It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, and that means that Custom Choice Cereal in cooperation with our advisor Dr. Stephen Wangen offers you another Q&A session.
You are encouraged to ask this renown expert who has celiac disease himself anything you always wanted to know about following a gluten- or wheat-free diet. Feel free to have a look at the Gluten Free Doctor’s impressive resume and expertise on our Custom Choice Cereal people page.
But now to the important things, here is how it works:
1. Post your question as a comment to this blog entry
2. We’ll send all questions to Dr. Wangen
3. Dr. Wangen’s answers will be published in reply to your comments
4. Key: First come – first serve. And we have to keep it to 5 questions
We at Custom Choice Cereal are excited that Dr. Stephen Wangen agrees to provide this great service to you. Please understand that he has a busy schedule that we therefore have to limit each session to 5 questions. Thank you very much!
The Wall Street Journal’s Health Journal columnist Melinda Beck wrote a great article on who has to stick to a gluten-free diet (celiacs, people with a wheat allergy, and those with a sensitivity to gluten). I was pretty impressed by the thoroughness of the research that was done and wanted to share it with you as part of our customer service. It particularly struck me that
Melinda described many of the most common symptoms that ‘glutened’ celiacs experience
it is not well understood how gluten can cause psychiatric and behavioral changes (keyword: leaky-gut)
7% of the population has anti-gliadin antibodies (‘AGA’), as do 18% of people with autism, and 20% of those with schizophrenia
The article also points out that much more research is needed to understand why the various conditions that benefit from a gluten-free diet are so much more prevalent today than several decades ago. While celiac disease was initially believed to begin only during childhood, it is now know that it can start at any time during the life of a person with the genetic predisposition.
In a little video, Melinda Beck also explains that the gluten-free diet is not a weight-loss diet, and that one should not embark lightly on a gluten-free diet.
Say what you want, but Chelsea Clinton’s by now famous gluten-free wedding cake has further increased awareness for celiac disease.
Though some regard it as a “fad diet”, a higher demand for gluten-free foods results in more choices for celiacs and those who have a gluten intolerance. That’s exactly our mission at Custom Choice Cereal, making the gluten-free life an enjoyable experience by bringing taste and variety to the gluten-free cereal bowl!
Though they define ‘celiac disease’ somewhat loosely we still highly recommend that you watch this video from yesterday’s Today Show! Great job to the Today Show for covering this important topic in such depth!
We at Custom Choice Cereal are happy to offer you another Q&A session on celiac disease, gluten intolerance, and living gluten-free or wheat-free with a renown expert in the field, Dr. Stephen Wangen.
Suffering from celiac disease himself, Stephen has devoted his life to educating and providing help to people effected with digestive issues of various kinds. You can read about The Gluten Free Doctor’s impressive credentials on our page about our advisors.
The whole things is pretty simple and works in 4 easy steps:
1. Post your question as a comment to this blog entry
2. We send all questions to Dr. Wangen
3. Dr. Wangen’s answers will be published in reply to your comments
4. Key: First come – first serve. 5 question limit per session
This great service could not be provided to you without Dr. Wangen’s goodwill. We at Custom Choice Cereal are very thankful that Stephen continues to offer these monthly Q&A session on our blog. At the same time, we’d like to thank you for understanding that out of respect for Dr. Wangen and his time we have to limit each session to 5 questions.
You might or might not like the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). We at Custom Choice Cereal are certainly not going to take any sides… However, we came across a story about a UFC fighter with celiac disease (please ignore that they call it a wheat allergy) and wanted to share his story with you.
Dennis Hallman said in an interview with MMA Junkie Radio that he never understood why he was so exhausted after training or why his cardio failed him in the octagon. When doctors diagnosed him with celiac disease they found out that for him it meant that his body was unable to produce testosterone and cartisol because of the gluten in his diet. Both these hormones are essential to the performance and recovery of an athlete.
Since going off wheat (and we might add: hopefully going off gluten alltogether!) in May, Dennis has immediately noticed the difference, most strikingly in his recovery after training and fights. He now feels like a “new man”. Here is what struck us at Custom Choice Cereal most about this story: when the Garmin-Transitions pro cycling team went on a gluten-free diet they noticed the exact same effect – better recovery – even though none of them have celiac disease or are intolerant to gluten.
This is an extremely important distinction that needs to be understood because not understanding it can result in serious (and very unpleasant) responses from the autoimmune system if a person suffers from celiac disease or gluten intolerance. In order to avoid this misunderstanding, education about and raising awareness for celiac disease are essentials components of the Custom Choice Cereal mission.
