hi and welcome to healthy inspirations i'm your host lindsay smith as always the goal of this show is to encourage and inspire you to take action in your life and your health each episode we're going to showcase different health and wellness topics and invite various community experts to share their knowledge and expertise today's episode is all about going gluten free for the holidays and i have a special guest joanna heart of simply divine health joy and a has taken a special interest in gluten free life so after her own personal experience of overcoming disease and other food related intolerances she also became a certified holistic health and wellness coach through the institute for integrative nutrition and partnered with her mother pam hart to create their own health and wellness coaching business called simply divine health so thanks joanna for coming in thank you so much for having me it's great to be here yeah i'm so excited to talk to you today you are an expert in gluten intolerance and i know this is something that i've even been experimenting with we've talked last night so tell me a little bit about your story sure what took place about all started about two years ago i started noticing just some odd symptoms post college it was just started with a lot of fatigue like i would have to take  between my work just to get through the day and then i'd fall asleep in the evening like way before it was time to go to bed so that was something and then also just mood changes just i notice i get like have severe mood swings nothing like i've ever had before  kim was actually really into the food allergy realm she had me do a food allergy blood tests and it was something that i didn't think anything of i just figured this is a waste of time i don't have a food allergy i've been able to  about anything and i don't notice any any weird symptoms related to food allergies and so she gave me a blood test and sure enough it came back positive for celiac and it was so positive that i mean there was no question i didn't have to do any further testing so that's kind of how it all started that was back in january and so i've been gluten free since then so what's that like when you're when you're used to eating cookies and cakes and  things that contain gluten and then they're like you can't eat this i mean i cried like it was just it's funny i mean i don't you don't think you'll react that strongly to it but then when you start thinking about will how am i going to go out how my going to go to people's houses for dinner and  i'm going to be so deprived and at that point i also had a cookie business which i was just like i can't bake anymore because i am going to contaminate everything in my kitchen so it was really a life changing result from that tests and it's something that most primary care doctors they give you a hand out and they're just like here's your list of things you should eat and that's about it so it was i was fortunate enough to have some good friends who are gluten free and so together we kind of worked through like the first couple months which were definitely a challenge so my mission is to make it easier for people just to overcome that initial hurdle of becoming gluten free and kind of just knowing what it's in because it's in a lot of things and i talk about it a lot and any diagnosis of any kind of race can be very traumatic but i think that you handled it you know as positively as you know even though it's like oh you can never eat this again i you know that's very difficult so what actually is a gluten free lifestyle sure will gluten is a protein that found in wheat barley rye and molt and so it just sounds like something that you just eliminate pasta and bread and that's it unfortunately in that's a big american diet guten is in just about everything like from sauces to spice mixes anywhere from vitamins to cosmetics i mean it's an everything and so when you just decide i'm going to go gluten free it's more than just giving up a few things it's like you get rid of your toaster to make it just make sure you're never careful and then another thing that's that's really interesting with celiac just it's not an allergy and that's something that i think a lot of people get confused with they think it's just a food allergy but it's actually an auto immune disorder and so with that it means that your body isn't absorbing nutrients normally and so that's why a lot of adults will see really odd symptoms like depression for tea like how i experienced guy roid it's all related to just malnutrition so that gluten goes in and it destroys the lining of small intestine which of the villa and with that basically it doesn't allow you to absorb anything and so that's for me why i was feeling so weak as i wasn't getting vitamins normally s say the main difference people with a gluten intolerance they can get away with eating things that might say on the way well made in a facility with we or not you know for celiacs you should not eat anything that says even if it's made in the facility but it maybe doesn't contain wheat you shouldn't have it just because of the chance that it could be contaminated so what i mean how do you go from you were eating this stuff and then then they're like oh you can't even or and how do i mean how has your body responded how to normal what's the normal response to that because i imagine if you were eating it before and you weren't having so many symptoms like how do you know yeah how do you know if it's working well that's what's before and so that kind of makes you think like maybe i'm doing something wrong but it's actually just a process like your body's detox thing from eating gluten so much and then after that about maybe a month or two later i did notice improvement as far as like my vitamin levels i had anemia as well meaning my own well was really low and with that it just it went back up to normal and so but for adults in general it takes like two to three years to really like completely reverse all your symptoms so it just it's a process like it's a really long process so how do you keep motivated because i can imagine that would be very discouraging it's like a two and three year process where you're going to start noticing result right i mean i think the initial motivation was just that i know that it's going to reverse itself like you've damaged your body but it can heal itself and so that's kind of the push like well i wouldn't want to eat something with gluten in it because i know what it does to me  now and so i think that's been a huge motivation and