The Celiac Disease Resource, Inc.

March 2011 Newsletter

P.O. Box 621, Glenmont, NY 12077 - upstateceliacs@yahoo.com - 518-461-7065
celiacresource.org

~Tidbits from Daria~

CURE FOR CELIAC? See: Big News for Celiac Treatment Comes in a Small Package

Remedies: Chewing Gum for Heartburn

It may be hard for most people to think of chewing gum as a remedy for anything other than a case of bad breath. But several studies in recent years have shown that it can in fact help alleviate the symptoms of gastro esophageal reflux disease, better known to most people as GERD or heartburn. Read article at: Chewing Gum for Heartburn

Pet Talk: Show dog knows his business, and his gluten

Hour after hour, day after day, Elias, as he is known, is a hardworking gluten-detection service dog. He accompanies his owner, Hollie Scott, 22, whose celiac disease is so severe that she's ill for weeks if she eats something that has merely been sliced by a knife used previously to carve something with minimal gluten content. The dog spent weeks in Slovenia completing gluten-detection training late last year and now he can detect and warn her away from anything containing gluten, hot or cold, in all its many manifestations.

Read the whole storey: Gluten-Detection Service Dog

Boston Market goes GF: It's All in the Gravy...

Allergy Eats - find your gf restaurant among different allergy listed places to eat.

www.allergyeats.com 

Gluten Free Reviewer is a great review website of different products.

www.glutenfreereviewer.com
 

Decorated Sugar Cookies
Take "Cause Your Special" sugar cookie mix (or your favorite gf cookie recipe). Bake as directed. Make a Confectioner's Powered Sugar Frosting: 1 stick butter, 2 cups powdered sugar and milk or water to the consistency you like. Start with 3-4 tbl. liquid. (or Betty Crocker's Vanilla gf frosting). Decorate and Celebrate! The kids will love having something special.

Is Gluten Bad for Your Body? Here you can read what they say about gluten, but also about the hype with Chelsea Clinton's wedding and other celebrities. What is it Exactly?

Fran's Finds

I just love a bargain. Especially on Gluten Free items, maybe because they are so rare. 

Recently, Niskyauna Coop was selling Udi's bread whole grain and white sandwich loafs for only $3.99 per loaf. I spoke to the manager in charge of this product line, and he told me he was planning on repeating this sale often, it is such a big hit. He also says he will keep this price for "awhile" so call ahead if you want to check it out. Even so, regularly he is selling it for $4.99. Last week I saw it for as high as $8.99 at a local store. The Coop is located at 2227 Nott St. (at Balltown Road) - 374-1362 - niskayunacoop.com

Next thrill was finding a delicious Gluten Free cracker selection at the Christmas tree shop. The brand was Wellabys (never heard of it before) for only $1.99 a box. I bought the: Cheese, Parmesan Cheese and Sun-dried Tomato flavors, all yummy,MSG & GMO free, 0g trans fat.

While you are in the Christmas tree, shop check out the Goldbaums Gluten Free Brown Rice pasta selections for only $2.49 a pound. I fooled some gluten eaters at Sundays pasta dinner, they enjoyed them very much

Keep in touch with me when you find something to share with us all . See you all at the next meeting. Gluten Free Fran - faz2400@yahoo.com

P.S.: save your favorite emply gluten-free product containers, and bring them to the meeting. We will have a table for displaying them (containers, boxes, bags, etc.) for others to check out.

Cookbook:

Here's a new cookbook: I met Laurel Mors,who is celiac, lives in Iowa, and has put together a Gluten free Mediterranean diet cookbook, which sells for $20. I have tried some of the recipes and they have been quite good.Her objective in doing this book was to put good nutritious, low fat, low sugar food into our bodies, plus the recipes are directed toward Celiacs & others with dietary restrictions.  In speaking to her on the phone,  Laurel indicated that she uses a flour called "GEMS" which was developed by a Wendy Turnbull in Canada - glutenfreegems.com. 

The recipe for the flour is on the web site and easy to come by. If anyone is interested in purchasing Laurel's book, she can be reached via email: lvmors@gmail.com  -  telephone # 515-955-4949 - she does not take credit cards, so you will need to send her a money order or check. Let me know what you think of this book if you get it - and - please feel free to use my name when talking to her.

              Celiac Inflammation Linked With Heart Disease, Asthma

              By Anne Harding and Alison McCook

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Feb 25 - Celiac disease patients may face increased risks of heart disease and asthma, according to two separate analyses of Swedish national data.

And that might be true to some extent even if they stick to a gluten-free diet, said Dr. Jonas Ludvigsson of Orebro University Hospital, who led both studies.

In one of the two studies, published online January 24th in Circulation, Dr. Ludvigsson and his colleagues found that patients with celiac disease were 22% more likely to die of ischemic heart disease during follow-up than the reference group, while risk for people with intestinal inflammation but no celiac disease was 32% greater.

People with celiac disease antibodies in their blood but no symptoms had no extra risk of dying from heart disease, however.

The research team had information on close to 45,000 individuals who'd had intestinal biopsies, including 28,190 with celiac disease and villous atrophy; 12,598 with inflammation of the small intestine but no villous atrophy; and 3,658 with positive celiac disease serology but no intestinal inflammation or villous atrophy.

The researchers compared each group to a reference group of nearly 220,000 people who hadn't undergone intestinal biopsies.

The entire intestinal biopsy cohort, including people without celiac disease, had a 20% higher risk of heart disease during follow-up, typically a 6- to 8-year period.

