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Thank you all for your responses to my question and clarification of this for me.  Although I did not take the time to respond to each one of you individually, I appreciate all of your responses to my post. The general response I received from all is that although there may be a wide spectrum of symptoms of Celiac being from mild to severe, no one diagnosed with CD should consume any gluten at all.  It is like being a little bit pregnant, either you are or aren't.  It was also explained to me that someone presenting with mild to no symptoms will still be incurring the same physical damage as a result of the disease. Here are some parts of the responses that I received.

If you eat wheat, it is like eating a tiny bit of arsenic or rat-poison. It
will not
kill you and may not make you ill, but in time it will manifest in all kinds
of
ways.  Better not to risk it.

 All of my reading indicates that there are NO
degrees when it comes to damage, in other words whether or
not one has lots of symptoms, the damage to the small
intestine from ingestion of gluten is equally problematic.

I would suggest you to ask your questions at this other excellent GF forum:
http://forums.delphiforums.com/celiac/messages

There are kind and knowledgeable people there, including doctors with CD, and an extensive GF product list.

In Celiac there are degrees to which symptoms present themselves, yet damage is always a threat and ever present and one should NEVER risk eating gluten after one knows about being Celiac (even if you can "get away" with things).  Cancer is serious business....some people might think it's OK in social settings or otherwise, but honestly if you respect yourself and your life you won't.  

A Celiac has to be really rigorous about being gluten free.  It's REALLY hard, depressing, draining, and somewhat alienating at first.  Once you get the hang of it (maybe after one year), talk talk talk about it with people/counselors, etc. then it's routine and not so bad.  

The most comprehensive book on the subject at the moment
is "Dangerous Grains", which tries to give an overview of
the current research. There really isn't good information, at
this point, as to how much wheat is "safe". If the antibody
levels are high, the chances are your body will always
over-react to wheat, and those antibodies do cause damage
to your body (not just the gut). But the degree of symptoms
doesn't mean much: they have done studies of people
who had no symptoms and ate wheat occasionally,
and those people had quite a bit of intestinal damage. Other
people can have major symptoms and minor damage.

-gluten ingestion causes the body to attack
itself.  All these antibodies are attacking specific targeted tissues in
the body.  These target tissues can be unique for each individual --
intestines, nervous tissue, brain, liver, thyroid, hair follicles, bones,
joints, muscles, etc. -- every individual has their own specific set of
autoimmune antibodies.  



Thanks again,

Valerie Zelinski



 

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