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Sometime ago, Donald Kasarda said that it had been shown in scientific
journal articles that in at least a couple of instances, both milk and
soy produced the flattened mucosa characteristic of celiac disease. I
would be interested in knowing if these people had adverse reactions to
milk, soy AND gluten, or just to milk and/or soy.

Before I was diagnosed with celiac (flattened mucosa per biopsy), I
never really had much in the way of intestinal problems. My problem was
severe anemia that didn't improve with iron tablets. While milk products
did cause me to feel mildly nauseaus, I was not aware that wheat, rye,
oats, or barley caused me any discomfort. In fact, if my stomach was
upset, I would  often feel better after eating a bowl of oatmeal. Since
I do not want to cause any more damage to my intestines, I have not
knowingly eaten any gluten since my diagnosis 8 months ago and therefore
do not know what kind of reaction I would have now if I did eat gluten.
I have consumed dairy products however, and it seems that whenever I do,
I get stomach cramps during the night and feel very tired and irritable
for several days afterwards. In addition, as an infant, I had constant
intestinal problems for the fi I was born. Changing my formula to some
sort of soy protein didn't help and only made it worse. My problems
finally cleared up after being put on something called Caesac (I think
that's the spelling).

Anyway, my question is, is it possible that flattened mucosa could
actually be caused by dairy products or soy and not gluten? Any thoughts
on this, Don?

Marti Nicoll
Canton, Ohio