Could I Return To Having Wheat After Having A Baby?

[Liveenjoylife]

I know after I went through hormonal changes at 28, celiac disease popped up. I do know that besides menopause women go through the most hormal changes in thier late 20's and like I said that is when celiac disease popped up. So, I am wondering if after having a child could my hormones go back to what they were before they changed on me and be able to eat wheat again. Even if I have celiac disease? No one in my family has celiac disease or any allergy symptoms to wheat.

[ENF]

No, Celiac is a lifetime condition,and you can't safely consume gluten. Science may one day develop something to change this, but for now it's just off-limits.

[nmlove]

Sorry, once it's "popped up" it can't be popped out. Good news is that if you're eating healthy, your baby weight should melt off pretty easily.

[TrillumHunter]

Have you ever heard of the book Celiac Disease: The Hidden Epidemic by Peter Green, M.D.? It's very informative and might help you to understand why gluten-free is essential for life.

Also, unless every single aunt, uncle and cousin has been tested, I'll bet someone else has it.

[tarnalberry]

Nope, because it's not caused by hormones. Once your celiac genes have been triggered, no one knows of any way for them to be "turned off".

[Liveenjoylife]

  TrillumHunter said:

Have you ever heard of the book Celiac Disease: The Hidden Epidemic by Peter Green, M.D.? It's very informative and might help you to understand why gluten-free is essential for life.

Also, unless every single aunt, uncle and cousin has been tested, I'll bet someone else has it.

No, not every single relative of mine has been tested, but they all can eat wheat and not have any probs. If I got it from some where in my family, then the family member must of already passed. Ah well gonna have to continue to deal with it. Thanks all.

[gfp]

  Liveenjoylife said:

No, not every single relative of mine has been tested, but they all can eat wheat and not have any probs. If I got it from some where in my family, then the family member must of already passed. Ah well gonna have to continue to deal with it. Thanks all.

Regardless you have had this since birth ...

The symptoms may have been masked for a part of that time but they were still in the background.

I'm male and didn't get symptoms until 27-28 when I got typhoid and my stomach never recovered however looking back the symptoms had been present since I was a baby and just disappeared in my teens.

You either react or you don't, a little like getting pregnant really. You either are or not, regardless of if you have got a pregnancy test back.

With celiac disease the reaction occurs, when we are young our villi repair faster than they are destroyed but they are still destroyed ... villi are not made to be destroyed so quickly so when they divide they increase amongst other things cancer risk. On top of that having the immune system constantly fighting what it thinks is a virus or bacteria can damage the immune system and thyroid.

Its conceivable you might start eating wheat and mask the symptoms for a year, maybe two but its unlikely and it will come back. Meantime you are still doing damage to yourself.

Incidentally the best ay to prevent the baby developing celiac disease if they have the genes from you is through breast feeding. If you eat wheat during this time you will pass some of the gluten to the baby.

[ciavyn]

You and I are on the same wavelength - where did this come from and how do I get rid of it?! Unfortunately, I think we are stuck. You might be surprised who in your family does have issues, but have no idea that they do. I always thought the overuse of the toilet in my grandmother's house (they only have one) was normal! After every meal, every one takes their turn, and it's not a pleasant aroma, let me tell you. I always got sick after eating, and so did my mother. My mother has had leaky gut syndrome all her life, but has NEVER told a doctor or anyone about it. I only know because I lived with her. People think what they know is normal until they learn otherwise. I thought everyone had bowel problems and it was normal to have pain in my stomach...until I learned from someone that these are symptoms, not normal.

But take heart - you will eat so much healthier, and enjoy food so much more. I actually crave my homemade soup (I've hated soup ALL my life), and my mashed sweet potatoes, and my gluten free chocolate chip cookies are pretty darned amazing. Nothing I eat tastes like plastic anymore.

Hang in there.

[Ahorsesoul]

  Liveenjoylife said:

No, not every single relative of mine has been tested, but they all can eat wheat and not have any probs. If I got it from some where in my family, then the family member must of already passed. Ah well gonna have to continue to deal with it. Thanks all.

Just because you do not think other family members do not have a problem with gluten does not mean they don't. This gluten problem can have no symptoms. It may show up years later with IBS, colitis, skin problems, bowel cancer or anemia (or many other problems).

