Ep 123 How to Feel Well With Celiac Disease

Let’s start the blog with the show notes for this Episode –
This week I interview someone I met on Instragram. I know that sounds a little suspect, but my guest is a celiac who is also a Holistic Nutritionist. She specializes in counselling celiacs who are having a difficult time feeling well on the gluten free diet. She approaches issues from the perspective of four pillars of wellness – nutrition, sleep, stress and mindset. We speak about each of these and how a well-rounded approach to wellness is often helpful to many with celiac for them to feel better again, or maybe for the first time.

You can find Ashley on Instagram at www.instagram.com/ashleyschmidt.celiac

Her website is www.ashleyschmidt.ca

The book she recommended is – The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday

Sue’s Websites and Social Media –

Podcast https://acanadianceliacpodcast.libsyn.com

Podcast Blog – https://www.acanadianceliacblog.com

Facebook – @acanadianceliacpodcast

Twitter – CeliacPodcastCA

Email – acdnceliacpodcast@gmail.com

Baking Website – https://www.suesglutenfreebaking.com

Instagram – @suesgfbaking

YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUVGfpD4eJwwSc_YjkGagza06yYe3ApzL

Email – sue@suesglutenfreebaking.com

Other Podcast – Gluten Free Weigh In – https://glutenfreeweighin.libsyn.com

My Thoughts –

When I interview or chat with my guests, I always make notes.  These aren’t notes in sentence form, they are often scribbles of phases or topics we covered.  Sometimes, I write down words that inspire me for my next question or observation.  My scribbles wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else, but they do bring back what was going through my head during our conversation.

After I finished editing my interview with Ashley, one phase I wrote down stood out to me.  My note said “label reading as an opportunity, gift”.  As I read these few words, I was reminded there was a time when I never read labels on food, not ingredients or nutritional information.  That seems hard for me to believe now.

I read labels on everything.  This obviously started out of a need when I began to eat gluten free, but it was also fed by requirements to produce labels for my foods at the bakery.  As a regular person, one doesn’t often reflect on the amount of time and energy that goes into preparing a label for a food product.  There are a multitude of regulations, from the size of the type-set to the order of ingredients.  Thankfully, as consumers we don’t have to know any of that.

As gluten free consumers, what we do need to know, we are forced to learn quite quickly.  Read the ingredients, look for key words, look for hidden sources of gluten, look for food certifications.  Label reading is not instinctive, but it is vitally important for our health.  Once mastered (and it can take years to master), it’s like a magic trick.  A super-power to be able to decipher sources of gluten from a list of uncommon ingredients. I often take this skill for granted, until I see a posting on facebook where someone has taken a picture of the ingredient list on a package only to ask for advice on whether it contains gluten.  Clearly there are many of us out there with the same super-power, because the answers come in fast and furious.  I quite like having this super-power.  I use it often, but only for good.  And Ashley is correct – label reading is an opportunity and a gift, and one I clearly would not have without my celiac diagnosis.