Monday, January 18, 2010

Meds DO have gluten in them

When I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease my gastro's nurse told me to be sure and check out my medication to make sure that none of them had gluten. I tried to get the pharmacy to help but was told was that gluten was wheat and medications didn't have wheat in them. I sent the pharmacist who told me that (and it was a hospital affiliated pharmacy) a couple of chapters from different books explaining that gluten in medicines could be a problem. This weekend I ate cleanly - absolutely no gluten. I woke up Sunday morning in terrible pain. I got my book out again and read the section on medications and one of mine was listed as not gluten free. So I got the name of the company off my Rx bottle and called the company and sure enough the medication has gluten in it. So now I've got a call in to my other doctor to get him to switch to another medicine. It seems that everything that is manufactured by Pfizer or its subsidiaries is tainted with gluten. Good to know.

More later...

1 comment:

  1. Johanna--Thanks for sharing this info! There are so many meds that are gluten free that we can become complacent and think they all are ... not so, just like you shared with us. I tried to switch from an expensive brand name drug to a generic a few months back and couldn't because it contained gluten. A good site to use as a reference is glutenfreedrugs.com, but, of course, always follow up directly.

    So sorry about your experience, but thanks so much for sharing.

    Shirley

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