Sunday, March 10, 2013

Going Against the Celiac's Motto

Sometimes I wonder if the articles I read about Celiac Disease are really truthful or not. On twitter, these articles are passed around the Celiac tweeters from one retweet to another. And it seems like there is a new one popping up almost everyday: "Celiac Disease may raise migraine risk", "Do people born in the spring at higher risk of being diagnosed with Celiac Disease?", "Celiac Disease may initially present as a neurological disorder"....

Most of these articles are day ruiners for us Celiacs because they're not exactly aimed at cheering us up. But a person is probably a lot more likely to read an article about risks and hazards than one about how going gluten-free is a great opportunity to switch to healthy and natural foods. I bet that for every article that talks about advantages of going gluten-free, there's at least 5 articles saying the opposite.

However, the Celiac motto is "Better Safe Than Sorry" and ignoring articles like the one's I've been complaining about goes against this particular motto. We want to know everything about our disease, whether it is legit or not. I can't tell you the amount of times I've avoided eating a certain type of food simply because just one person posted online about getting a reaction to it. That's a lot of trust I am putting into a stranger's opinion on the internet.

I think it's about time that doctors, writers, and whoever else who claims that they've got Celiac Disease all figured out to finally admit that they actually don't. They are doing more harm than good by filling our gullible minds with hypotheses that don't have enough facts or evidence on its side to be proven true. We simply don't know much about this autoimmune disease yet and maybe we never really will. I'd rather be fed 1 truth than 100 lies that are supposed to make me feel informed.

Now that's my take on the matter. What's yours??

1 comment:

  1. Hmm, for me, I don't mind seeing hypotheses as long as they're still phrased as hypotheses. All the examples you listed include the word "may" or are posed as questions, which I appreciate. Where I start getting annoyed is when bloggers or news reporters pick up hypotheses and state them as though they were facts! At best, they're confused; at worst, they're being dishonest and/or purposefully inflammatory. It's important not to take research and statistics out of context but unfortunately it happens all the time, in every kind of media. -Molly

    P.S. Just discovered your blog via Twitter—glad I did!

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