any coeliacs with reaction to GF bread?

[becstarlitsea]

So I have coeliac, I was doing well on a gf diet, although getting a bit more sensitive recently (eg I used to be able to eat oats without a big reaction but now definitely can't). I've been feeling ropey for ages (abdominal pain, palpitations, migraine-type headaches, fainting) and the gp has no clue why. I had a miraculous recovery when we went on holiday - where I couldn't get hold of gf bread. As soon as we got back I got ill again. So I gave up gf bread and got better again. I thought it might be the xanthan gum in the bread and tried buying some other that didn't contain it, but got a reaction again. I seem to react badly to genius, sainsburys freefrom, laucke, mrs crimbles, doves farm gluten free self raising flour... But I seem to be okay with polenta made at home so I don't think it's corn...

Does anyone else with coeliac react to gf bread? If so, do you know which ingredient causes it for you - is there one you can eat without a reaction? Or do you stick to a bread-free diet the whole time? I'm trying to figure out how to meal plan and stick to our meagre food budget while avoiding these really annoying symptoms. Very grateful if anyone else has any insight!

[BeenBeta]

I dont react to GF bread. Going on a coeliac diet and removing all gluten and lactose made a huge difference. I have never heard of someone being sensitive to GF bread and suspect maybe it is something else in your diet that you also accidentally excluded while away on holiday but reintroduced when at home. I am sensitive to oats though like you.

All I can suggest is you try baking your own bread and GF cakes so you know what goes in. I have a breadmaker. I found GF cakes/bread both expensive and quite unpalatable anyway.

Also, try removing milk products from your diet if you arent already and use Soya milk and dairy free margarine like Pure most margarine has some milk products in it. Sainsbury sells Pure as do most supermarkets.

[BeenBeta]

Not saying you are not sensitive to GF bread obviously - you might be but I have never heard of it. Just suggesting an alternative explanation that might be worth checking out first - a life without any bread or cakes or pastry would be tough.

[becstarlitsea]

I agree - I'm very reluctant to give up bread entirely. A life without toast and jam is no life at all . I did think of lactose - I used to be lactose intolerant before giving up gluten, but now seem to tolerate it as long as I'm gluten free. But on holiday I had masses of dairy - cafe au lait and yoghurt for breakfast, icecreams, chocolate mousse with cream... mmm want to go back just thinking about it... And I felt so much better while I was there, so it doesn't fit.

[ppeatfruit]

are you sensitive to the gf flour? Sometimes people are also sensitive to potato (there is potato flour in it). You could try all rye bread, Waitrose have a good selection.

[BeenBeta]

Right so not lactose by the sound of it sensitve to oats.

ppeatfruit has made a good point on potato flour. Some people are especally sensitive to the whole family of plants that include tobacco, tomato and potato. I get an instant headache anywhere near a whiff of tobacco smoke and by bladder hurts after eating a tomato.

[ppeatfruit]

Thank you beenbeta

[MissAnneElk]

Do you use a separate toaster for your GF bread and a separate tub of spread and jam that you know is not cross contaminated?

[MissAnneElk]

Ppeatfruit. People with coeliac disease can't eat rye bread either.

[silverfrog]

my dd1 (not coeliac, but follows a gf/cf diet - intolerances due to ASD) reacts to genius bread.

It took me ages to work out what it was, but we too went away, she didn't have genius bread for a bit - all fine. came back, had a sandwich, and the results were not good.

I double tested to be sure (got ehr bowels back on an even keel, and re-tried genius - same result)

she now eats Dietary Specials rolls - the rustic ones, and these are fine with her.

[ppeatfruit]

MissAnneElk I didn't know that, how annoying.

[ilovemydogandMrObama]

Soya? DS is dairy allergic, but also soya allergic.

[BeenBeta]

Just checked the side of the bag of Doves Self Raising and Doves Bread flour in my cupboard. It is a blend of flours. Includes maize, tapiocca, potato, rice, buckwheat.

