For the longest time, I had mysterious things wrong with me that weren’t quite explainable. (No, I’m not talking about my personality.) As a teenager, I was horribly tired, more than a normal teenager, and suffered with crippling knee pains whenever I played sport. A trip to the orthopedic surgeon didn’t give me many answers beyond ‘you’ll probably grow out of it’. Ten years later, I still had the pains. I also had a low level of constant digestive problems – I won’t be too descriptive here, but suffice it to say I don’t think I had normal digestion for a long time.

It wasn’t until I became aware of a fantastic blog called Gluten-Free Girl, and read her first book, that I began to think that there could be a food intolerance behind these problems. A lot of the things I experienced were on the list of symptoms for celiac disease, an auto-immune disorder that causes your body to attack itself, mistakenly thinking that the gluten proteins found in wheat, barley, rye and spelt are toxic to the body. It’s one of the most under-diagnosed diseases in the country – it’s estimated that 1 in 7 Americans suffer from celiac, but only 5% of them are diagnosed. That’s a terrifyingly large number of people going through life feeling bloated, nauseous, exhausted, achy and sick without ever figuring out the simple reason why.

I decided to go on a two-week exlusion diet, first cutting out wheat, then dairy, to see if either made a difference to how I felt. I never got to the dairy test. Within three days of getting rid of the wheat in my diet, I felt like a completely different person – my digestion problems practically disappeared, I felt more energised, and I just felt healthy. After about six weeks, I went to the doctor to be tested for celiac (it’s a simple blood test) but I was not aware that you need to be eating a gluten-filled diet in order to get an accurate result. Neither did the doctor, apparently, as he went ahead and gave me the blood test which came back negative (as it would after 6 weeks on an essentially gluten-free diet). In order for me to find out if I really do have celiac, I’d have to spend a week or more eating bread, pasta, bagels and the like before being tested again – which frankly sounds like a week spent in hell. I get sick within 45 minutes of eating slightly contaminated food, so actually chowing down on a bagel fills me with the kind of horror that I normally reserve for a massive cockroach falling on my head. Basically, I ain’t doing it.

So I’m working out for myself what my tolerance is. So far it’s pretty much any food with gluten in – I have started to keep a food diary (Vince badgered me into it after he saw how sick I got recently) which will help me narrow down any sources of gluten I might accidentally ingest. My biggest obstacle, more than bread or cakes or anything else, is beer. I love beer. If you know me, this is not a surprise. However, beer contains gluten. Weirdly, I have been able to drink beer before and not feel ill afterwards, but now I’m on my super-strict diet I can do a proper test of this and see whether I really am ok with it. I haven’t had any beer for a few weeks and on Saturday I’m going to indulge in one of my favourites during the Texas game. Stay tuned for the exciting results.

If you recognise any of the symptoms I described, you may want to think about asking your doctor for a celiac test. It’s so simple to get, I don’t know why it isn’t recommended for everyone, given how prevalent a disease it is. There are so many amazing foods that I have opened my eyes to now I’m GF, and I think I eat much better now I have to be conscious of what I feed myself and have to read every label. Food is life. Don’t let it make you sick.

A P.S. Oh! Like a total eejit, I forgot to post this picture, the reason my memory was prodded to write this post. I had the thrill of meeting Shauna James Ahern, aka the Gluten-Free Girl, this week as she was in New York with her awesome husband (aka The Chef) and beautiful daughter, promoting their awesome new book. We wandered around the Union Square farmer’s market along with other food bloggers (including my good friend Anna from London Foodie in NY) and I got to meet some awesome new people who also embrace the GF way of life, like Britt from GF in the City. Such a fantastic morning!