Gluten in Personal Care Products?

                                        Gluten Free Personal Products?

I promised awhile back that i would get to the personal care products that i use that do not contain gluten. Before i give you a list i want to explain why i do not use products that conatain gluten even though i'm not going to ingest them.

I know that there are many people including doctors that feel that if you don't ingest a product even though it has gluten you should be fine. I on the other hand have gotten so sick from gluten i didn't want to take a chance. Not only that,  i noticed a huge difference when i removed gluten from my personal product use. You see, even though i had cut gluten out of my diet i still didn't feel well. I was still dealing with a body rash and my hair was still falling out. I was also still dealing with body acne. Once i removed the gluten from my personal care products i got relief in all of these areas. I'm not the only one who has noticed a huge difference in how they've felt after using personal care products without gluten. If you have time to check out other bloggers and chat rooms of people with celiac disease you will see just how many people agree they feel better cutting gluten out of their personal products as well.

It only makes sense that we would have reactions to things that go on our skin when our skin is a huge organ. We actually absorb things that we put on our skin in as fast as 26 seconds. Makes you think, doesn't it? 

Now of course as with anything else there will always be those who refute this. There are still many doctors and scientists that say that gluten cannot be absorbed through the skin and that we don't have to worry about gluten in our personal care products. I on the other hand prefer to go by my own experience and those of others that i have talked to and read about and how they feel better staying away from gluten in their products. 

Having said all of this one of the areas that i believe is especially important to keep gluten out of is our lipsticks. Ladies you cannot deny that we inevitably eat some of our lipstick throughout the day regardless of how hard we try not to, so this is an area i say we definitely cannot afford to compromise.

Now, i am going to share with you some of the personal care products that i use. I would also like to point out that i have started using fragrance free products. I started using fragrance free products when i started having even more problems with my thyroid. When you have thyroid issues you may notice that your allergies get worse. You will also learn that toxins in your environment can aggrevate thyroid function even your cleaning products and chemicals in your drinking water can do this. For these reasons and so many others it is important to be careful with many ingredients in all of your products. Some ingredients to watch out for other than gluten include pthalates, chlorine, flouride, triclosan, latex, dyes and parabens. There is an interesting article on parabens that one of the blogs that i follow published. It stresses how parabens are linked to cancer in humans, you can read that article here.

With all of this information i knew i had to find companies that i trusted and that were just as conscious about these matters as i was.

Here are some that i found and use and trust.  All of these companies have fragrance free and allergen free products. Many of them are organic and many don't just watch out for gluten but corn and soy as well.  yay!

Dessert Essence-  I use their toothpaste and dental products.  I also enjoy their fragrance free shampoo and conditioner.  Side note:  My very, very picky husband has even started using these same products and actually likes them.  : )

Gluten Free Savonnerie-  I love their body soaps and lotion.

Dakota Free-  I enjoy their soap and their moisturizer that i also use on my hair when it is dry.

Hugos Naturals-  I use their fragrance free lotion.  They have a line of products that are certified gluten free.  Warning:  If you are extremely sensitive with fragrances i would make a note when purchasing from their website for them not to include the free gift of decorative soap with your package.  I have come across that soap the hard way.  Im still trying to get the smell out of my linen closet 6 months after i threw it away. Ugh

As for makeup products i use here are some great companies as well:

Red Apple Lipstick-  I love this company.  They are 100% gluten free and paraben free and take great care to keep any toxic ingredients out of their products.  They currently make lipsticks, glosses, eyeshadows, lip pencils and i believe there is talk of mascara soon to come.  They do their products in small batches to keep the integrity of their products.  Check them out, you will love them!  Oh and please give my blog a shout out if you purchase their products.  Thanks!

Afterglow Cosmetics-  They are also 100% gluten free.

Beauty Secrets Mineral Makeup-  www.allnaturalmineralmakeup.com- I use their foundations and concealer

Cowgirl Dirt Cosmetics-  I use their mascara.  They are also organic.

FYI-  I started to make my very picky husband an organic hair gel/pomade.  I make it using beeswax.  He loves it and his coworkers loved how his hair looks and they asked for some as well.  I also make a very strong deoderant for him from natural and organic ingredients and of course they are 100% gluten free.  If you're interested in purchasing my products just contact me and i'll discuss the details with you.

My hair gel/pomade:  Its great for curls.  My husband has curly/wavy hair we live in a humid area which causes even more hair issues.

My hair gel/pomade is named - "I Bee Waxin"- $5.00
My deoderant is named- "Bee Stink Free"- $5.00

Something to look out for when buying your gluten free personal products is to verify that the vitamin E they use which is also called tocopherals is derived from a source other than wheat.

I hope that this post helps take the pressure off of looking for some trusted gluten free products.  If you find the information helpful please pass it on.
Thanks so much!!

It's National Celiac Awareness Day!

Today is National Celiac Disease Awareness Day.  

