Durham's Gluten Free Network

There are many health tips out there, but I've been reading some lists lately and there are a few that are agreed by everyone, and some that I think are important, but missing. People get plenty of tips for what to do to prevent specific illness, but what about overall health?  What's your roadmap? How does a person create a roadmap for staying healthy? How do we maximize quality of life during our brief time on Mother Earth?  Today's post tries to address these questions. Let's review the existing collections of tips. Google has surprisingly few results in this area.  I'll mention the top 2 results relevant to this topic and then add a gem that I found which can be adapted without much work.  https://commonsensehealth.com/common-sense-health-tips-for-healthy-living/ http://eatlocalgrown.com/article/15126-tips-for-a-healthy-life.html A gem that can be adapted: http://www.bestofcareinc.com/common-sense-tips-for-family-caregivers/  The first two are d...

(c) Angelica Nelson I know how simplistic it can seem to have Celiac Disease.  Stay away from gluten.  Done. But it's not that easy. Gluten sneaks in and continues to damage the body.  Not just the gut lining, but the thyroid, the liver, the hemoglobin level in the blood (anemia), and more.  So retesting the levels of reaction, and the likely candidates for autoimmune harm, would be common sense.  But not everyone knows you have to do that, and some don't think it's needed.  On the latter, hey, it's a free country, if you don't want it tested, or can't afford it, that's OK.  But if you do, and your doctor doesn't, the situation is more tricky. To help you communicate better with your doctor if you do want regular testing of Celiac disease activity levels, you might want to know about a new guideline published by researchers in Denmark and The Mayo Clinic in the US. Your doctor has access to the full text, but this is the gist:  In the first...

Finding gluten free resources is difficult for anyone who is maintaining a gluten free diet because they have a disease that requires it.  I tried running a search for "Durham gluten free" in several search engines I know about today. What I found was surprisingly little difference between the search engines.  And all of them demonstrate a basic lack of understanding about what people want when they search for gluten free in their area. "Gluten free" should be the same as "safe for people with Celiac Disease."  If other people want to partake in that restriction, that's OK.  But if so called "gluten free options" exist which would not be safe for those with Celiac, then that carries a risk of injuring people with Celiac Disease, Gluten Allergy, Wheat Allergy, Gluten Ataxia, some forms of IBD, and EDS (among other diseases). Since most search engines interpret the phrase "gluten free" to mean that a person is probably looking fo...

When my mom and I were first creating a new life in the US, she would sometimes make a Romanian soup called "Chor-buh" spelled Ciorbă. Now it's much later, and the internet tells me similar soups can be found in Turkey, and the word is derived from the Persian "shorba."  I looked farther and found similar soups in other cultures so the recipe changes a bit depending on which location it comes from.  I'll try to stick to the Romanian version in this recipe. This version is a bit of a production to make, but results in a delightfully bright colored soup with fresh flavors, anchored by rich meatballs. The highlight of any weekend. The full name of this recipe is Ciorba de Perisoare, which sounds like "Chore Buh de Perry Shore Eh."   Soup with Meatballs is the translation.  Romanian has the honor of being the closest living language to Eastern (vulgate) Latin. It's a shame I've forgotten nearly all of it. Famous Romanians include Elie...

For several years now, the USDA and FDA have been meeting about a new idea in food production currently referred to as "cultured meat."  I don't have an immediate knee jerk reaction to it since I've worked in a lab, growing things in petri dishes, but I do notice that there are two concerning aspects for me.  First, the discussion around labeling has unfortunate echoes of the labeling arguments around GMOs in the 1990s.  And second, hardly anyone is discussing the nutritional value or the opportunities for engineering meat with specific amounts of both macro or micro nutrients (that is protein, fat, vitamins and minerals). As Americans we have chronic deficiencies of certain nutrients, even the healthy.  It's even worse for those with Celiac Disease that directly causes malnutrition.  While I can understand why this wouldn't be the first issue addressed by the potential manufacturers of this food, I think, if they did address nutrition (not just protein) so...