I suggest if you are really getting desperate that you get your own breadmaker and then blend your own flour but missing out one of those components at a time.

[BeenBeta]

The other thing I didnt realise when I started GF was how many things in my cupboard were sneaking in some kind of wheat or barley.

For example most sauces, even stock cubes. there are proper GF alternatives in most cases but I got caught out quite often to start with.

[ppeatfruit]

yes my DH is wheat sensitive and it is incredible how many products contain it.

[becstarlitsea]

Thanks so much, these are all really useful thoughts. I was first diagnosed with coeliac about ten years ago so I'm pretty good at avoiding cross-contamination and checking labels - the results are so horrid that I've learned not to be cavalier about it. Very interesting about your dd1 silverfrog - and especially if she can eat dietary specials... I might wait until my reaction has settled down - headache and tummy ache today, bleargh - so I'll stop eating all GF bread, wait until I've been better for a week and then try eating dietary specials and see if I get the reaction or not. And also another week without GF bread might confirm whether it really is that that's causing the symptoms or whether it's something else.

Blending my own flour will be last resort - great inventive idea BeenBeta, wouldn't have thought of that. I should probably try it at some stage just so that I can find out exactly what the ingredient is that's causing this.

[silverfrog]

it is (going on how dd1 is when she has an infringement) awful, becstarlitsea. I hope you can find the cause.

dd1 follows a very strict exclusion diet - no gluten, casein, msg (even naturally derived), or sweetners in particular. she also cannot tolerate most perfumes/aromas, so has very neutral soaps etc.

she is severely ASD, and following this diets has helped her enormously.

We rejoiced when we found genius bread - at last, a GF bread that was not too awful. dd1 seemed to like it (beofre she wouldn't really eat bread at all), and so we were happy she had extended her diet to include another food.

we went to a party where, very kindly, the hosts had bought some gf food for my dds. this was when she first had the dieatry specials rolls. I thought it could well have an effect, but her general diet had been good, so gave it a go. to my absolute astonishment, despite her eating these, adn then a couple of gf cakes (we try to avoid sugar too, but hey, it was a party!), her poo the next morning was the best it had been in a long time! (sorry to be graphic)

so I began to test - observed her poo (nice!) and assessed for a few days. then gave her a genius bread sandwich. following day, horrific results - rancid loose stools.

so, banned genius bread agin, it took over a week for her stools to even approach normal again - when usually a diet infringement would take max 5 days to return to normal. I double checked the ingredients - all seemed fine (in fact, genius bread has fewer suspect (for dd1) ingredients than the DS rolls!)

I went through the above again - introduced genius bread, same horrible results. back to DS rolls, and poo is fine. I have no idea why, ut for now the DS rolls work for dd1.

If you are going to try mixing your own flour, I can recommned these people

the flours are absolutely definitely pure when they say they are - the exclusion diet dd1 follows is ridiculously stringent, and the AiA/Respectrum requirement on cross-contamination is second to none.

[Danthe4th]

I can only eat the gluten free and wheat free bread, I get very tired and stomach cramps if I eat too much of the gluten free bread that has been made with wheat but with the gluten taken out.
If you look on the glutafin website they do both gf and gf/wf bread try sticking to the gf/wf and see if it helps.
I can also eat the pitta breads from supermarkets as they have been made with rice and potato flours.
I'm the same with mrs crimbles products I can only eat the gf and wf.
I would suggest you go back to basics and read the labels again, some recipes have changed.
If you do eat the bread which is just gluten free, it is gluten free because most of the gluten has been removed, it is suppossed to be below a certain level. But if you eat more than 2/3 slices at breakfast then have a sandwich at luntime it all adds up and you can find it takes you over the allowance of gluten thats not meant to affect us.
I also can't eat oats but can usually get away with a small peice of flapjack if i've made it, but if I eat 2 pieces i get stomach cramps.

