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

Thank you very much for your interesting and informative summary. 

One item raises a question for me:


> 10. Studies have also shown that most gf people's symptoms that happen
>   within half an hour or so of eating gluten are largely psychosomatic,


I heard a version of this from Peter Green, of whom I have a high opinion. However, the "largely psychosomatic" idea fails to satisfy. How can it be psychosomatic if you have no idea that something glutinous hit your intestines? Green's comment was in the context of a response to my question about why is it that symtomatic reaction is stronger now than it was before I was diagnosed (biopsy: there's not a scintilla of doubt that Celiac's what I have). Apparently psychological causation is the current best guess. Maybe. Anything's possible.

Would be interested in what other people say about their experience along these lines. And if anyone has the medical/scientific knowledge to offer a good guess as to why symptoms are worse after one has been GF for awhile, I'd love to hear it. 

I used to think...and thought collective wisdom was....that after a time on the diet, one no longer has the antibodies that protect against the symptoms of a gluten hit. Antibodies, of course, do not protect against intestinal damage and are considered in fact to be a sign of possible intestinal damage....you all know that: I just want to be clear that I've not confused the two issues. But that "protective antibodies" theory's discredited, and Dr. Green says it's unknown why symptoms for many of us become stronger with a longer time GF. He, as I said, posits psychological causes. 

I am not one to reject "psychosomatic" in general; in fact, my educational and experiential background leads me to be far friendlier to psychological explanations than are many. I can think of two occasions in the last 10 years when my instincts/sense of smell/whatever told me "something's off" about an item I swallowed anyway. It was a matter of not wanting to hurt the feelings of someone who proudly told me they'd made this treat especially for me, then listed the ingredients...turned out, ALMOST all the ingredients. This I discovered after I got sick w/in an hour. Psychosomatic? I could buy that rationale in those two cases. But there've been other incidents that were a total, complete surprise and shock, and that hit w/in more than one but less than three hours of exposure. So I dunno.

What do you all think?

> as the
>   gluten has not yet had a chance to interact anywhere it can cause problems.
>    Nausea and headaches are the most common of those, similar to panic attack
>   symptoms - just our subconscious telling us we think something is wrong by
>   hyping up our sympathetic nervous system.  Even knowing this, this person
>   finds that symptoms of accidental gluten are far more severe when found out
>   right away vs. a day or two later.


I shall, of course, summarize.

Mary B.
NYC


Visit the Celiac Web Page at Http://www.enabling.org/ia/celiac/index.html
Archives are at: Http://Listserv.icors.org/SCRIPTS/WA-ICORS.EXE?LIST=CELIAC