I sure my dad has celiac disease. He'll be 90. I've cleaned up the toilet after he's used it. Looks like celiac disease to me. He doesn't understand why he can't control his bowels after eating pasta or bakery goods. So if you ask him if he has trouble with eating gluten or wheat, he will tell you absolutely not. He just knows he's always had this problem so it's normal to him.

Having a negative test does not mean a person does not have celiac disease or an intolerance.

[nmlove]

Not to mention that the number of silent celiacs are apparently higher than those with symptoms. But they still are at risk for "complications" of celiac disease. Crazy to think about.

[Liveenjoylife]

  Ahorsesoul said:

Just because you do not think other family members do not have a problem with gluten does not mean they don't. This gluten problem can have no symptoms. It may show up years later with IBS, colitis, skin problems, bowel cancer or anemia (or many other problems).

I sure my dad has celiac disease. He'll be 90. I've cleaned up the toilet after he's used it. Looks like celiac disease to me. He doesn't understand why he can't control his bowels after eating pasta or bakery goods. So if you ask him if he has trouble with eating gluten or wheat, he will tell you absolutely not. He just knows he's always had this problem so it's normal to him.

Having a negative test does not mean a person does not have celiac disease or an intolerance.

Yes I know gluten and celiac disease can be hidden as well! I am very aware of it all. I know blood tests don't always come back saying you don't have celiac disease when chances are people will. It's not legit. I have a huge family. So, telling them all to get in line to get tested is less than likely to happen. Your father probably does have celiac disease, but as you said what he goes through is obviously normal to him. When in actuallity it is not.

[Liveenjoylife]

  gfp said:

Regardless you have had this since birth ...

The symptoms may have been masked for a part of that time but they were still in the background.

I'm male and didn't get symptoms until 27-28 when I got typhoid and my stomach never recovered however looking back the symptoms had been present since I was a baby and just disappeared in my teens.

You either react or you don't, a little like getting pregnant really. You either are or not, regardless of if you have got a pregnancy test back.

With celiac disease the reaction occurs, when we are young our villi repair faster than they are destroyed but they are still destroyed ... villi are not made to be destroyed so quickly so when they divide they increase amongst other things cancer risk. On top of that having the immune system constantly fighting what it thinks is a virus or bacteria can damage the immune system and thyroid.

Its conceivable you might start eating wheat and mask the symptoms for a year, maybe two but its unlikely and it will come back. Meantime you are still doing damage to yourself.

Incidentally the best ay to prevent the baby developing celiac disease if they have the genes from you is through breast feeding. If you eat wheat during this time you will pass some of the gluten to the baby.

Wheather I were to nurse the baby or not genes play a huge role. I could only hope and pray that my children do not get what we all go through. It is not fun by any means.

[gfp]

  Liveenjoylife said:

Wheather I were to nurse the baby or not genes play a huge role. I could only hope and pray that my children do not get what we all go through. It is not fun by any means.

Genes determine if you can get it ... and without the genes you are not going to get it although we don't yet know exactly which genes sequences do and which don't outside of the DQ2 and DQ8.

However having celiac disease may not be fun but is certainly not a serious condition by itself once identified.

It is not a hardship not to eat wheat any more than it is a hardship not to eat live ants.

If you want to feel bad about not being able to eat live ants then you can, same goes for wheat. The difference is that is harder to avoid live ants in your food than wheat, even on a picnic.

People who have never tried heroine or crystal meth do not hanker after it ... we don't wake up thinking .. Oh I could just shoot some meth today ... and it is the same for kids really who never ate bread.

Hundreds of millions of kids have grown up, lived and died without ever tasting or missing bread... Pre-Columbian Americans did not wake up every morning thinking .. "Oh my Quetzalcoatl ! My life is so incomplete without something I have never heard of that my language doesn't have a word for but is a bit like maize".

People did not wake up in the night in 15C Europe and think OMG, I someone needs to discover potatoes.

If you think about it this way then its easy to think that celiac disease is no hardship ... avoiding being forced to eat wheat is the hardship!

Either way you can reduce the risk by breastfeeding whilst gluten-free.

[jerseyangel]

  gfp said:

Pre-Columbian Americans did not wake up every morning thinking .. "Oh my Quetzalcoatl ! My life is so incomplete without something I have never heard of that my language doesn't have a word for but is a bit like maize".