The increased risk was relatively "modest," Dr. Ludvigsson and his colleagues note. For example, there were 24 more heart attacks per 100,000 person-years among the celiac disease patients than in the reference population, and 102 more deaths per 100,000 years among people with intestinal inflammation but no celiac disease.

Dr. Ludvigsson told Reuters Health via email that "patients with inflammation but no villous atrophy have not traditionally received a gluten-free diet. Hence, persistent inflammation in this (latter) patient group may explain their high risks of ischemic heart disease."

The researchers don't know whether patients with confirmed celiac disease were avoiding gluten.

"Unfortunately," Dr. Ludvigsson told Reuters Health, "we have no individual-based data on gluten-free diet adherence. We know from earlier studies that 83% of the patients adhered to a gluten-free diet, but if these individuals were at increased risk or if the risk increase was restricted to those 17% with bad adherence we do not know."

"My personal guess," he added, "is that the risk increase is found both in those on a gluten-free diet and in those not on a diet, but that it is higher in those not on a diet. But I have no hard evidence to confirm this."

In a second study, Dr. Ludvigsson and his colleagues found that people with celiac disease were 60% more likely to develop asthma, relative to those without the disease.

For every 100,000 people with celiac disease, 147 will have asthma that would not have occurred in the absence of the autoimmune digestive disorder, according to the researchers.

Individuals with asthma are also more likely to eventually develop celiac disease, they reported in a February 11th online paper in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

For this study they compared the same 28,000 Swedes with celiac disease to more than 140,000 controls.

It's unclear what might explain the association, Dr. Ludvigsson said. "Personally, I think the role of vitamin D deficiency should be stressed."

People with celiac disease are more likely to develop osteoporosis and tuberculosis, both diseases in which vitamin D plays a role. If a person with celiac disease also has low levels of vitamin D, this could in turn affect the immune system, which could increase the risk of developing asthma, he said.

"Another potential mechanism could be that asthma and celiac disease share some immunological feature," he added. "If you have it, you are at increased risk of both diseases."

J Allergy Clin Immunol

Celiac Disease More Prevalent in Multiple Sclerosis

Megan Brooks (freelance writer for Medscape)

March 10, 2011 - Celiac disease is more prevalent in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and their close relatives than in the general population, clinicians from Spain report.

Increased efforts aimed at early detection and dietary treatment of celiac disease among MS patients with tissue IgA-antitransglutaminase-2 antibodies "are advisable," they conclude in a report published online March 7 in BMC Neurology.

"We have found a prevalence of celiac disease among MS patients that is 5 to 10 times higher compared with the general population all over the world, which is between 1% and 2%," said first study author Luis Rodrigo, MD, from the Gastroenterology Service, Hospital Universitario Central de Asturias, in Oviedo, Spain.

Dr. Rodrigo and his colleagues note, however, that celiac disease is often under diagnosed and therefore underestimated.

"The practical point is to put these patients on a gluten-free diet and to observe the improvement of the neurological disease over time," he said in an email to Medscape Medical News.

Clinic Experience Fuels Study

Dr. Rodrigo and his associates recently saw a 30-year-old female patient with relapsing-remitting MS who developed abdominal pain with diarrhea and weight loss. She was diagnosed as having celiac disease, put on a gluten-free diet, and subsequently saw improvement not only in her digestive symptoms but also in her neurologic disturbances.

This experience led them to analyze the prevalence of serologic, histologic, and genetic celiac disease markers in 72 MS patients and 126 first-degree relatives, as well as 123 healthy controls.

They detected tissue IgA-antitransglutaminase-2 antibodies, a key serologic marker of celiac disease, in 7 MS patients (10%) but in only 3 controls (2.4%), a statistically significant difference (P < .05; odds ratio, 5.33; 95% confidence interval, 1.074 - 26.425).

They also detected mild or moderate villous atrophy (Marsh III type) in duodenal biopsy specimens from 8 MS patients (11.1%). There were no significant differences between MS and control patients in HLA-DQ2 and HLA-DQ8 genetic susceptibility markers of celiac disease.

In addition, 23 of 126 first-degree relatives of MS patients had celiac disease (32%).

The only differential parameter between MS patients with celiac disease and those without was the age at onset of MS, which was younger (35 ± 7 years old) in the former and older (44 ± 10 years old) in the latter (P < .05). All of the 8 MS patients with celiac disease were female.

Early Detection, Treatment Key

On the basis of their initial experience, the clinicians say they put all of the MS patients with celiac disease on a gluten-free diet "and all of them improved considerably both with respect to the gastrointestinal and to the neurological symptomatology in the follow-up period," they report.

"So the main message that we want to [get out] to doctors who attend MS patients is to perform clinical, serological, genetic, and histologic studies directed to find a possible associated [celiac disease]," Dr. Rodrigo told Medscape Medical News. "All these studies must be done in collaboration with a gastroenterologist expert in this field," he noted.

Jeffrey L. Gross, MD, from Associated Neurologists of Southern Connecticut in Fairfield, who was not involved in the study, said he too has had experience with a patient whose MS symptoms improved after their celiac disease was brought under control.

In a telephone interview with Medscape Medical News, he made the point that it is "sometimes difficult to say whether a person with celiac disease is having neurological symptoms on the basis of their celiac or whether it's just 2 conditions occurring simultaneously in the same individual."

He noted, however, that there is "a statistical link between Crohn's disease and MS and 1 of the 9 drugs now approved for MS is also approved for Crohn's disease, so there is a link between the gut and the brain somehow."

The study authors and Dr. Gross have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.

BMC Neurol. 2011;11:31. Published online March 7, 2011.