then also i've just really enjoyed living like the gluten free way so it's been interesting like it's forced me to cook a lot more and to be healthier overall just because you can't rely on just buying like prepared packaged foods anymore you really do have to cook a lot and then it's actually been fun yeah good i know we're going to get into in the second segment a little bit more diving into some of the products and things like that is the type of lifestyle for everyone would you say i'd say overall if somebody is considering gluten free it's i mean it's a huge commitment so for some people maybe they feel like that's too much i can't i can't do that it's overwhelming i think overall it would be a benefit to most americans just because we load up so much on carbs and pasta and bread and we don't have enough that simple so in a way forces you to eat more whole process or less processed foods so i think it really it could be something for everybody whether or not it will eventually get to that point i mean we're seeing a rise in food allergies and celiac so i think the more people can learn about it now just to prepare the better and i was doing some research myself and i saw people maybe they have a thyroid disorder and that's all it is for me that was just a symptom of celiac so i think anybody who has any sort of like symptom that could be celiac from the process or depression  just get a blood test i think it's worth it to check with your doctor and just just to clear your mind from that because it's better to surly like if you have celiac it's better to catch it before you get a lot worse and do permanent intestinal damage  so i would just recommend getting tested ok so you can do that through a doctor yeah i did it through i went through my pharmacist originally and she worked with my primary care doctor and i got a blood test that way for some people they have to be careful because the blood test can come back as a false negative so it may look like you don't have it and then you are confused because you think i have these symptoms what is this in that case i would get a biopsy just to make sure for me it was such a strong positive that i don't have to but for other people they do so just to clear them clear their mind yeah yeah now someone is experimenting and they're like well i want to go gluten free i know we've talked about this before like a diet thing which people do  what do you recommend for something like that if they're maybe not celiac but they're like i want to see yeah i mean that's that's always a good thing to try i think i'd say what they should do is replace all of the typically gluten this foods like bread and pasta with just a gluten free substitutes because it really doesn't help you if you're trying to lose weight i'd say just cut out a lot of the refined foods use things like keen wa which i brought a box of later so we can look at that but healthier grains are always a great thing substitute with a lot of vegetables and fruits i think that's a great place to start so definitely that could be an easy thing for somebody who wants to kind of try gluten free one of the things that makes me laugh is that i know we're going to like it so we're go talk about this later but the gluten free kind of phenomenon the toughening at the different grocery stores which is great but it's also like there's to me it's there's a lot of gluten free options for its vegetables and it's kind of about to basics but i think as a society we've kind of gotten into this somewhat of a lazy mode when it comes to that we want you know the things that are just easily readily available what driving sense and definitely i'm sure as you're transitioning from the lifestyle did you find that when you were transitioning you maybe started all i did i gravitated towards already made foods and especially just for like making lunches i was like i don't really i don't want to time to make something like use a whole bunch of fruits or vegetables so i went towards like the already processed packaged foods and i didn't feel great doing that so now i really have a woman a did a lot of those things and i also went dairy free on top of it so that it kind of made me more restricted but in this sense i feel more energized and i feel better so yeah i would i would recommend just if it's easier to start off with like transitioning and getting packaged foods to do that but that after a comfortable i'd say just cook a lot and experiment with new foods one of the things i always say is health is a journey not a destiny and and it's then and that was ok yeah i know and i think it's the same thing that you're saying even with gluten free it's if you need to use those foods as your transition that's ok and don't like it is a bad thing but know that there's there's more out there and i asked her to kind of learn about it have shift finale so tell me a little bit about i know you said your dairy free as well see that a lot of people with gluten sensitivities also have other food sensitivities it's not uncommon once i got diagnosed i was asked to go off dairy for the first month because what it does is actually makes it easier on your body to just digest normally because once you get diagnosed i mean you know there's an the digestive problem and so with with milk i mean that's just tough for anybody adults especially to it  just it was kind of doing myself a favor by giving it up then i went back on it and i don't feel great on it i just felt like this isn't doing many favors really so i just decided to give it up entirely and so i mean that was really difficult at first just to get used transition right but i mean i find that at this point after giving it up for a couple months i really don't miss it so it's just a matter of like wean yourself off and then your body kind of adapts and you don't crave those things that you did before well good  awesome well i'm excited we're actually going to take a quick break and when we come back we're going to continue talking with joanna and she's going to show us some great healthy gluten free foods and how to use them for the holidays so things you simply cannot control and so i'm really important things you can do like keeping your family healthy managing finances preparing for retirement it's all here in this booklet from the american diabetes association because we want everyone to be healthy and happy for your free copy of planning for a healthy life to help manage the things you can't control who am i i'm someone who cares about smiles i'm an orthodox specialist who corrects teeth and