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Hi everyone,

I trust this is a friendly list for newbies to this disease.  I just subscribed here so I hope you might read this abit and give me a few pointers.  It looks like everyone here does some great comparing of notes on foods to avoid, etc.  THANK YOU you to all who contribute and archive all this valuable data- I am amazed and need to start digging in and downloading them to read.  I am happy to volunteer to help and share info as I get on-board with this.  I am very active on the net in many ways and run a number of  unrelated fun and business web sites.

After being misdiagnosed for a long time (I am not sure maybe 5-10 years now) of suffering- I finally was given the blood test which came back 40.  Normal evidently is below 20 and 30+ is high.  This was last Friday so for the past 4 days I have spent all my free time on the net reading up and researching- I am very, very, very grateful to all those people and organizations with ton's of free information.  I am up to speed about this disease and have a great attitude about dropping ANYTHING and EVERYTHING that has Glutin/Wheat, etc. and offends from my diet FOREVER.  I will gladly do that to escape the miserable life I have had with eating for so long and all the pepto bismol, reflux, etc. etc.  I go for the endoscope biopsy test tomorrow Thursday and since I hate tests I am filled with anxiety about it and any risks.  Evidently there are few.

A few specific questions if anyone can help:

1. The good news I guess about this disease is that the damage is reversible.  Has anyone found other otherwise?

2. 100% compliance appears the only solution.  Correct me if I am wrong.  I assume everyone does alot of testing- IE" try this food, try that food some work others make you sick until you "fine tune" your own situation.

3.  I have been fortunate/unfortunate to previously be able to afford to eat out quite often so now I need to change my life to a healthier diet.  My fear/concern is that even though with a chef, short order cook, etc. anyone of these people's best efforts and education that I might give them in the way of written info of how to prepare something gluten free that they STILL will accidently/unintentionally contaminate the food being prepared for me.  I have zero expectations- these people are there to serve the masses no some person with this disease.  So somewhat paranoid about eating out.  I have read that 3 crumbs of bread is as bad as a slice of it.  How true is that for most of you?   With that level of toxicity it seems very difficult to allow other food preparation people to do the "quality control" of food preparation- unless you only eat the "Glutin-Free" mail/store food.  I mean I saw a post on Wendys Frys just now and that I personally would not trust the oil/procedures to be followed by anyone in a fast food restaurant for cross contamination.... but then again I assume there are varying degrees of tolerance everyone has.  So how much trust is there out there????  Am I overly paranoid?

How about Gatorade?  Coke?  Sushi?  (I eat alot of Japanese food) and need to bring my own wheat free soy sauce.  Is there a database I can download of name specific brands that people feel don't give them problems?  I have purchased books and looked and looked for something like those calorie books which list specific brand names and the info about the product but have not found anything yet.

Anyway, thank you for listening to me.  Great to see that I am not alone with this or lived in 1900 and ready to die due to lack of resourced or education about this thing.

Have a great day.

Dave





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