Celiac Disease and Cheat Days Ep. 14

If you have ever been tempted to eat gluten or you do eat gluten even though you have been diagnosed with Celiac Disease, this episode is for you!

If you have a loved one who you suspect has Celiac Disease, please be sure to listen to the end. This is also for you.

It's a little intense over here this week, but, it has to be said.

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Music Credit bensound.com 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:26

Override welcome back to this week's episode of the healthy celiac podcast. If you're new here, thank you so much for joining us this week. And if you're a returning listener, thank you. Thank you so much for coming back. This podcast is just growing by leaps and bounds, and I'm so excited by the amount of countries where people are tuning in from. So it's fantastic to have you guys here and being able to teach you the information that I've learned along my way. So this week we're actually talking about celiac disease and cheat days. Oh, it's a good one. It's interesting because when we say cheat days, what do you think of, do you think of, okay, so normally I eat gluten-free, but just this once I'm just going to have a little bit of gluten, you know, just, just today, I might just have a little bit of a treat and not worry about the results that, you know, the side effects, because that's what we're talking about. Apparently there's lots of you guys that do this and it's quite concerning. It's a worry, it's a real worry. And I just want to share with you a bit of a reminder of why it's a bad idea. It's actually pretty silly, not, not to be awful, but it's kind of scary that this is going on. And there's people talking about it out there in the Facebook world and online in these forums that people are sharing the, you know, every now and again, they have a cheat day and then, and the rest of the time they eat well, now we're not talking about what are you building here? Are we, we're not talking about, you know, eating healthy and high protein and you know, going to the gym and working out really hard for six days of the week and then Sunday having a cheat day and eating hamburger or pizza and smashing a bottle of soda award soft drink. We're not talking about that. Are we because other people can do that. We can't, we have to eat gluten-free all the time. 100% of the time, because it is not a diet, is it, it's not a diet. It is a lifelong prescription to our health. We are very lucky in the fact that this is one of those very rare diseases where we don't actually have to take medication to feel better. We just have to eat gluten free. And that might sound harsh, but it's true. We, we are probably one of the lucky ones because we do get to make food choices that yes, they can be a pain in the bar and yes, they affect our life. But I would much rather just have to eat gluten free than have to take medication. So when you put it in that perspective, we are kind of blessed that we don't have to take the tablets or inject anything into ourselves to, to heal and to feel better. We simply just have to make that decision to ate 100%. Gluten-free forever.

Speaker 2: 3:27

Now this

Speaker 1: 3:29

Episode is mostly for you guys. If you do have cheat days or you're tempting to have cheat days, because I think what's happening is not enough. People are actually being told, what happens if you do eat gluten? Now we all know the side effects. We all know the signs and symptoms. We've all got our own signs and symptoms. And the side effects. When we do have gluten, we are all very, very different. My main one was diarrhea in the beginning and as time went on, it got worse and it became more following things like vomiting as well. So it was both ends. It was vomiting, it was diarrhea. It was body aches. It was fatigue. It was brain fog. So I personally never want to eat gluten because I never want to feel like that. Like that is just crazy to want to feel that way for the sake of a chocolate donut. Like that is my thing. Chocolate donut is the only one thing that I really miss. And I wish that I could find an amazing gluten-free chocolate donut. But other than that, I'm fine. I'm not tempted. And I don't want to feel that awful feeling that I used to feel. So I just, it's not worth it. Whereas I do know that there are people that don't really get as many side effects or symptoms and some people get mild side effects such as just a headache. They don't get all of those other things. So they think it's worth it. They think it's okay to just have a bit of gluten every now

Speaker 2: 4:59

And again, and deal with it. So

Speaker 1: 5:03

The thing is, yeah, you get those signs and symptoms, those side effects. So what happens every time you actually inkling what's going on inside your body, right? What are you doing to yourself when you consume gluten? Well, the thing is your body is attacking itself, right? So the Villa, which is in our small intestine becomes incredibly damaged from consuming gluten because our body is literally attacking itself. Okay? So the damaged Vila are then unable to absorb any nutrients from our food. And therefore we need to get our body back into a healthy state as quick as possible so that we can heal our VLI and continue to absorb nutrients.

