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Understanding gluten intolerance

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Ulcerative Colitis
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Posted 8/30/2019 11:59 AM (GMT -7)
If I'm in remission, why can I still not tolerate gluten?

Anyone?
Posted 8/30/2019 12:31 PM (GMT -7)
I'm in remission (symptomatic) and whenever I eat gluten bread (croissants are my weakness) I feel lousy, similar to constipated feeling, which I interpret as my gut having a hard time processing it. Maybe our guts are forever changed from UC (although I'm not a believer in "forever" anything) or there is a gluten intolerance spectrum and your body is telling you "don't eat that" more than other peoples bodies.

Maybe you were gluten intolerant before getting UC and your intolerance threshold after UC made it much more apparent. I don't think it's a yes-no for gluten-intolerance, I think it's a sliding scale of tolerance, unlike an anaphylactic reaction.

Avoiding gluten is beneficial for me in other ways. I love french bread with lots of butter and I'd weigh 10 lbs more if there was no reason not to eat that. And did I mention croissants?

There have been some posts about it not being the wheat, that maybe it's the weed-killer used on the wheat. Some others posit that modern wheat is not like the wheat of ancestors and hence less gut friendly. I say "whatever" and eat rice pasta and gluten-free Udi's white bread instead. So I can't eat everything, so what.
Posted 8/30/2019 1:34 PM (GMT -7)
>>why can I still not tolerate gluten?
Food intolerance is independent of inflammation levels, so flare or remission is irrelevant.
Posted 8/30/2019 9:03 PM (GMT -7)
Isn't gluten intolerance considered celiac disease?
q
Posted 8/31/2019 4:43 AM (GMT -7)
There's seldom a black and white without variations in between. Yes celiac is a strong gluten intolerance (pains afterwards, small intestinal inflammation as a consequence thereof). A non-celiac-gluten-intolerance is a lot milder (comparitively) but still problematic.
Posted 8/31/2019 5:08 AM (GMT -7)

OP said...
If I'm in remission, why can I still not tolerate gluten?

I am in remission now but if I eat gluten or any triggering food, such as listed in my signature, then I am on my way to flarestown. The first sign is loose stools and IBS symptoms. Over the years I have learned the hard way to immediately stop the dietary insult or else soon I will be in the middle of a full-blown flare.

Monitoring my diet is very important for remaining in remission.
Posted 8/31/2019 5:32 AM (GMT -7)

Imagardener2 said...
I say "whatever" and eat rice pasta and gluten-free Udi's white bread instead.

There are some excellent tasting gluten-free rice pastas available at Whole Foods and probably some other groceries as well.

Udi's gluten-free bread gives me trouble probably because it contains other junk that I cannot tolerate besides gluten. I am lucky to live where bread from DeLand bakery is available. They cannot officially say their bread is gluten-free because it is baked in ovens that also produce wheat and gluten foods.

If their bread does contain any trace gluten then it must be in such small amounts that it doesn't affect me at all, unlike ordinary wheat bread and pizza which drives my gut crazy. Check out the ingredients, you cannot get anymore 'clean' than that.

https://www.delandbakery.com/p/004an.html
Ingredients: Oatmeal Flour, Filtered Water, Sea Salt, Baking Powder

DeLand All Natural Flax Millet Bread
Ingredients: Organic Millet Flour, Organic Golden Flax Seeds, Organic Brown Rice Flour, Filtered Water, Sea Salt, Yeast.
Posted 8/31/2019 6:42 AM (GMT -7)

IamCurious said...


I am in remission now but if I eat gluten or any triggering food, such as listed in my signature, then I am on my way to flarestown. The first sign is loose stools and IBS symptoms. Over the years I have learned the hard way to immediately stop the dietary insult or else soon I will be in the middle of a full-blown flare.

Monitoring my diet is very important for remaining in remission.

Same here. I never get a flare unless I go off my diet. As long as I am on SCD, I stay in remission which I define as 1 formed BM a day, no blood or mucus. But still have other minor symptoms. If I go off SCD, I immediately start heading towards a flare.

Also my CRP levels go up if I go off of SCD and are generally lower when on SCD.
Posted 8/31/2019 6:54 AM (GMT -7)
Lucky you have a gluten-free bakery. I am not in love with Udi's white bread, it's just the only one I can buy locally that is gut-approved. Been avoiding making my own and eat less bread instead.

We really love Annie Chung's Pad Thai Rice Noodles (white not brown rice version) with all kinds of sauces, tomato, cream, butter and wine. Husband went gluten-free due to skin condition and doctor's recommendation. Skin much improved. Local pizza places all have GF available now.

Food choices for GF have really expanded in recent years with better ingredients than in past. I never feel food deprived but continue to read labels because gluten is just one of my gut's non-preferred ingredients.
Posted 8/31/2019 9:32 PM (GMT -7)

quincy said...
Isn't gluten intolerance considered celiac disease?
q

Celiac disease is a defined disease with a specific cause and can be tested for, diagnosed, and treated. It is very real.

Gluten sensitivity/gluten intolerance are vague conditions with no defined pathology, no tests/diagnostic methods, and no agreement on whether or not they are even real, or if they are merely imagined conditions.
Posted 8/31/2019 9:34 PM (GMT -7)
When you say you cannot tolerate gluten, what exactly is meant? What symptoms present and how do you know those symptoms are due to gluten?

(There are some researchers who believe gluten intolerance does exist. There are other researchers who believe a condition exists that many think is gluten intolerance but is actually intolerance to another protein that exists alongside gluten in wheat and related grains.)

Post Edited (beave) : 8/31/2019 10:38:06 PM (GMT-6)

Posted 8/31/2019 9:37 PM (GMT -7)
As for food intolerances and flares, they're not entirely separate things. Conventional wisdom in IBD treatment says that while a patient is in a flare, he/she is more likely to have food intolerances than when he/she is not flaring, ie, in remission.

Lactose intolerance, for one, is more common in flaring IBD patients than in IBD patients in remission. The same might be true for fructose intolerance, and possibly for many other food intolerances.

This is probably more true for Crohn's patients than for UC patients, but it can apply to either one.

That said, there are people for whom they are intolerant to certain foods all the time, independent of their IBD and independent of their IBD activity (whether or not they are flaring).
Posted 8/31/2019 9:51 PM (GMT -7)
One possibility for the intolerance is that gluten triggers the gut's tight junctions to open, increasing gut permeability and increasing the amount of 'bad stuff' that can get through that may trigger our overactive immune responses and make you feel crap.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3384703/

This would be the case regardless of whether you are in remission or not. Whether it is the main source of the trouble I don't know, but it is one reason we may want to generally avoid gluten regardless even if we don't seem to have an obvious intolerance to it.
Posted 9/1/2019 1:27 PM (GMT -7)

Tufas said...
One possibility for the intolerance is that gluten triggers the gut's tight junctions to open, increasing gut permeability and increasing the amount of 'bad stuff' that can get through that may trigger our overactive immune responses and make you feel crap.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc3384703/

Thank you Tufas.
So much for gluten sensitivity being an "imaginary" condition.
Posted 9/1/2019 7:25 PM (GMT -7)
I take it that jab was for me. I guess one paper is definitive and all the controversy over gluten sensitivity is settled science. Good to know. I'll inform the researchers.
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