Wheat intolerance - it's more common than you might think

This week, in the space of 12 hours, a new acquaintance and an old friend both mentioned that they were finding wheat and/or gluten were causing them health issues.

We were at dinner with friends, who always take the utmost care, bordering on complete paranoia, to make sure that everything served is wheat free. It's the only place I feel completely safe to eat, with the exception of a dedicated gluten free restaurant, or at home.

They had taken the opportunity to invite some other friends to join the revelry. As usual I was happy to provide wheat & gluten free desserts, New York Style Cheesecake with blueberry sauce, and Pumpkin Pie with whipped cream.

Imagine my surprise when a male guest said, "I'm trying to avoid wheat because I feel so much better when I'm not eating it". Well, I nearly fell off my chair, how rare is it for a man to admit this? He happily tucked into both desserts, and his wife promised to check out our website.

Just 12 hours later we were meeting friends for our regular walk and coffee, and my friend, who in all the years I've known her has had a persistent tickly cough, mentioned that she'd been trying to cut gluten out for the last couple of weeks.

To cut a long story short, her daughter had met a nurse at a social event who mentioned she'd had a persistent cough for years, and when she cut out gluten it went. Our friend had therefore been trying hard to avoid gluten for a couple of weeks, and the difference was noticeable, even to me.

So I guess the moral of this blog is, sometimes those unexplainable little niggles that a lot of us suffer, but don't seem to have a medical origin, may in fact be dietary issues. After all, if you put the wrong type of fuel into your vehicle it's not going to run well, if at all. The human body is the same, if you fuel it with things that aren't suited to it, like foods it can't tolerate, then it's exactly the same.

Listen to your body, it usually knows what's best for you.