This is perfect! I think you should bronze it

But to the original question, I agree with the rest that Celiac is forever. It's ironic that childbirth can actually trigger the disease. I also had symptoms during childhood that seemed to disappear during my teens and early 20's. After the birth of my second child (c-section) I began to have symptoms again, and a bout with the flu in 2003 put me over the edge and I began to have severe, debilitating symptoms.

[Liveenjoylife]

  jerseyangel said:

This is perfect! I think you should bronze it

But to the original question, I agree with the rest that Celiac is forever. It's ironic that childbirth can actually trigger the disease. I also had symptoms during childhood that seemed to disappear during my teens and early 20's. After the birth of my second child (c-section) I began to have symptoms again, and a bout with the flu in 2003 put me over the edge and I began to have severe, debilitating symptoms.

I got hit with a real bad virus when I was 25 and that affected my stomach and intestines, and had symptoms too, BUT they dissapeared as well, and didn't really take off till I had turned 28, I am almost 29 now. I was under severe stress which I know woke it up.

[jerseyangel]

  Liveenjoylife said:

I got hit with a real bad virus when I was 25 and that affected my stomach and intestines, and had symptoms too, BUT they dissapeared as well, and didn't really take off till I had turned 28, I am almost 29 now. I was under severe stress which I know woke it up.

I guess when we're predisposed to it, any sort of trauma can trigger--even emotional. I could always live with the symptoms until I had that flu--I was never the same after.

[ciavyn]

  jerseyangel said:

This is perfect! I think you should bronze it

But to the original question, I agree with the rest that Celiac is forever. It's ironic that childbirth can actually trigger the disease. I also had symptoms during childhood that seemed to disappear during my teens and early 20's. After the birth of my second child (c-section) I began to have symptoms again, and a bout with the flu in 2003 put me over the edge and I began to have severe, debilitating symptoms.

Jerseyangel: I had the same thing to some degree. I can remember being miserable during my teen years (nothing like having GI issues in high school, where the desks are almost on top of each other and every person in class is likely to say, "Hey, what's the smell?" Ugh!), but then not having much issue in my early twenties. Towards the end of my twenties, I had some issues, but again, nothing severe. However, I went through some major trauma the past two years - emotional devastation that took me for a ride - and it's been terrible. And I traveled so much that I knew where every clean bathroom was in a 200 mile radius! Oy. It's hard to believe how miserable I was.

I wonder why it's like that: showing symptoms, disappearing, then reappearing with a vengeance.

[jerseyangel]

  ciavyn said:

I wonder why it's like that: showing symptoms, disappearing, then reappearing with a vengeance.

I often wonder the same thing. When I was a child, I thought it was natural to have stomach cramps after eating and be nauseous often. My teen years were great, in that I could go out and eat or drink anything I wanted to, although at the time I didn't give it much thought.

After the c-section when I was 28, the nausea started happening again, along with persistent anemia and for the first time--panic attacks. That was the beginning of 20 years of living with anxiety. I went to doctors, but was told the anemia was because I was female, and that the nausea was due to sinus infections (this in the absence of 'classic' sinus infection symptoms). I was given lots of antibiotics and even steroids during those years, which I'm sure did more harm than good. I frankly think they didn't really know what to do with me.....

It's almost a blessing that I got so sick after that flu, because I may have gone on even longer just trying to live "around" this thing--never knowing what the real issue was.

Personally, I have to wonder if maybe some of us have more than one "trigger"--possibly causing more severe symptoms each time? I don't know, just thinking out loud--but for me there was never really a "defining" moment where I can say that was "it". I think there is still so much not known about this condition--granted, lots more is known and recognized than even 5-10 years ago and for that I'm grateful, but my personal feeling is that there is still lots to be learned.

[Mskedi]

  gfp said:

Hundreds of millions of kids have grown up, lived and died without ever tasting or missing bread... Pre-Columbian Americans did not wake up every morning thinking .. "Oh my Quetzalcoatl ! My life is so incomplete without something I have never heard of that my language doesn't have a word for but is a bit like maize".