jaws i received two to three years of specialized education beyond dentals i'm the maker of healthy smile welcome back to healthy inspirations we have joe and a heart of simply divine health and now joanna is going to teach us a little bit about some gluten free products and what to look for when you're shopping and maybe even give us some tips for the upcoming holiday season so tell me a little bit about some of the flowers that we have here one of the big things when you go gluten free is to be able to cook and use some sort of flour substitute because that's really flour different types of flowers so this first one white rice flour and it's the bob's red mill brand and that's something that i use as a primary ingredient in my own flour mix you can get all purpose flo mixes but they're very expensive so i recommend making your own it's so much easier you just need to know the components so you'd want to use a combination of white rice flour and then tapioca flour or tapioca starch is the same thing i see that all the time and yeah mixes and they have a very expensive and i recommend the energy brand it's at most grocery stores and it's at sun a bridge health food store yes so grab a box of tapioca flour and then i'd also add potato starch which is a weird sounding but you only need about a teaspoon for a bit pretty big batch of flour so those four components are what i use to make my own flour mix so how much would something like that maybe cost it ranges i mean the white rice flour is probably maybe five bucks for like a pretty large bag these boxes are maybe two fifty three dollars and then the santa gums the most expensive that's about twelve but you get a decent sized bag and you only use but a teaspoon per ba can be very expensive i know like i know one brand is about twelve ninety nine for one and that doesn't last long so i recommend making your own another good flour to try is coconut flour and low cocoa yeah it's so good it's great it's good  website they're not cheap but they're worth it because it's really hard to find cosmetics that lipstick that doesn't have gluten something that's a warning sign if you're looking at labels for cosmetics the word maltodextrin those are just two of a long list of things to just be careful with because they could either be corn or wheat derived so something like that in cosmetics i would recommend just going on line and doing some some research on it because each brand is different and then some manufacturers might put gluten in one thing and not in another so it's just worth to go online and look it up and i know our last show we had leni here and she had her sugar scrubs and you know the skin is the largest organ on your body right and so she was telling us you know when when you put something on your body you inject it yeah ingested as well and so it's interesting because the same goes for gluten right great it's something that like you can absorb it through your skin but anywhere that you put it that's closer mouth that's where you're running the risk so like foundation lipstick even champ who i know of as a good brand for shampoo that it's fluid and free for makeup is also a good brand now do companies have to have a certification to be glued free they don't have to have a certification it depends on the brand some of them will have like a little circle and of a have a g f and i don't know if i have any here with that this might but they should have them they'll just slip wheat in as an ingredient so you have to read the whole the whole list of ingredients but i'm getting more familiar in which brands tend to be easy to read like kraft is a great brand that they they make in bold what the allergens are  so just look for like bold words or may contain milk or sawyer wheat and then you'll know you've got more familiar with it all right so we want to do some holiday baking so what i have going on i know we have yeah we have  say i so like if you want to make your typical sugar cookies to give away to people gloomy is a bakery downtown that they actually have the mixes the sugar cookie rolled mixes that you can just throw together and then roll out and use you're new to it or are doing it because someone you know has yeah they start make it easy on yourself first and then you can experiment and then make your own cookies from scratch yeah we don't have to go this route but yeah of all that was there you know get mixes to start with  and make it easy and then the next to the icing is actually hot cocoa which is something that we drink a lot of during the holidays so swiss miss is a gluten free berry and deli is also so i would not think hot chocolate has just a matter of learning getting familiar with labels and then just looking up brands i mean that's what i did the first month as i just spent a lot of time researching like what are some good brands and then you just stick with them so so what i mean but really i think it comes down to with any type of food sensitivity or any type of changing your health i think it's the support yeah you know so if someone's really struggling and they don't have time to research late right i mean i know you're available as a what's your website so everyone simply divine health dot com made a month yeah you can go on my website look look up we have some dairy free recipes on the web site and then if you have questions about any of the products or just in transition in general just feel free to get in touch with me i'm always ready to support anybody who has a gluten issue so that's something that i feel very passionate involved because i know that's one of the biggest things when we're trying to lose weight or go gluten free day or overcome something it's nice to have the yeah right one of the things you also talk about is friends and family yeah that's something that you should definitely inform your friends and family just so that they're aware and make them aware they'll be ready to support you and they'll be willing to help and make it easier up parties especially around christmas so we can count on you to bring us some gluten free yeah ok yeah at our next holiday gathering and it makes it like you said easier on everyone sure com so great ok will joanna thank you so much for coming on this was amazing i'm so glad always trying to educate myself more to with this and i know you've helped me a lot with that so thanks for coming on to be here and thanks everyone for tuning in and we will see you next month for our episode on new year's resolutions how to stick with it and makes of resolutions this year that will last