Speaker 2: 5:46

So if we're

Speaker 1: 5:47

Not eating going free all the time, then our body is constantly damaging itself and constantly having to repair itself. Right? So what happens then is it causes

Speaker 2: 5:59

This

Speaker 1: 6:00

Response in our body to be constantly attacking itself. And if you know anything about disease and what causes disease, it is generally from inflammation and inflammation can cause so many further issues that just get nasty. Now, one of the big things that happens to people with celiac disease, if they continue to eat going is getting type one diabetes. Now you've, might've heard me talk about this. In a previous episode, my niece has got type one diabetes and absolutely breaks my heart to see this young teenager having to do with this lifelong issue of having to inject herself and test herself before she eats. And it's just, it's extreme. I would not wish that on anybody. So I do not wish for you to ever get diagnosed with type one diabetes, but that is something that can happen if you're not taking care of your health. Ms is another one arthritis. If you know anyone with arthritis, it can be very debilitating. It can cause many, many issues, especially as you go through into your old back into old age, I guess is the way of putting it. Um, as you age and you know, you're trying to do things. It gets a lot harder when you've got arthritis. Ulcerative colitis is another one, which is very nasty to deal with then there's Crohn's disease. And then of course cancer,

Speaker 2: 7:28

Yes, it can

Speaker 1: 7:30

Cause cancer. Now, I don't know why we are not all being told this. When we get diagnosed with celiac disease, we all need to be told how serious this is. This diagnosis is so serious that if we don't stick to our gluten free way of life, now there's a number of different types of cancers that you can get. If you continue to eat gluten after a celiac disease diagnosis, but I'm going to talk to you now about two of the main ones. Now, the first one is esophageal cancer and the second one is small intestinal cancer. Now it kind of makes sense when you think about it. So your esophagus is basically goes from your throat to your stomach. So where do we eat? Where do we consume going? Of course it goes in the mouth that goes down and throat and it goes to well,

Speaker 2: 8:17

So yeah,

Speaker 1: 8:19

Cancer. What do we normally think of when we think of that? We think of smokers. Don't we, people that have smoked their whole life and they get a cervical cancer and they can barely talk. And it's a horrible, horrible type of cancer. Can you imagine getting that because you just couldn't give up gluten, definitely not worth it. Absolutely not worth it. So I want this, I want this episode to hit home guys. I really want you to think about this and the damaging effects that it can cause now the other one is small intestinal cancer, right? Think of what could go on to your body. If you had cancer in your small intestine, it is bad enough that our veal eye gets damaged, but can you imagine having cancer in your small intestine and the repercussions of that? It would just be horrendous. So I don't want that to happen. Anybody. It is something that we need to take seriously. And I also want you to really, really hone in on it. Anyone that's related to you that you think has got celiac disease. Now, a few people have reached out to me recently because they believe that family members have got celiac disease and they refuse to do anything about it. They, they say that they don't want to know about it. They couldn't eat gluten-free they couldn't live

Speaker 2: 9:51

That way. Well, maybe

Speaker 1: 9:53

You could share this episode with them and teach them the real realities of what could actually happen to them. If they do have celiac disease and they continue to be ignorant and continue to go down this path, imagine if they did get one of these types of cancers or one of these other types of issues, imagine then what their life would be like. It'd be a whole nother ball game. Wouldn't it? It would just be awful. So if there's someone in your life that you truly do believe has got celiac disease and you want them to get tested, please feel free to share this with them. Please, please get them to listen to it. And maybe they listen to my voice instead of yours, because this, this is serious. This is people's lives. And people's health that we're talking about. Now, if you can help someone else amazing if I can help someone else amazing. But the thing is, we have one amazing life on this earth to live, and we want to live at the best way that we can. And we want that for other people as well. So let's make that happen and let's share as much information with others as we possibly can. Thank you so much for listening. I really hope that that has helped someone today. The bright person will hear this message and will change somebody's life. I'm absolutely certain of that. So thanks so much for listening and training. Next week, I will talk to you soon.