“Wheat free and gluten free is not the same thing. While all wheat free food is gluten free, a gluten free diet also requires the celiac to refrain from eating rye, barley, and contaminated oats. This needs to be clearly understood by the individual with celiac disease, or gluten intolerance, so that adequate questions can be placed to company representatives regarding their definition of gluten free foods and cross contamination practices.”
Thank you, Vickie! We would only like to add that everyone also needs to be aware that these different ‘in-house interpretations’ for the terms ‘gluten-free’ and ‘wheat-free’ exist. Or has Hajo’s Dad would say: “Every gluten-free food is wheat-free but not every wheat-free food is gluten-free”.
Here is how it works, just follow these simple steps and you’re fine:
1. Post your question as a comment to this blog entry
2. We send all questions to Dr. Wangen
3. Dr. Wangen’s answers will be published in reply to your comments
4. Key: First come – first serve. 5 question limit per session
The Custom Choice Cereal team is very happy that Dr. Stephen Wangen agrees to provide this great service to you. Thank you for understanding that out of respect for Stephen we have to limit each session to 5 questions!
The entrepreneurial spirit in the Triangle is very alive, and rarely does a week pass since having started Custom Choice Cereal where I don’t meet at least one other local entrepreneur. Being located in the Research Triangle Park, many of these entrepreneurs operate in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, or IT.
That’s why I am very excited to have met the people behind Local Yogurt, “Durham’s first independently owned frozen yogurt shop!” They offer delicious frozen yogurt in four flavors and plenty of toppings. The best part: the yogurt is gluten-free! How awesome is that??
With the heat hitting North Carolina and the 4th of July weekend ahead, this is the perfect treat for anyone, but especially for those with celiac disease and everyone on a gluten-free or wheat-free diet. Go ahead and visit LoYo this weekend at one of their three locations in Durham, Raleigh or Greenville!
Tina’s wall post made us at Custom Choice Cereal wonder about the connection of breastfeeding and celiac disease, and a quick google search revealed some interesting information. Of course the decision to breastfeed or not is up to each individual family. But please keep on reading!
A 2001 study by German researchers around U. Peters observed 143 children with celiac disease and 137 randomly selected non-celiac children. They found that breastfeeding for 2 or more months has a protective impact and decreased the risk of developing celiac disease by a whopping 63%. The Celiac Sprue Association and Lippincott’s Nursing Center provide more details on this study and other research in the context of breastfeeding and celiac disease.
We at Custom Choice Cereal aren’t doctors and cannot give anyone medical advice. However, our takeaway from these results is that Mother Nature simply knows it best!
Ann writes the blog Healthy Tasty Chow, and the funny story about her is that her husband actually had stomach issues when she became pregnant. After a quick test they soon found out that among other food allergies he is mildly allergic to wheat.
Custom Choice Cereal’s cereal creations made from all gluten-free ingredients are therefore the perfect treat for him. As we have pointed out before, gluten-free is also wheat-free and thus safe for Ann’s husband. Funny enough, it was Ann who actually sampled our cereal since it provided a much welcomed opportunity to procrastinate a little before cleaning the kitchen
“I pour myself a nice little bowl of my custom cereal. And then another bowl. And now I’m eating it dry out of the bag. Is it that good or am I just hungry? A little of both I think. [...] A friend of mine, Megan, has celiac disease and so I decided to give her half of the bag to try out for herself. She said that she loved the flakes, they held their texture in milk significantly better than other gluten free flake cereals she has tried. Like me, she loved the added ingredients…”
Thanks a lot, Ann, receiving such a great feedback is the best encouragement for us at Custom Choice Cereal. For Ann, the intuitive ordering process was big part of the overall fun in creating her personal gluten-free cereal:
“It’s really cool to make your own cereal and see the Nutrition Facts change with each item that you add/subtract. What was even cooler is that when I received my order in the mail, within the week, my nutrition facts were printed on the back with a complete ingredient list. It had an order number for easy re-ordering as well. I love love love this concept and hope it continues to flourish…”
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It’s the first Wednesday of the month again, and that means that Custom Choice Cereal in cooperation with our advisor Dr. Stephen Wangen offers you another Q&A session. 
However, we came across a story about a UFC fighter with celiac disease (please ignore that they call it a wheat allergy) and wanted to share his story with you.