[gfp]

  Liveenjoylife said:

I got hit with a real bad virus when I was 25 and that affected my stomach and intestines, and had symptoms too, BUT they dissapeared as well, and didn't really take off till I had turned 28, I am almost 29 now. I was under severe stress which I know woke it up.

The most important word in that is symptoms.

As I perhaps explained poorly earlier we have symptoms we know about and symptoms we don't.

As others have alluded, there are also symptoms we didn't think were symptoms at the time but can look back on and retrospectively see were.

The problem is that the symptoms we cannot see are damaging us as much as the ones we can.

How our body expresses them can change and what else is going on with our body can also change the way our body expresses the symptoms.

celiac disease symptoms can be classed in different broad groups:

Note many of these actually have opposites: One body expresses the same thing entirely differently!

1/ We have GI symptoms like diarrhea/constipation and cramps. Annoying as these are they are in themselves minor and if we are getting enough fluid harmless if often embarrassing.

2/ We have symptoms due to malabsorption of vitamins, minerals and other nutrients: These can be seen as reduced bone density, obesity/underweight and complications arising from lack of nutrients or vital vitamins/minerals.

3/ We have long term stress problems on our immune system because it is constantly working and long term cancer issues because the villi are not designed to be constantly attacked and repaired.

4/ Direct neurological symptoms from depression to brain fog.

Unfortunately most of the symptoms <b>we</b> can attribute to celiac disease fall into the annoying but not in themselves serious type (1). Just as one person may get diarrhea and another constipation shows just how the symptoms themselves are just expressions of what is really happening deeper inside.

Pregnancy/Childbirth are stress factors on the body.

They are accompanied by huge hormonal changes and nutritional needs. This changes the ballpark the game is played in BUT they are just factors which further stress an underlying condition like a bad viral infection.

The presence of gluten in a celiac is a constant antagonist. At some times in our lives it can be minor and other times all consuming but the underlying reaction doesn't change once triggered.

Our body may mask it (in terms of group 1) but the serious consequences of groups 2-3 are ever present.

Long term health risks are no lower for the immune system or cancer if we show external symptoms or not.

Malabsorption may be less or we may just be replacing cells as fast as they are destroyed ...

One way to view this is that the villi are in a constant battle with the antigens.

At some times (when we are younger) they will repair more quickly than being destroyed.

As we get older our ability to self repair diminishes: At some point we destroy just slightly more than we repair.

As soon as this happens we hit a spiral ... as more and more villi are destroyed our ability to adsorb nutrients is reduced and hence our ability to repair is reduced.

Pregnancy (or other parasites since this is a fitting description of pregnancy from a celiac disease perspective) can cause this balance to tip.

However this doesn't mean that we were perfectly health before, simply that we were slightly on the side of repair faster than destroy.

After pregnancy and as hormones settle back (depending on breast feeding or not) .. you could wander slightly over the side of repair faster than destroy. This however will be temporary! Meanwhile it is still damaging you even if the symptoms you feel are less obvious!

As far as the baby

If you are eating gluten then the baby will get gluten!

There is no way not to short of you shower every time you have eaten gluten and before you touch the baby .. breast feeding or not babies will and do put anything and everything in their mouths. This includes your hair, clothes and stuff and anything you touch after you touch gluten.

Every fallen crumb can land on a toy ... it really is that black and white.

[cyberprof]

  Liveenjoylife said:

I know after I went through hormonal changes at 28, celiac disease popped up. I do know that besides menopause women go through the most hormal changes in thier late 20's and like I said that is when celiac disease popped up. So, I am wondering if after having a child could my hormones go back to what they were before they changed on me and be able to eat wheat again. Even if I have celiac disease? No one in my family has celiac disease or any allergy symptoms to wheat.

Actually, celiac messed up my hormones and put me into menopause a few years early. Your hormones hopefully won't be damaged by eating wheat again. However, there is no chance that true "celiac" will go away ever. Liveenjoylife I hope you feel better.

  jerseyangel said:

I guess when we're predisposed to it, any sort of trauma can trigger--even emotional. I could always live with the symptoms until I had that flu--I was never the same after.

Same here. I had symptoms from age 18 to 48 and ignored them, thought that everyone had stomach aches after eating. I had such a bad stomach flu bug in 2007 that I never recovered and went to the doc about a week later. I could no longer ignore the problem.