Wheat sensitivity but not Barley?

[atheresa]

I drank a couple of Best Damn Root beers before I realized they were not gluten free. They are brewed with barley. I have been gluten free 2 1/2 years now because I have bad gastro problems, migraines and depression when I eat wheat. I was just wondering if it is possible to be only reacting to wheat and not barley, or what might be going on. Is it possible I could drink real beer and not have any side effects? I wanted some opinions before I go for a trial run that could ruin the next couple of days.

Thanks.

[kareng]

Do you have Celiac disease?  If you do than, NO, you can't drink regular beer, etc.  not reacting to the barley was just lucky.

If you don't have Celiac....why not?  Maybe you don't need to be gluten-free at all.  Maybe whatever your issue was has resolved itself.

 

 

 

 

[atheresa]

9 hours ago, kareng said:

Do you have Celiac disease?  If you do than, NO, you can't drink regular beer, etc.  not reacting to the barley was just lucky.

If you don't have Celiac....why not?  Maybe you don't need to be gluten-free at all.  Maybe whatever your issue was has resolved itself.

 

 

 

 

I don't have celiac. I just know that when I eat gluten I get migraines, depression and diahrea. Any time I have been accidentally been glutened in the past 2 years, I have a couple of really bad days. Also, my energy level has increased without gluten. Is it possible for a gluten sensitivity to resolve itself? That would be amazing news. I would love to go back to eating regular foods but I have not heard of that happening. I just wondered if anyone ever heard of anyone that was just sensitive to wheat but not other grains.

 

[Jmg]

Hi Atheresa,

Take a look at this page: Open Original Shared Link

It outlines not only celiac but other ways in which wheat or gluten can affect people and suggests that some can eat barley, rye etc without suffering the same effects. (Gluten is the protein within wheat. For Celiacs the protein in Rye, Barley, Spelt and Triticale are similar enough to gluten to cause a reaction.) 

Quote

 

People with wheat intolerance will still experience adverse symptoms from gluten free products, as the remaining part of the wheat will be affecting them. They may, or may not, be able to eat rye, barley and oats, that are part of the wheat family and, as with many other food intolerances, may be able to reintroduce wheat back into the diet after a period of elimination.

 

If your doctors have clinically excluded Celiac (very important) and you just want to avoid ill effects that you experience then it sounds like you aren't reacting to the barley, so maybe it's ok for you.  There are those who think that a gluten sensitivity may be reversible perhaps by exposure to degraded gluten protein:

Open Original Shared Link

Quote

For those with a less severe reaction, with what Pollan calls “gluten intolerance”, which is more commonly known as non-celiac gluten sensitivity, the sourdough process may increase tolerance for consuming the bread, says Alessio Fasano, 

I would sound one note of caution. I had negative blood test and biopsy, my GI told me to avoid gluten based solely on my reactions to it. So I'm not celiac. However, about a year or so into the gluten free diet I reacted to a relatively small amount of barley malt in a cereal product. So either I have latent celiac which went undetected under biopsy, or it's possible for non celiac gluten intolerant people to react to barley as well as wheat. 

Ultimately we all have to make our own decisions. I have enough correlation to keep me strictly gluten free for life. But there's clearly a wide variety of folks out there and maybe you're lucky enough to be able to consume some previously forbidden foods without ill effect. Just be very sure that celiac is definitively excluded or you could be incurring very serious damage, even without perceptible symptoms.

One final link (trigger warning - includes delicious looking beer  ) 

 

Best of luck!