Gluten & Soy Together

[bigbird16]

Hi, I'm not sure if this is the right category fo this topic or not.

I just got back from spending a week with my mother and grandfather as we prepared him for a move to a smaller place. Grandfather was aware of the wheat/dairy/soy problems from previous visits and didn't care as long as he got fed. Mom has a hard time with this whole thing. She's one that doesn't know what's in her food--pasta has wheat?--and thinks I'm going overboard. I volunteered to make all of the food while we were together and came up with wonderful meals every night that they both loved. Mom even said she didn't get hungry between meals on what I was feeding us. (What a difference eating whole foods makes, huh?)

We went out to dinner with some other family, one of whom is a doctor, one night at Bonefish Grill. I went through the speil with the waitress about making sure no dairy or soy in addition to no gluten. While I ate, doc started to ask about my symptoms with dairy, so I told him. He was surprised to learn that some medications include lactose as a filler. Doc went on to tell me that wheat and soy intolerance aren't usually found together. (Oh, and he has a daughter with a gluten "allergy.") My mom chimed in that it's funny how people can be fine with something all of their lives and then suddenly have a problem with it. (Um, no, it hasn't been fine for many years, I simply found out what was wrong.) They went on in that vein. Dynamics being as they are, I let it rest and continued to eat. (Veggies had butter on them; I had only one bite. How hard is it to leave butter off of steamed veggies? I got sick, thankfully not too bad.)

Does anyone know off-hand of any research that supports gluten and soy intolerances either being common or not common together? I'm looking around for information, too, but figured I'd ask.

Many thanks!

K

[ravenwoodglass]

I don't have any research on it but I do know I react to both. And with soy it is both an allergy and an intolerance. While being intolerant to one doesn't automatically make you intolerant to the other I think there are quite a few on the board who have intolerances to both and to other stuff like nightshades.

[trents]

  On 9/1/2010 at 5:23 PM, ravenwoodglass said:

I don't have any research on it but I do know I react to both. And with soy it is both an allergy and an intolerance. While being intolerant to one doesn't automatically make you intolerant to the other I think there are quite a few on the board who have intolerances to both and to other stuff like nightshades.

I don't know about the incidence of soy intolerance in relation to gluten intolerance in general but I can tell you most of the people I have met who have the specific form of gluten intolerance we know as celiac disease are also soy intolerant. And many of them are also dairy intolerant. If you attend celiac support groups this becomes evident.

[bigbird16]

Ravenwoodglass and Trents,

Thank you. From reading here and talking to others, that's been my observation, too--that gluten intolerance often goes hand-in-hand with other issues, especially soy and dairy. It makes sense in my wee melon that a problem with one kind of protein might be a sign that a person could have problems with other types of proteins if they're similarly structured. But of course, I'm just a plebian.

After that discussion, though, my mom (a nurse) thinks even moreso that it's in my head. (She never saw me at my worst, right before I went gluten-free.) I really should have invited her to stay up with me all night after the minor dairying to experience the migraine, enjoy the technicolor chucking, and see me walk into things.

Oh, also just to clarify, I put the daughter's gluten allergy in quotes, because I'm not sure whether the parents mean allergy or intolerance, not because of any doubt that she has an issue; they won't discuss it. Maybe I should take this doctor under my wing a give him an education; thankfully he's an orthopede rather than a GP, so the chances of him giving someone misinformation are not high.

Y'all have a wonderful, healthful day!

K

[GFinDC]

I haven't looked for any research on it. but soy is listed on all the lists of the top 8 food allergens I've seen. So if it is that commonly listed as a problem for people in general, it seems to reason that it would be a at least as likely to be a problem for celiacs. None of those lists says soy and wheat though, or eggs and fish as a combo. They only list single foods as allergens. That wold be interesting to see some research done on it. I hope my combos food problems isn't the winner though. :D

[JAMR]

Since we produce an antibody to gluten that damages the small intestine, by definition other foods will not get properly broken down, and will pass out of digestive syetem in a form that our immune system could consider an attacking antigen. Soy is in the top half dozen foods considered to cause problems (along with lactose, wheat, fructose, yeast. This means that from a purely logical view you can expect that soy and gluten intolerance will appear together in people. I have no idea what the statistics are but suspect (as with much of food intolerance) there is insufficient data and research to come up with the numbers. There is a lot of independent research on soy and it appears to have quite a few negatives. I react both to soy and gluten, also lactose, cashew nuts, sugar, and I am assuming that once the gluten damage is under control, I should be better with the others, except soy. It appears that soy can be a problem by itself.

As regards your mothers views on the reality of the illness, you have my sympathy. My mother is in denial, simply because admitting that I have a chronic condition means its possible she did (or did not do) something that could have avoided my condition. Even when I tested positive for the gluten 'genes', she insisted I had not inherited them from her. At this stage it serves no purpose for my mother to carry the guilt of my illness, however it is frustrating not to be acknowledged.

[Skylark]

I've read the same research on poor digestion and intestinal permeability. There are also some old papers showing that celiacs have more food antibodies in general than people without celiac.

The soy intolerance can go away. I was reacting to cow casein and soy when I did my elimination diet. I was able to start eating both after a year or so gluten-free. I also stopped having trouble with shellfish.

[GlutenFreeManna]

It never ceases to amaze me how ignorant some medical professionals are when it comes to food allergies and intolerances. I met a doctor at a party several months ago. I didn't know she was a doctor when I met her. I was looking at the packaging for the hummus the hostess had put out and was dismayed to see that it contained soy. The doctor questioned me about why I couldn't have the hummus and I told her I was "allergic" to soy. I use the word allergic with people I don't know because it is stronger and usually leads to few questions than explaining I have an intolerance. The doctor raised her eyebrows and told me she had "never heard of anybody being allergic to soy, after all it's so hypo-allergenic." When I asked her what she did for a living and she said she was a family physician I was at a loss for words.

[Marc1]

Speaking of soy from a material sciences standpoint, many varieties of soy need to be processed to be eaten, and unfortunately one of the cheaper ways to process Soy is by using a catalyst derived from wheat. If you are sensitive to wheat based products, you will react to soy processed in this manner. Other varieties are processed in gluten free ways and some varieties of soy do not need to be processed at all. The problem is finding out first if the soy you are eating is processed and how it was processed. That is not even getting into cross contamination or the fact that most of the soy in the US is genetically engineered and some ignorant researcher thought it would be a good idea to splice in wheat genes into some varieties of soy to increase protein content, unfortunately gluten is a protein. The last bit is not well known since US law assumes any gluten content derived from spliced genes would be so small that people do not react, hence no labeling is required. So even if your soy is processed gluten free and the people you are buying from got it fresh from the field, You can still get sick from soy without having a soy allergy, if the farmer did not tell the cook they were growing GM (geneticaly modified) soy, which they won't since they don't have to by law. For more info on this look up GM seeds and soy. As a disclaimer, not all soy is genetically modified, and only a tiny fraction are spliced with wheat genes, so if you are a gm seed company, please do not sue me. There is an entire category devoted to GM crops and their issues beyond what I already wrote if you are interested in more information.