<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

This is a question that came out of corresponding with the person who posted
"yerba mate: is it OK?".

Her concern was based on a comment her doctor made, that mate (an infusion
or tea popular in South America) was "poison to the intestines".  This made
me think of another post in which the poster described the mechanism of CD.
They said something to the effect that:

1) When gluten is digested, gliadin is formed.

2) When it encounters tTG in the stomach, it combines with it and forms a
new compound.

3) It's the new compound that triggers our immune systems.

4) tTG normally doesn't occur in the stomach and nobody knows why it is
there in ours, perhaps it is due to injury/damage to the digestive tract or
perhaps it is due to a hereditary factor.

I was sick nearly 20 yrs before I fully understood I had CD and went GF.
That gave me enough of a time period to see some patterns.  For example,
stress always seemed to aggravate things.  At home, I learned by experience
to stay away from breads.  However, experience also showed me that symptoms,
although still present, were almost undetectable if I did something like eat
bread while away on vacation for a week.  It was one of the pluses of taking
vacations.  Most of my nuerotic symptoms subsided.  It was also why doctors
always thought I was a nut.

The point though is that it seems generally accepted that stress harms the
body.  I've also seen many references to people thinking that stress could
activate CD in people that hadn't shown symptoms previously.  If that were
true (i.e. injury could bring on or aggravate CD), could it also be true
that substances, like mate, that are GF but have an injurious effect on the
body could also aggravate CD?   This is not to say that they cause problems
in the same way as gluten but rather it is to ask would we be helping
ourselves by keeping a GF "bland" diet as opposed to a GF "spicy" diet that
included GF "corrosive" teas, GF jalapeno peppers, GF spicy Asian food,
etc., etc.?  Obviously, such diets can come with a price but is there a
higher price for celiacs?

I hope the question makes some sort of sense.

Chuck (Delaware)