How Long For Gluten Attack To Show

[lovelylisadiving]

I have self diagnosed my 11 month old daughter as a celiac kid. Going to doc later this month. I thought I had her gluten free for about 1.5 weeks now, but last night she had a bad bowel movement, reminisent of her gluten days. Trying to figure out what she ate that unknowingly that had gluten in it. Was it something she ate yesterday or could it have been from a day or two earlier? How long does it take for gluten food to upset the instestine? Thanks in advance for your comments...

[Kim27]

I'm going to say that the general consensus on here is that gluten symptoms vary from person to person. There is a no definite timeline.

HOWEVER a VERY important point for you to know... Since you noted that your daughter is going to the doctor later this month and you have already taken her off gluten. It is VERY important that someone being tested for Celiac has been eating foods containing gluten prior to being tested. If she has already been gluten free prior to being tested, her test results will be skewed, and they will show a false negative, when she really might have it. If you truly think your daughter has Celiac, it is important that she continues eating gluten up until her appointment and testing, or the testing will be worthless.

[lovegrov]

Note that if you're hoping to get your 11-month-old tested, don't bother. Testing is NOT accurate at that young of an age. Most agree you must be at least 2, and many think even older

richard

[SweetDsMom]

On the "there has to be Gluten in her system" front - my DS was diagnosed w/ celiac by his regular pedi almost 2 weeks ago. But this was after they drew blood and ran a celiac panel on it. All of the results were very high for celiac.

We immediately took him off gluten and saw a change w/in a day or two. We had an appt the following week (last Friday) w/ a pedi GI. As we already had the blood drawn, he did NOT need for DS to still be on Gluten and he even said "You took him off Gluten last week, right?".

We will still eventually have to have an endoscopy done, but not until he is healthy and back up to speed.

As for the age thing - I've been told the same thing. 2 years. However, at 17 months, he was VERY SICK for over a month and once we took him off gluten, there was a marked change. He was still malnourished, though, and was in the hospital over the weekend. From that, he is now SO MUCH BETTER than he's been in a month.

If you truly think there is an issue, the pursue it and do what you need to do to make sure your child is safe and healthy (I can't imagine what would have happened if we did nothing for him because "oh, he's not 2. We can't really know if he has celiac or not").

BUT- in pursuing it, at least go to your regular pedi and get a celiac panel run. Which, again, they WILL need gluten to be in her system.