Gluterra was founded by a husband and wife team of gluten-free foodies with a goal of being the most comprehensive resource on the web for gluten-free recipes, gluten-free restaurants, gluten-free products, gluten-free videos and more.

Our site visitors range from those that are choosing the gluten-free lifestyle as a healthier option, to those with gluten sensitivities, all the way up to those suffering terribly from celiac disease.

If you see anything that is a problem or want to suggest any feature that you think would be helpful, please send us an email through our contact form.

 

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It all started (we think) one year when my wife (Kayo) and I decided to take a big trip to the islands – the islands we saw on the postcards with big palm trees stretching out over pristine white beaches and turquoise oceans. We picked the tiny and very rural island of Tobago, one of the southern most islands in the Carribean. This is the island that you see in all those big posters where they want to show you the most perfect beach in the world.

The beach and ocean were indeed breathtaking; at least I think they were because I only got to see it once. You see, I spent five grueling and painful days in bed and seemingly twice as long in the bathroom after our first night on the island. It must have been something I ate.

The medical system there is basically non-existent, and I will only bore you with a few of the gruesome details. They involve riding to the hospital with the doctor (bizarre); a dark dingy empty middle school-like shell of a building with no one around (concerned); 6 IV attempts (you could get an IV in me by throwing a dart so what’s up with that?, oh and very painful), cotton in a tofu box (yuck), no sense of medical cleanliness or procedures (I felt I knew more than the doctor), blood all over the floor (mine) being smeared by the so-called doctor (gross and painful), panicked calls to other doctors on different islands (fearful), painful screams from me (never have I ever screamed before at a doctor or hospital – much more pain and concern), and me and my wife, both whiter at this point than Casper the ghost (she normally has beautiful olive skin) all the while fearing the worst – that I was possibly about to become a statistic (petrified).

I was gravely ill and severely dehydrated with no one to help out except the loving support of my wife. It all ended when I ripped the IV out of my hand because of an extremely painful bubble in my arm traveling up my vein towards my heart. Flash back to my scuba diving class and I knew this was not good. Not. Good. At. All. I found out later that the burning and moving pain in my arm and chest when getting the IV might have been too much Potassium in the solution burning as it traveled up my arm, but my doctor also said we will never know what could have happened. That thought gives me very little consolation now.

My savior was the W.H.O. rehydration salts the doctor helped my wife buy at the local convenience store. My American doctor said they saved my life. All in all, it was a totally miserable, grueling, painful, awful-beyond-belief experience.

Needless to say, I had to fly back early on easily one of the worst and most painful flights ever. Yes, flights with an “s” – three back-to-back flights lasting almost 18 hours total including the lovely two-hour sardine-in-a-hot-tin-can wait on the tarmac in Miami trying to wait out the severe thunderstorms before taking off to Atlanta. This was after two long flights in a small plane, one into Puerto Rico and the other into Miami. Miserable does not even come close. Remember me the next time you are “inconvenienced” while sitting on a plane.

Over time I had stomach issues here and there and yaddah, yaddah yaddah… I did colonoscopies and endoscopies, and Barium swallows and test after test just to try and figure out what was going on, and getting normal test results for all of these tests.

On my last bout with stomach problems I found a doctor that ordered a test for pathogens and an antigen antibodies test for various allergies. When the tests came back the doctor said my results lit up like a Christmas tree and it underscored why I had been having so many stomach problems. When I asked her why the other doctors had not figured it out, she said that the other doctors probably did some sort of pathogen test, but tests these days are much more sensitive and I had not had these tests in many years, giving lots of opportunity for bad stuff to get much worse.

I obviously had to get rid of all the pathogens, and there were plenty of them. This process will probably make its way into an article. In addition, the antigen tests found that I had “leaky gut” which made me allergic to all sorts of things, including Gluten and I’ve been gluten-free ever since. Lucky for me and based on my last tests, my leaky gut seems to have healed nicely.

I said earlier “we think” this is how it all started because the lining of my stomach was like I wadded it up and threw it away. The pathogens that I picked up there really took their toll on me. I used to be able to practically eat nails, but it took me almost three years before I could even have a cup of coffee. So, we “think” this was where it all started since the doctor said conditions like mine usually start with “I was traveling in a third world country and…”

Now on our fourth year of being gluten-free, dairy free, and egg free we have found it very challenging to live that lifestyle without a lot of work. We couldn’t find a web site that was a source for everything we wanted and needed, so we created Gluttera.

We hope that this site makes your life a little easier and a little more enjoyable.