Do You Find You Are More Sensitive The Longer You Are Luten Free?

[HaileyRay812]

I am curious if any of you have noticed you have more symptoms the longer you stay gluten free? The longest I have gone so far is 2 weeks and then when I got back on gluten, I instantly was so itchy and lethargic! I also would feel like I was getting hives. Most of my symptoms in the past have been gi and sinus infections. The longer I am off gluten, will I react stronger and stronger to it as it completely leaves my system?

[Austin Guy]

I've only been off gluten for 90 days, but getting accidentally glutened now makes me feel much worse than it did when I ate it regularly. So for me, it seems that I am more sensitie now.

[starrytrekchic]

It made me feel much worse for about a year, then things started getting significantly better.

[RacerX35]

I have been gluten free for just over a year now and believe that I have become more sensitive. I can't even eat a pepperoni off the top of a pizza anymore. I did last time and had a minor siezure in bed and I believe that it was from the pepperoni.

Later,

Ray

[stephharjo]

I am more sensitive as well. 1 1/2 weeks I was gluten free and accidentally ate tacos where the seasoning had wheat in it and I was sick for two days.

[GottaSki]

We have several celiacs in my family and we all become more and more sensitive as time went on. One of my teen aged sons will occasionally (one item once every few months at school or social activity) ingest gluten on purpose, each time he became sicker and for longer. I think he's gone about 4 months without a slip now and he says he's done with tempting it.

[SpiralArrow]

I've definitely experienced this recently. Before I realized it could be gluten that was bothering me, I had problems like severe insomnia, constipation, bloating, constant brain fog and lightheadedness, higher anxiety, etc. These things are bad, but after having doctors tell me there was nothing wrong I was beginning to just accept this as something to expect every day. Everything was getting worse at a slow pace.

I went gluten free for 3 or 4 weeks, and now my reactions are terrible. I've spent almost a week now recovering from a stupid experiment that involved eating a muffin. I was bed-ridden with stomach cramps that prevented me from walking, terrible nausea, constipation, bloating, and I was on the verge of having panic attacks on my worst day. I felt like I was dying! The week was comparable to how ill I felt when I got swine flu, and that was no fun at all.

For some people, I think once your body knows what it's like to be free of a substance that is causing it damage, it REALLY lets you know if you're under attack again. Whereas before if you're eating daily doses of gluten there is no real time for your body to swing from recovering to being newly damaged again. If that makes any sense.

[oceangirl]

Hi,

I think you'll find variation on this board, as always; however, I will say that when I was a couple of years in to being gluten free my reactions were off the charts and now, as I'm into my 6th year, they may be a tad less dramatic. That said, I am supremely sensitive to the evil gluten and, frankly, am afraid of it for the way it makes me feel.

Most veterans of this board, however, I suspect might gently advise you that there is a LOOOOooonnnng learning curve with gluten sensitivity and, typically, (again, with caveats...), it can certainly take up to a year or more gluten free to rout out other suspect sensitivities and isolate your true gluten response. Sorry if that sounds alarming and heinously arduous but... there it is. Some are lucky and find they have no other intolerances and can simply eliminate obvious gluten and be just swell. Sadly for many of us, that is just not the case and the detective work can take more time than we'd like!

Good luck and good health to you!

lisa

[mushroom]

I am fortunate or (un)fortunate in that gluten is the mildest reaction of my sensitivities. Pure gluten (as in medications, which is often how I end up with it) causes mostly nausea and wanting to puke. But putting tomato with it as in pizza is a killer

[cyberprof]

I don't know if I'm "more" sensitive, I just recognize it better. About three days after diagnosis, I ate some boeuf bourguignon (a la Julia Child) that I had cooked and frozen half the recipe before diagnosis: The recipe has about 4 pounds of beef and 1/4 cup of wheat flour, meaning I ate about 1/10 of the recipe, which is about a 1/4 tablespoon of wheat. So I had been gluten-light about three days -- meaning I didn't eat anything knowingly but wasn't an expert yet on gluten-free -- and boy did I notice that boeuf bourguignon had wheat! But it's about the same level of reaction that I had last week after a dinner out, when I got an unknown quantity of gluten.

[Skylark]

I got more sensitive after a few years gluten-free.

[PainfulSpaghetti]

I have a theory as to why this happens. A Gluten sensitivity / allergy, is an autoimmune disorder, and when we eat Gluten our bodies attack themselves. When we are eating it on a daily basis, a vicious cycle occurs, and the body is constantly fighting off the gluten attack. When you stop eating Gluten and then introduce it to the system again, your body is fighting at full force. Therefore the symptoms are far worse. Even a Tablespoon of soy sauce causes me to become itchy, and bloated and headachy and just plain ill. Think of it this way, when you are eating gluten on a regular basis, your body is sick, and after awhile it becomes almost accepted that you are. When you stop eating gluten all of the damage slowly starts to get better. But if you introduce it again, much like throwing a drop of gasoline on a fire that is almost out, your body "flares up".