be potentially suffering in silence or suffering, and you've never really pinpointed that their symptoms could be to do with celiac disease? So anytime someone in my family complains to me about an ailment, I will question them and ask different things to see whether perhaps they have celiac disease. Now my brother was also diagnosed with celiac disease, so he was in denial. You may have heard me talk about his story. He was in denial for years and it took him a long time to finally listen to his baby sister and go and get tested. And lo and behold, it has completely transformed his entire life. I look at him and just think, wow, he's so much happier and healthier now, and it's, it's, I guess, taken him on a better health journey. Since his diagnosis, he's much more switched on about what his body needs to fuel it and what sorts of things are, you know, super foods and things that he talks about now that I just, it blows my mind because he was never that way beforehand. So for him, a celiac disease diagnosis has been a blessing. I wouldn't call it a curse at all for him. I would call it a blessing because the path that he has now gone on since his diagnosis has been so positive and he's such a better person, if I can say that he's such a better, happier person because of his celiac disease diagnosis. Okay, so there was me, there was my mom, then there was my brother. Now then two of my uncles were diagnosed with celiac disease, and both of these uncles are my, my mom's brothers. So they didn't suffer the same symptoms as my mom. Uh, one of her brothers, he's quite a bit older, he tried going gluten-free for a while and he couldn't do it. And he has come to the conclusion that he's lived his life and he doesn't suffer from any symptoms of celiac disease. So he doesn't care. So he doesn't wanna, he doesn't wanna know about it. So he's ignorant. He's chosen to eat gluten, and that's his prerogative, that's his choice. And I, I guess his decision for that may have been very, very different. If he got a diagnosis 40 years ago, who knows? But that's his choice and we can't sway him. And I wouldn't try and sway him because like I said, he's chosen that path. He's decided he's lived his life and so be it. And then my other uncle, my uncle Pete, he has always been really, really skinny. Like really skinny. And we just always thought that that was him and never really questioned why he was such a little bean pole compared to everyone else. But since he's got a diagnosis and he's eating gluten-free, he's very strict, he's much healthier, he looks much healthier, and he feels better. He was really, really unwell, um, in the lead up to his diagnosis. But we think that his celiac disease has been triggered later in life. He hasn't suffered from the symptoms like my mom did her whole life. So again, he wouldn't have probably thought to get tested for celiac disease if he didn't know about my mom, myself and my brother. So it's kind of been interesting to see that it's had this flow on effect and that we've been able to help other people in our family. I am convinced that one of my aunties has celiac disease. It's my mom's sister and I do remind her and speak to her and, and not so much beg, but I do ask her to get tested. And she did get tested<laugh> and she didn't go get the results. I found this out recently. She went through all the testing process and she didn't go and get her results. So I think she's in a little bit of denial and she doesn't want to really know about it. So hopefully one day she will take that step and, and go and get some answers because it would, it would give her a lot of support in other areas of her life because, um, she also has fibromyalgia, which is linked very closely to celiac disease and that can be supported by supporting celiac disease. So, you know, we can only help people, we can only tell them so much and we can only support them as much as they want to be supported. But I do truly believe that I, I truly believe that one day she's gonna get an answer and wish like my brother that she'd listened to me years ago. So we will see what happens. I will keep you posted on that one. So who in your family needs to be tested? So your immediate family members do need to be tested for celiac disease because they have a very high chance of having celiac disease. So your immediate family members, your parents, your siblings, your own children, if you have children. And then if it turns out that say your mom has celiac disease like my mom does, then it would be her siblings and her parents and so forth. So all you, you know how that all sprinkles out across the family. That's how it works. It is genetic, so it needs to be tested through the family. There's gluten intolerance over on my dad's side of the family, but no diagnose people with celiac disease. So I'm very blessed that both sides of my family, there's a big awareness of gluten-free. There's a big awareness of what gluten does and that has really helped. So it can help you as well when you have other members in your family that
Speaker 2:Have have got celiac disease because it makes those events such as Christmas and birthdays and gatherings like that much easier to have more gluten-free food when it's not just you that's being catered to. So be a little bit selfish and think about<laugh> that by you helping others, that'll also helped you as well. So who can you help? Who can you support? And if you need to, you can actually get your doctor or your primary caregiver to type out a letter to give to family members to have them tested for celiac disease. If they dunno what the process is so you can get your doctor to write that out for them and you can give that to your family members. I did that when I was first diagnosed and I know that most of the immediate family members of mine went and got tested within a short period of time. And then, you know, people like my brother didn't do it and took years to finally listen to me. So, you know, do what you can to help people do what you can to inspire those people in your family and see if you can help them to feel better. Because if you are anything like me getting a diagnosis for celiac disease, eating gluten free, healing my body, knowing all about gut health and what makes me feel better and what makes me thrive has just been a blessing. So if you can do that for someone else that you care about, then you're a life changer. You really are. So yeah, think about who you can help and who you can talk to in the coming weeks and months to help them maybe get a celiac disease diagnosis and live a better life. So yeah, hope that inspires you. Thanks so much for tuning in, and I will talk with you again very, very soon. Take care. Bye.