Summary: Celiac.com 07/01/2022 - If you’ve been reading from the start (Chapter 1), you understand the social influences that work against your quest to diligently follow the gluten free diet. You’ve developed strategies for how to deal with each of the “vexing venues” (places we run into trouble) discussed in Chapter 2. In Chapter 3, you’ve uncovered how long-held “truths” don’t serve you, and you have implemented new “truths” imposed by your food intolerances. If you are a woman, in Chapter 4, you discovered how you might experience more pressure than your male counterparts when navigating aspects of society. In Chapter 5, you learned how the gluten free lifestyle plays out on the home front. Throughout, you’ve heard first-hand from participants from Dr. Duane’s nation-wide study, which have perhaps validated your personal experiences. In this next iteration of Gluten Centric Culture, we discuss what happens when you think you’ve got it all worked out and something goes wrong. In future chapters, we’ll discuss how things can go right more often because of your approach, even to the point where your life is rewarding and inspiring again. Jean’s Back on Shaky Ground Seven years into my gluten-free life, I broke out in another full-body rash. I couldn’t imagine what caused it. I thought my kitchen was completely gluten free, but something caused this. I asked my husband, “Did you by chance accidentally bring a doggie bag home from a restaurant that might have contained gluten?” “Nope,” he said. I wondered, “Did I buy something from the bulk bin at the grocery store?” Since the rash takes ten days to show up after ingestion, I looked at my calendar from ten days ago. That day, I went to a restaurant my friend wanted to go to that is famous for sliders. She ordered sliders, and I had a lettuce and tomato salad. On a cold dreary day ten days later, I walked several miles from campus to that restaurant just to ask if there was any chance that the salad I ate was cross-contaminated. They claimed it was impossible. I felt betrayed and angry. I am always so careful. The rash is so itchy -- I bought several bottles of clear calamine lotion and rubbed it all over my body. It gave me about ten minutes of relief before the itching raged again. I took histamine blocks in the day, and antihistamines in the night. Over the next week, the misery got worse before it got better as the rash bloomed over my body. It took ten days for the itching to subside and six weeks for it to go away completely. Meanwhile, I still didn’t know what caused the reaction. The GlutenEZE strips are little chemistry packets (complete with a test tube) you perform at home to see what contains gluten. I used them to assess everything that might have been contaminated. After I examined all that I could think of in my kitchen, I contemplated what might be in my bathroom. I looked at the ingredients on my hairspray (some hairsprays contain wheat protein). I inspected the soaps I used to see if the ingredients changed in the new batch I bought. I read the labels on all the creams, lotions, foundations, blushers, lipstick, eyeliner, eye shadow, brow pencil, face-masks, skin hydrators… Nothing contained gluten. I was baffled. What could have caused this? By day seven of the rash breakout, I had tested 43 things in my house (spending $473 on test strips and still no answer). Then I remembered that about ten days before getting the rash, I came home from school feeling ill. My head hurt, which is rare, my chest was tight, and I just wanted to lie down. I remembered taking an aspirin that day before I took a nap. The aspirin had been in my medicine cabinet for several years. I read the ingredients on the aspirin and one of the ingredients said “starch.” When I shook the GlutenEZE test tube, the contents exploded all over my bathroom. That had never happened before! I looked at the results and it showed the aspirin tested positively for gluten. Eureka! I finally found the cause. One lit
