Diet Novelties .com

…„Gluten-free diet gave Veronica her life back ,when she’d just entered her teens, Veronica Camilleri started to exhibit a range of unusual symptoms.She not only stopped growing, but started to lose a lot of weight and became anaemic. Just going to school was an effort and climbing up a flight of stairs left her exhausted - taking part in any physical activity proved almost impossible.

As the months passed, her failure to thrive became progressively worse until a visit to her GP. She was given iron injections to tackle the anaemia. A blood test followed and within a few weeks it was confirmed that Veronica was suffering from an allergy or intolerance to gluten - the protein found in wheat, rye and barley.

The condition is coeliac disease which is believed to affect as many as one person in 300. “I had started to feel better after the iron injections but within a few months of going onto the gluten- free diet I was virtually back to normal,” said Veronica. “Because I had been so unwell, I could appreciate the benefits of the diet and there was no temptation to ignore the medical advice.”

As a test when she was 16 years old, Veronica was taken off the diet to check whether she had been cured, but within a couple of weeks the old symptoms started to return. Today, Veronica is a 40- year-old mother of three, awaiting the arrival of her fourth child, and says she has led a completely normal life ever since her teenage traumas.

Recent research has suggested coeliac disease may run in families and this theory is supported by Veronica, who discovered her daughter Charlotte had the same condition.

“I became concerned when she was two years old and she would throw up for no apparent reason and be perfectly normal afterwards,” said Veronica.

“She would even get up in the middle of the night to be sick and then put herself back to bed.”

Blood tests proved positive and medical tests confirmed that Charlotte needed to be put on a gluten-free diet. After this experience Veronica sought blood tests for her two older sons, but both proved negative.

“Being forced to live with a glutenfree diet, people tend to think you are living a deprived life, but that’s far from the reality,” said Veronica.

“All it means is you cannot eat food that includes gluten, such as normal bread, cakes, biscuits, cereals, pasta and sweets.

“Despite this, there is now a wide range of gluten-free products - including all of these things - and so you can live a perfectly normal life.”

A special exhibition on gluten-free products is being held in Cardiff International Arena on Saturday, June 29.

6,000 NEW CASES ARE BEING DIAGNOSED EACH YEAR

There are 50,000 people in the UK who are confirmed coeliacs, with a further 6,000 diagnosed each year.

It was once considered a rare childhood condition but it is now being diagnosed in adults, most commonly between the ages of 30-40.

Symptoms in children may include becoming irritable, diarrhoea, vomiting and passing pale stools. In adults, symptoms include anaemia, diarrhoea, weight loss and fatigue.

Once confirmed, there is no cure and the treatment is a gluten- free diet for life.

Naturally gluten-free foods include rice, corn, soya, potato, pulses, fresh meat, fish, dairy products, fruit and vegetables.…”