[nightcat]

Yeah, I react to genius as well, useless at baking so given up bread altogether. When travelling we take rice cakes as sometimes the basic breakfast can be very basic, but don't use those much at home either.
Have taught my ds to live off the things you would normally have with bread, that way he gets far better nutrition, as carbs are mainly calories and as I don't believe in fortified cereals, we try to do without as much as poss.

[silverfrog]

Well, the strength of reaction dd1 had was obviously very severe.

Yesterday, she managed to get hold of a punt of plums she'd picked at school and brought home. Scoffed the lot. I was not looking g forward to this morning's happy - for obvious reasons! But, it was absolutely fine!

So clearly a lot of the other gut issues dd1 appears to have have been exacerbated by the genius bread...

[becstarlitsea]

Very interesting, thanks! I've been off gf bread, just sticking to rice cakes for a few days now and I've still got a headache but the stomach ache, fainting and palpitations are much better. Looking at all the labels of ones I've reacted to, tapioca flour seems to be the thing they have in common. Maybe it's that. But my headache might have another cause as it's still dragging on... I think I'll go back to the gp with it - it's making me very grouchy...

[InMyPrime]

Hi, I'm coeliac too (about 10 years and counting also!) and just wanted to add my tuppenceworth in to say that GF certified products typically have a small amount of gluten in them as they often use flours that have been processed to remove the gluten and it is never fully removed. The amount of gluten would be low enough to meet the Codex Alimentarius standards on gluten-free labelling but it's still there. So if you were eating a lot of these products at one time then you might be getting a reaction to the trace gluten in them. I certainly find that if I eat a lot of these substitution products I start to get acid reflux and indigestion generally.

Even though GF products are classed as health food products they are actually heavily processed with lots of additives to make them taste 'normal'. Not that that's always a sufficient deterrent to stop me overindulging in the FreeFrom chocolate muffins and the gluten-free Genius sandwiches from Starbucks though... .. For me, it's more a sluggish feeling and build up of bloating and acid reflux rather than the more drastic reaction I get if I accidentally eat some gluten-containing foods, in which case I would normally vomit within an hour and feel horrendous for days...

[Wheatfree]

Hi. I was recently diagnosed with various food allergies including wheat, rye, oats and guar gum amongst other things and have experienced the same problems when eating gluten free bread.

When I first stopped eating wheat I felt great. My head was clearer, I felt less depressed and I no longer had stomach ache or sickness. Unfortunately, most gluten free food is causing me more stomach ache and sickness that the wheat did :(

After a lot of trial and error I found that potato flour, tapioca, guar gum and possibly xanthan gum were the main culprits.

One explanation I found on Wikipedia says that potato contains a toxic substance that can only be partially destroyed by cooking at 170°C. This is higher than the 150°C/160°C used in some potato flour recipes i.e. Tesco Victoria sponge cake mix. Cooking potato flour at higher temperature turns it into a hard jelly

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potato#Toxicity

[nightcat]

That's interesting, wheatfree, thanks for that.
I recall always being told that raw starch is toxic, whether grain derived or not. I also think that most standard wheat bread is undercooked as well as not properly fermented. Could apply to gf bread too if a similar technique uis used. we just try to do without bread altogether, ricecakes as a last resort.
This may not be true, I certainly never tried, but when I was at school my friends were experimenting how to get temperature and one of the methods was to eat a raw potato :o, prob extremely unhealthy too.
I use potato flour occasionally in dumplings but always cook it very thoroughly.
Also, are you aware that fridge stored cooked rice/potatoes can also be toxic? Haven't got to the bottom of it yet, but I have minimised reheating.

[alypaly]

Glutafin do a gluten and wheat free bread. might be worth a try. you can get them on prescription for the moment.

[Wheatfree]

I think Glutafin bread is the same as Dietary Special bread. The ciabatta rolls are really good though everything else they make disagrees with me :(

I can't wait to try the new Warburtons GF bread & crumpets!

www.thegrocer.co.uk/Articles.aspx?page=articles&ID=214258