Tuesday 10 December 2013

Broken Blog Search Widget

Lots of people are discovering that the Google Blog Search Widget has broken and Google have no urgent intentions of fixing it. There is a Google thread about it which I posted some code my husband wrote as a workaround. It's not perfect, and it doesn't bring up a neat little list of post results so if you are searching for something with a number of results  it's going to be a long list of full results....(particularly true on a free from recipe resource so please get your act together Google!!) but it's the best out there at the moment.

On this Blog you will see I have located it on the right hand bar, under the Google Search widget, so try it out and see.

If you wish to add it to your own blog you will need to do the following:-

Wednesday 4 December 2013

Coeliac Disease and a “gut allergy” to Gluten. What’s the difference?

From our background of complex gut allergies/immune responses I find the topic of Coeliac Disease particularly interesting. People “get” Coeliac Disease. It might often be tricky and time consuming to diagnose, but it is well understood by many health professionals, has a set diagnostic criteria and is widely recognised. To the extent that a formal diagnosis will earn you gluten free foods on prescription.

The NHS Choices website says it is an autoimmune condition - which it is, and it is a type of Delayed Hypersensitivity, explained well on Wikipaedia here.
“Coeliac disease is what is known as an autoimmune condition. This is where the immune system – the body’s defence against infection – mistakenly attacks healthy tissue.
Coeliac disease isn't an allergy or an intolerance to gluten.
In cases of coeliac disease, the immune system mistakes substances found inside gluten as a threat to the body and attacks them.
This damages the surface of the small bowel (intestines), disrupting the body’s ability to absorb nutrients from food.
Exactly what causes the immune system to act in this way is still not entirely clear, although a combination of a person's genetic make-up and the environment appear to play a part."
NHS Choices

This is not so very different from EGID (Eosinophilic gastrointestinal disease) although the latter rarely receives half the understanding that Coeliac Disease does, despite being far more complex and overwhelming for the sufferer. And yet - and this is the bit which *really* puzzles me - just like Coeliac Disease, EGID is NOT an IgE allergy, NOT an intolerance, and is actually a delayed, Type IV hypersensitivity - a cell mediated response and currently thought to be autoimmune in nature also.
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