All of us who suffer from celiac disease before getting diagnosed may not have even been aware that there was a day dedicated to this.  

According to the Celiac Sprue Association Sept. 13th was chosen for this day because it is the birth date of Dr. Samuel Gee, M.D. a physician and pediatrician.  Dr. Gee is the first physician that is credited with being the first to identify the link between celiac disease and diet.  One of his famous quotes is: "If the patient can be cured at all, it must be by means of diet."


So i guess we can be very thankful to Dr. Gee because if it weren't for that important link between celiac and diet more of us would be way sicker then we are.

Of course those of us who suffer from this disease know that it is way more complex then it sounds.  We also know that doctors themselves can't even tell us everything about celiac because of their lack of education when it comes to this disease.  The education given to these doctors in medical school is to suspect celiac disease in a child suffering from diarrhea, abdominal pain and bloating.  As we know it's much more complicated than this.

Like me, so many of us are getting this disease in our adult years.  Many deal with constipation, itchy rashes, hair loss, bloating etc.  Or many might have just one complaint being neuropathy, tingling in their hands and feet.  It becomes way more complicated and it masks itself as other disorders.  Unfortunately many of us do develop other disorders as well.  Then there are those that have no symptoms at all.

Dr. Green the director of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University in NYC was asked in an interview why it is so hard to get doctors to realize that celiac disease could be the culprit for making patients so sick and this is how he responded:

<DGF: Why is it still difficult to get doctors in the U.S. to consider that celiac disease could be the culprit making patients sick—especially the ones with IBS symptomsthat don’t resolve with IBS treatments?

Dr. Green: There are a couple of reasons, actually. Most doctors here are not prominently taught about celiac disease in medical school or in post-graduate education. The latter is often funded by big pharmaceutical companies, and none of them presently offer a medication to treat celiac disease. We really can’t blame the doctors totally because most of them are not going to look for something in their patients that they were taught is extremely rare. Of course, celiac disease is not rare at all, but many doctors still think that it is.>

I got this information from the www.delightglutenfree.com website.  Read the entire article here. It is very informative.

I have to give my experience with a doctor very briefly: 

After i had been diagnosed and had seen the doctors at Jefferson University Hospital at the Celiac Center in Pennsylvania i was trying to get help for my brother who lives a few states away in Ohio.  He was in his doctors office at the time and was asking him to test him for this disease.  My brother couldn't remember the names of the tests so he called me while he was with his doctor and put me on the phone to give him the names of the tests that the doctors at Jefferson had done on me. 

The doctor was not polite at all.  He kept insisting that my brother did not have celiac because he didn't have diarrhea.  I explained to him that i didn't either in fact i suffered from constipation.  I tried to ask him if he would at least test him to see if he carried the gene for this disease.  He said there was no such test. Although i explained that they had just finished these tests on me and found that i carry the gene and i gave him the name of the test he still protested.  Now i'm not a doctor and i understand that many of them have very big egos but i wasn't trying to belittle him in any way i was just trying to help my brother get the proper help he needed.   Unfortunately there are many doctors out there with this same attitude and if this is the case for you i encourage you, just as i did for my brother, to find a new doctor.  Keep looking until you find one that listens!

What can we do to help educate people?  Well there are several things we can do and they don't take a lot of effort.  

It's important to start with our own family and make sure that they have all been tested for this disease.  We can share interesting articles on celiac disease with family and friends through email or social networks. We can email local grocery stores in our area and request that they get more trusted gluten free items in their stores.  Talk to your doctor openly about what you have learned and print out specific articles you have found helpful or that you may have questions on.  Even if you just get the conversation going it is better than them just sending you out the door after diagnosis saying go eat gluten free and see me in a few months.  

There is quite a bit of downloadable guides and articles on the www.celiaccentral.org website that you can use for yourself as well as for your childrens schools.

Another way you can do your part is just to educate those around you.  Yes more and more people are becoming aware of Celiac Disease and being gluten free but they are still very uneducated about it.  You can educate and not bombard people with information with the smallest of phrases such as:  "I suffer from an auto-immune disorder it's not an allergy" ,  "Gluten is a protein that causes damage to my intestines", "I have to be extremely careful to avoid gluten because this disease can lead to developing cancer down the road."  

You don't necessarilly have to give an entire speech but just saying a short phrase that shows the seriousness of the disease will help people to see that this isn't a fad for you and it will give them some much needed information that will leave them thinking.  Who knows maybe they will even go home and do some of their own research,  that is what has happened to me at times.  

Well i hope that this article was enlightening and gave you some encouragement to go out in the world and educate others or even in the very least i hope i encouraged you to educate yourself some more on this disease.  I have found that there is much to learn.  

Please tweet this article to others so that we can raise more awareness on this complex disease.  Thank you!

Stay Healthy!!

References:  celiac sprue association website

                    celiaccentral.org

                    delightglutenfree.com