Myths, Misperceptions & Faleshoods About Coeliac Disease

I have been lucky enough to have received a copy of "Celiac Disease for Dummies" and excellent plain speaking guide to the newly diagnosed or, like me, managing the disease down the track. I wanted to share some of its wisdom with you so over the next few weeks I will reproduce some of the areas that I most commonly get asked about, especially the Myths, misperceptions and faleshoods. Unfortunately with the availability of the world wide web its extremely easy to find incorrect and sometimes dangerously wrong information. As I have said before, research, read, question the information you are given don't accept what you are told as Gospel truth, especially by non Medical groups or individuals, only a licensed Doctor can give you a diagnosis of any disease! The information I will state here for you is all proven medical information....

Myth #1 YOU MUST AVOID ALL PRODUCTS WITH GLUTEN

Sometimes it seems to us that gluten is about as ubiquitous as the air we all breathe. Gluten, can be found not only in foods, but also in some shampoos, creams and lotions. A commonly held myth is that if you have Coeliac disease or dermatitis herpetiformis (DH) using such gluten-containing products can triger your Coeliac Disease or your DH. In a word (well, two actually) IT CAN'T.

The only way that your Coeliac disease will be triggered is by you ingesting gluten. So long as your shampoo, cream, lotion, and so forth stay on your skin and out of your mouth (as if!), they won't come in contact with your small intestine and thus, will be unable to cause your disease to flare. This is also true of DH which, is a skin disease very closely linked with Coeliac disease. If you have DH it is safe for you to use gluten-containing topical products.

Lipstick may also contain gluten, but so long as your lipstick does as its name says it should - that is, stick to your lips - your insides will remain a stranger to your lipstick's gluten and thus, your use of lipstick won't pose a risk.

For the sake of completeness, we'll add on qualifier here: Albeit very rare it is possible that some speck of gluten-containing lipstick will, indeed, find its way into your insides and lead to problems. So if you're strictly avoiding gluten yet you continue to have gastrointestinal symptoms, make sure your lipstick is gluten free. you'll need to contact the lipstick manufacturer to find this out.

Reproduced from "Celiac Disease for Dummies"