Gluten Sensitivity

[Sherri28]

I have been gluten free for 5 months now but still feel the occasional gurgling. Does anyone know if you touch food that contains gluten like crackers or bread but don't eat it can you get the same response as if you had eaten it? I am real careful after touching it to wash my hands. But, I am afraid I'm am so super sensitive that my body reacts just to touching it. I may have to start using gloves. If anyone has the same symptoms or knows the answer to my question please let me know. Thanks!

Sherri

[WheatChef]

There are thousands of reasons besides gluten for your stomach to rumble (assuming that's what you mean by gurgling). Unless you're putting your hands into your mouth soon after touching gluten products you're not in any danger from touching them.

[Korwyn]

I have been gluten free for 5 months now but still feel the occasional gurgling. Does anyone know if you touch food that contains gluten like crackers or bread but don't eat it can you get the same response as if you had eaten it? I am real careful after touching it to wash my hands. But, I am afraid I'm am so super sensitive that my body reacts just to touching it. I may have to start using gloves. If anyone has the same symptoms or knows the answer to my question please let me know. Thanks!

Sherri

If you are being extremely careful I would expect you to be OKin this scenario. There is a physiological conditioning element that may be coming into play. I have a friend who has celiac disease who cannot even walk by a bakery and smell the baking (from the street!) without having his stomach start rumbling and developing gas. After years of conditioned response, your olfactory senses and brain can play tricks on you for some time. Your brain knows that these things are going to trigger certain gastrointestinal responses. So the sight or smell of them may cause your brain to begin sending signals to your stomach to 'prepare for the worst!' The enzymatic response to those signals would be the same (initially) as if you were going to actually eat them. Of course you don't eat them so the response dies off. It is the same thing that happens when you smell a really good steak dinner cooking and you are hungry. You actually start salivating more to produce the enzymes necessary to start the digestive process ahead of time. Or wave a nice treat in front of a dog for a few minutes and watch them start to drool.

The physiological conditioned response should eventually subside I think, but it may take some time. In my friends case it took over a year.