Your Celiac Questions Answered: Listener Q&A with Belinda Ep. 187

In this listener Q&A episode, I’m answering your most pressing questions about life with celiac disease. I’ll share insights on navigating pregnancy after a celiac diagnosis, dealing with the frustrating misinformation some doctors provide, and clarifying the confusing advice about oats from dietitians. If you’ve been looking for straightforward answers and practical tips, this episode is for you. Join me as I tackle these important topics and help you feel more confident on your celiac journey.

Previous episodes mentioned

https://thehealthyceliacpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1720208/episodes/10569099-pregnancy-and-celiac-disease-ep-57

https://thehealthyceliacpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1720208/episodes/15961498-undergoing-an-oats-challenge-a-gluten-free-guide-ep-182

Prenatal Vitamins Mentioned (affiliate link and 10% discount)
https://belindawhelan.usana.com/ux/cart/en-AU/product/151.030189

Find out how Ultimate Celiac System can support your Celiac journey here  https://belindawhelantraining.com/ultimate-celiac-system

Wish you could get gluten free meals on the table fast that the whole family will love? Check out Meal Plans Made Easy
https://belindawhelantraining.com/gluten-free-meal-plans-made-easy

Join my free community and grab your copy of 11 Mistakes People Make Living Gluten Free here https://www.belindawhelan.myflodesk.com/11mistakes

Check out my Daily Health Tracker here
https://www.belindawhelan.com/dailyhealthtracker

 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

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

All right, welcome back to this week's episode. It's going to be a very quick one today. I know everyone's busy and time is of the essence this week with lots going on, so I just wanted to record a really quick episode that you can sneak in and listen to quickly. So I'm just going to answer a couple of questions that I have been sent through, as well as answering some questions that I've found in some Facebook groups. So let's jump on into it. The first as answering some questions that I've found in some Facebook groups, so let's jump on into it.

Speaker 1: 0:51

The first one is a message that I received via my podcast, so this is one of my fan mail messages. I don't know who it's from, but it's from someone in Lexington, kentucky, so thank you for sending through your message. It says Hi, I am recently diagnosed with celiac and I need a good prenatal vitamin. I know us with celiac are prone to need more vitamins and supplements than most. What is the best one? And do you have any other tips or suggestions when trying to conceive with celiac? How long you should be gluten free before trying to get pregnant? Okay, so there's a few questions in there that I'll answer for you. I have done an entire episode that covers so much of this information. So I definitely recommend that you go back and have a listen to that one. So if you're on the podcast, it's episode 57, and it's celiac disease and pregnancy or if you're on YouTube, then I will link it below this video and you can go and check it out. But basically, yes, you do need a good prenatal vitamin. It's very, very important for your baby's health as well as your health. I personally took one called Cell Centrals prenatal. I do have an affiliate link for that where you can get 10% off, so I'll pop a link to that one below in the show notes for you if you're interested in going checking it out. It's a very high quality supplement.

Speaker 1: 2:11

So when I first learned about supplements, there are pretty much two categories of supplements. One is a pharmaceutical grade supplement and one is just a food grade standard. So how this works this is the easiest way that I understand it is. Think of a pizza. When you get a pizza, it can have pepperoni, it can have pineapples, tomato whatever your ingredients are, and they're kind of scattered all over the pizza, and then when you eat one slice of pizza, you might get two pepperonis, you might get one piece of pineapple, you might get three pieces of tomato and then the next piece of pizza. You might have a different amount. That is basically what a food grade vitamin has. You can have a different amount of each ingredient in each tablet. So they're not they're not under any regulation to have what's on the label in their product, so you can be definitely wasting your money. So some people think that certain vitamins are expensive, but the way I look at it is vitamins that are cheap generally don't have what is on the label in each tablet. So you're probably wasting your money and you're better off spending a little bit more on getting something that is a pharmaceutical grade supplement, and what that means is whatever is on the label is in every single tablet or capsule pill, whatever you're taking. So pharmaceutical grade supplements are the way to go. Highly highly recommend that you spend your money a little bit more and put it towards taking those. So yes, definitely need a high grade supplement.

Speaker 1: 3:57

So the other question was any other tips to conceive with celiac? I have done the full episode on that, so I won't go over that in this episode because I don't think it needs to be reset, but it's definitely worth going back and listening to that episode because there's some really great tips in that. I just had a listen to it again before recording this episode and, yeah, it's a really great episode with lots of fantastic tips and insights and to help you understand the you know the ins and outs of getting pregnant with celiac disease. The next question that is written here is how long should you be gluten-free before trying to get pregnant? I do cover that off in the episode and that, basically, is totally dependent on how well you are doing on a gluten-free diet, whether your body is healing and you're starting to absorb the nutrients from your food, you're starting to get your energy back, your symptoms are going away, things like that. So please go have a listen back to that episode, episode 57. I will link it below, as mentioned, so I hope that helps you and if you want to send me a message, please let me know, because I can't use your name in the episode, unfortunately, the next one. I did get permission from this person who has posted this because it's quite a long question and I just wanted to ask that person that it was okay to read this in my podcast and they have said yes, so this is in an Australian celiac support group and the poster writes hi.

