Thursday, June 20, 2013

Gluten in the Air



I have learned to avoid the traditional bread aisle especially in large grocery stores.
And if I have to get coffee, tea, honey, or syrup which sometimes share the bread aisle I will actually hold my breath, quickly enter and exit.  No dawdling, no label reading. In and out.

Surely there are people that think I am crazy for this but I have found that when I breath by all that gluten bread my lungs feel like they can't get enough oxygen. A weird cough starts... like my lungs are forcing something out. It's an odd and kinda scary feeling.  Feels a bit like suffocation.

I thought it was just me. (though I have learned there are always others - no matter how seemingly odd the symptom)

Then I read about airborne gluten in bakeries and farms (from the animal feed). Where flour particles can stay in the air for up to 24 hours.  24 hours!  So if there is baking going on nearby, everyone is breathing it.   Could there be that much in a long narrow bread aisle, so much outside of the packages, that came from gluten factories, that I can feel it?

I first noticed it after about 2 years gluten-free. Now it happens every time, in any store with a concentration of gluten bread. 

I don't mind if people think I am crazy, I would guess others have had that experience in the grocery store. Besides I have had practice with people thinking I am a bit odd... all those years of a laundry list of medical complaints & illnesses, a rolodex filled with specialists, migraines and auras at every turn. 

And it was simply that I was was being poisoned by gluten day in and day out.



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