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Me:  i am planning to try eating some vital wheat gluten, it is 80% protein
and the other wheat proteins have been mostly removed.  i'm planning to
start with a small amount, like 1/16 teaspoon, wait maybe 2 hours to see
how i react, maybe longer, then if i don't react, try 1/8 teaspoon, wait
2 hours, and so on, doubling the amount every 2 hours if there is no
reaction.  My reactions to gluten grains have happened within 1-2 hours.
So my reaction to that challenge would help in deciding if i am gluten
intolerant.

I reacted to rice, too!  That confuses things a little for me.

Yes i am seeing an allergist.  i am getting allergy shots for my 23 inhalant
allergies and the IgE Candida allergy.

Lots of people have acted like i was one of the people who decide they have
a Candida overgrowth without evidence, when i said i was allergic to Candida.
It is strange and it makes me wonder if having an IgE allergy to Candida is
rare and maybe a sign of a leaky gut.

-- if you are intolerant to allthe gluten grains -- wheat, rye, barley, oats,
like me -- are you gluten intolerant for sure?  Could you be reacting to
another protein that the gluten grains have in common?

Responses:
I talked to my doctor about being allergic or sensitive to other portions
of grains, and she said that people can certainly have strong reactions
to the many different molds in different grains - but that those
responses tend to be specific to a certain grain (e.g. wheat), not all
the gliadin gluten grains.

Actually, it is a piece (or peptide) of the protein that shares a
common sequence  of amino acids (if I recall correctly) among wheat,
barley and rye protein.  A piece of the oat protein is very similar,
enough to cause similar reaction in celiacs.
No other grains are known to possess this sequence in a part of their protein.

If you have found you are intolerant to grains, you should try to get tested.

1) Removing gluten from wheat doesn't work completely, so when you eat
the deglutenated wheat you will still be getting gluten.

Celiacs are often
intolerant of multiple foods, so you could have celiac and be intolerant of
other grains as well.  I have heard corn is a common one for celiacs.

-- Does gluten intolerance imply celiac disease?

Responses:

As far as I know, the difference between intolerance and celiac disease is
damage to the intestines.

Most or all experts now consider gluten intolerance to merely be early
stages of celiac. You might not have damaged your villi yet and you might
not even feel bad, but you are headed toward full-blown celiac if you keep
eating gluten. Some people might not ever develop celiac, but they still
take higher chances of cancer, other autoimmune diseases, etc. Then there
are people like my father who had no symptoms at all but a biopsy showed
major damage to the villi.

>If you have food intolerances in general, the usual recommendation is to
>wait a few months, then try the food again, and if you don't have a
>reaction, you can start eating it again once every 4 days.

Not true for IgA reactions. For IgE and IgG reactions, that can be true.

Gluten intolerance generally means "IgA immune reaction" and it
generally damages the villi. If the villi get damaged to a certain degree,
they call it "celiac". But it is a kind of spurious distinction. If you have
an IgA reaction to gluten, it causes LOTS of diseases, not just celiac.
The book "Dangerous Grains" really lays this out well.

The problem is that MOST people have no symptoms whatsoever.
About 1/3 of celiacs have celiac symptoms, but most gluten
intolerant people have no obvious symptoms after eating gluten.
It's a little like smoking cigarettes -- it can take years for the
damage to show up. SOME people get really sick from eating
gluten, and they are the lucky ones, in a way -- it is really easy
to decide not to eat the stuff if it makes you sick.

I am gluten intolerant and the way the doctor explained it was
that if I continued to eat gluten I would develop celiac disease.

Me:  My allergists handout on food allergies explained most intolerances as
IgG reactions, and said most intolerances fade after a few months and you
can eat the food again every 4 days.  i've heard the IgG reactions are
carried on the red blood cells, so when a generation of red blood cells has
past, the IgG reaction fades out.  I'm not sure if this is true for
gluten intolerance.  i haven't avoided gluten for that long.


-- Does the intolerance of celiacs for gluten fade out?

Answers:
People who stop eating gluten for years and then start again experience the
complete range of reactions. Some don't react at all, at least at first.
And some get horribly and violently ill, even worse than before they first
went GF.

3) Celiacs will almost always have a bad reaction to gluten even after
years of being gluten free.  That's why you have to be gluten free for
life.  It gets much easier as you go on.

If you have celiac disease, you have it for life.  You will not
become tolerant, but if you're not particularly sensitive, it may take a
while for symptoms to return if you start to eat gluten again after being
GF, but the damage will return if you tested positive on biopsy once in your
life.

I believe you are correct in thinking that if it is an intolerance a small
amount can be eaten occasionally with no reaction.  But not all celiacs
react, either.

Most celiacs find that re-introducing gluten after avoiding it a while
gives an even worse reaction than before! I sure did

-- Do intolerances to other foods damage the villi?

Response:

according to a recent article in the CSA newsletter, apparently so!
but much more rare than CD.

I can't tell you whether anything else damages the villi in this manner but
there are other intolerances that mimic celiac is terms of other symptoms.
And the blunting of the villi caused by celiac is sometimes the culprit in
other intolerances, such as milk.

Casien can cause similar villi damage if you are casien
intolerant.

Hee hee. Yep, some people think so. Eggs might do it too. But there
is little study on this. Gluten is a lectin though, and it gloms
onto the villi in everyone, as I understand it. It can damage
villi in non-intolerant people also. However, the IgA attacks
the lectins sitting on the villi and then damages the villi
worse. So any sticky lectin, in theory, can cause damage if
the immune system attacks it.

Yes, casein intolerance also causes that type of damage. But lactose
intolerance (which some say is misnamed; they want to call it lactose
maldigestion or something like that) does NOT cause any damage, just
unpleasant symptoms; and it may also go away with time in some persons
(but not all).

I don't think that allergies to milk,
etc cause villi damage, I think only celiac does that.

Other comments:

I agree with your reasons for wanting to know. It's very difficult to be
taken seriously by health care professionals even WITH a diagnosis, and
without one, almost impossible.

Me:  My allergist has a form "Physician's certificate of medical necessity"
and maybe this would help to inform people about a gluten intolerance even
if you don't have a celiac disease diagnosis.

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