Speaker 1: 5:25

I was diagnosed as a celiac back in 2011 and have tried to stay gluten-free as best as I can. I do slip up now and then I have had four gastroscopies and as best as I can, I do slip up now and then I have had four gastroscopies and, obviously, the blood test that showed I had the gene. Last week I went to the doctors for my normal blood test and he claimed that I no longer have celiac disease. I have been seeing him on and off for four or five years and he has never told me this before Not saying he is right, but he reckons that I no longer qualify in the range to be considered celiac. Now. Either I was misdiagnosed all those years ago or he is getting this very wrong. Either way, I am pretty annoyed by this. Probably need to get tested again by someone else, but considering they all send the tests off to the same blood testing corporations, results would probably be much the same. Have they changed what qualifies you as celiac, or do I need a new doctor? As he is a damon, I am no longer a celiac.

Speaker 1: 6:25

Wow, wow, wow, and this is why I am always saying your doctor probably doesn't know as much about celiac disease as what even you do if you're a listener to this show, because, oh my goodness, thankfully this person was given some really fantastic advice in that group. I'm so happy to see the responses that that person was given, because the thing is, once you have celiac disease, once you have celiac disease, you have celiac disease. There is no cure. If this person has now been told she does, he or she I don't actually know if it's a man or a lady, because there's a picture on their Facebook that's a man and a lady together but I don't actually understand how this doctor can say that, because if that doctor has come to that conclusion, that means there's a cure for celiac disease, which there is not. There is no cure for celiac disease. But this doctor's basically made it out like this person is now cured. No, that is not how it works.

Speaker 1: 7:29

When we eat a gluten-free diet and we don't consume any gluten, our body then heals. We don't show that we've got damage from gluten because our body has now healed and it doesn't show up. It doesn't show up in any tests. It's only when you have gluten that it shows up in your blood test. So this particular doctor needs to go back to medical school, needs to do some further study and should not be giving this advice to this person. This is dangerous. This is messing with people's health and their lives.

Speaker 1: 8:02

If you've been told this, I would probably say report that doctor, because they need further educating and they should not be giving out this misinformation because it is incorrect. It is so far from the truth and they have no idea what the heck they're talking about. Unfortunately so thankfully this person doesn't need to go get tested. I would definitely say they need to go get a new doctor. I would be running as far away from that doctor as possible and never going back to them, because that is some seriously messed up misinformation for sure. So, yes, if you get told you no longer have celiac disease, your doctor is on crack and you need to get the heck away from that doctor and find another one if that's possible for you. Woo, yes, I'll just get down from a high horse now. I do love to get up there every now and again. All right, and the next one that I keep seeing is about oats.

Speaker 1: 8:58

Now, for us here in Australia, the oat story is very different to the oat story elsewhere. So in Australia, oats should be not on our radar when we first get diagnosed with celiac disease, and I personally recommend this to my students and my clients as well, no matter where they are living, because of the amount of people that react to avenin in oats. But the question that I saw recently was I went to a dietician and my dietician recommended that I start eating oats, and this person had just got diagnosed with celiac disease, went to a dietician to get some advice and again it happens so often has been misguided and given the wrong information. So for those of us in Australia, we need to avoid oats. That's a 100% avoid oats until you have done an oats challenge. I've done an entire episode on doing oats challenges and what's involved. It used to always be Celiac Australia's advice for us to completely avoid oats.

Speaker 1: 10:06

Now, having said that, there are no safe oats in Australia that have been labeled gluten-free, so that's another challenge in itself. But if that is something that you want to learn more about or you're confused about, I will also post the link to the episode about oats. But if you live elsewhere and oats are deemed safe for you on a gluten-free diet, then again, you need to be making sure that those are safe oats, that they are not contaminated with any form of gluten, and that, if you do, I personally believe that if you do want to eat oats, you should avoid them first. Okay, you should not be consuming them straight away, because you may be one of those people that does react to the avanin in them in them, rather, and if you are reacting, you may think that you're just having gluten and that you're still getting sick, whereas if you eliminate them for a period of time and then introduce oats, you'll know whether you can tolerate them.

Speaker 1: 11:05

So I'm not going to go into that too much, but I just wanted to cover off the oh my god. Doctors, dietitians why are they not giving us the right information? Why are they not educating us? This grinds me so much that I'm a health coach and I seem to be able to share more information than what these doctors and dietitians are. So please be careful who you're getting your information from. Please be careful in Facebook groups that share misinformation and are not giving the right information. Thankfully, those two questions were answered correctly and there was some really great feedback given to those original posters. So, yeah, I just wanted to talk about those quickly on today's episode.

Speaker 1: 11:47

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you've learned something or, you know, heard a new insight and felt a little bit more at ease with what you're doing on your journey with celiac disease. And, as always, if you have a question, if you have a subject idea, a topic that you want me to cover off, please let me know. If you're on YouTube, you can type it below this video at any stage. Just pop your question in there. Or hey, belinda, I've got an idea for an episode. Or you can go to Instagram if you're listening on the podcast and you can send me a message over at the Healthy Celiac and I will get back to you there and answer your question in a future episode. But, yeah, otherwise, thank you so much for listening. I hope you have a fantastic week and be safe out there it's a crazy world and look after yourself. Talk to you soon. Bye.