Medical student, Ciara Parker, 23, spent ten years battling with coeliac symptoms and now shares her story during Coeliac Awareness month which takes place this May.
She said: “I got misdiagnosed as not having coeliac, so I’d be just sitting in pain because I was told ‘you don’t have coeliac’, so I still ate bread and continued as normal.
“I sort of became desensitized to it because I was just used to having that pain, that bloating and just feeling tired all the time.”
Coeliac is an autoimmune disease caused by a harmful reaction to gluten which affects 1 in 100 people in the UK, but only 36% have been diagnosed according to Coeliac UK.
Helen Armstrong, also from Sheffield, shares a similar story having first noticed symptoms in her early twenties and was diagnosed with coeliac 10 years later.
She said: “You kind of just put up with things like that [symptoms] because they’re not life threatening and I think lots of people end up tolerating symptoms that perhaps they should get checked out.”
The main symptoms are gut related such as indigestion or constipation, but the disease can also affect fertility, fatigue and coordination.
Both Ciara and Helen shared that finding restaurants is a struggle because although they may be advertised as gluten free, they aren’t always coeliac friendly.
Ciara said: “I’ve been to places where they say there’s a small risk of cross contamination and then the rest of the week my immune system’s done for.”
Helen, 46, posts gluten free restaurants in Sheffield that she finds and shares her at-home-gluten-free recipes on her blog Steeliac | Coeliac in Sheffield and Twitter/X to help others with this condition.
The blogger said: “You have a bit of a mindset change in terms of acceptance of things that you can’t have. But also see the positive of trying new things, finding new favorites.
“So it [the blog] was about trying to find ways that I could recreate some of those things I really like to eat that I can’t get out and about. It’s a good time to be diagnosed because there are a lot of options.
“I think what’s really, really helpful is that some restaurants become accredited with Coeliac UK so you can have confidence going in there.”