Fruits And Egg Causing Severe Pain

[martd]

Hi All

I've been looking through the window for a while now and decided i should call in and say hi, and also ask a question if thats ok?!

I was diagnosed with celiac disease in September 2009 (symptoms started February 2009) and have been gluten-free ever since, with the odd mistake here and there like most people, im sure.

I was diagnosed after visiting my doctor with crippling stomach cramps after eating.

They tested me for all sorts including an ulsar, gallstones etc etc.

Finally a blood test and an endoscopy (arent they fun!) showed up celiac disease.

Ok, so off i went on a gluten-free diet.

I was still getting the odd painful stomach now and then but once I stopped eating oranges, pineapple, bananas, strawberries and egg (fried egg - in gluten-free cakes etc its ok) my pain stopped completely.

After a couple of nights out i realised that cider (Strongbow and a few others) causes the same reaction, although a longer delay between consumption and reaction.

Looking back I would say that most (maybe all?) of my pain attacks were directly after eating one of the above food stuffs!

I have cut the following out of my diet - along with Gluten:

Bananas

Oranges

Strawberries

Pineapple

Egg (sunny side up!)

Any type of fruit juice

Cider

Probably more that I dont remember right now

However, i regularly have McDonalds (without the bun) and I have no reaction at all that I could tell you about.

And although I was emailed direct from McDonalds HQ to say my listed items could be consumed safely and were gluten free, i'm still not convinced that SOME gluten doesnt find its way in.

My question is this (eventually) could my celiac disease cause my bad reaction to the above food/drink?

Could the damage caused by my celiac disease cause my body to react badly to the fruit etc?

My gluten-free specialist says not and that there may be something else wrong.

Can anyone shed some light? Or does anyone have the same problems?

Thanks for reading my ramblings.

I look forward to hearing your replies and answering some of your questions in the future

[trents]

Shortly after being diagnosed with celiac disease and going gluten-free almost 10 years ago now, I began to notice that whenever I ate a large serving of eggs I would get a bad belly ache. I can eat up to one egg with no problem but not two or more. The odd thing is I had eaten eggs all my life to that point and never had a problem.

[T.H.]

All righty, I'll try to be pithy (which is nearly impossible for me, LOL.).

Short answer is: it's likely not gluten. Many people find that they have previously unrecognized food allergies/intolerances that come to the fore once the gluten is eliminated. That could definitely be these.

There are also a few conditions that span a broader spectrum of foods that might be worth looking at. Fructose malabsorption is the one that comes to mind, with all the fruit problems. It is one that seems to develop more often in people with other gut problems, so it could kind of be caused by celiac disease. If you google it, there are lists of 'safe' foods, although it's still relatively new to the medical scene, and people seem to be able to tolerate some foods better than others, depending on who they are.

Long answer on the gluten, though?

Everything, and I really do mean everything, can be a gluten issue. Fruit might be fine, except that someone ate a sandwich and picked over the fruit at the store, and when you bought it you didn't wash it well enough to get their gluten cc off the fruit. Gluten cc can happen at any time in the chain that gets the food from the field to your kitchen. And then from the fridge to the pan to your plate.

HOWEVER - if you are more sensitive to gluten, so you have more problems like the above, you also likely would be sick as a dog with Mcdonald's food. Since you weren't, it's highly unlikely you would have such problems with the fruit all that often.

Which is why the short answer was that it's unlikely to be gluten.

And as to whether I have the same problem?

I am super sensitive to gluten, such that I have to carefully choose my produce to make sure it doesn't come into contact with gluten while it's being grown (like gluten straw in the mulch). My daughter, on the other hand, seems to have issues with fructose, so fruit bothers her for that reason, but not for gluten issues like myself. So I've gotten to have to deal with both of these, sigh.

[Kim69]

Looks like fructose malabsorption and other food sensitivities. I too cannot eat bananas or fried eggs. I have been diagnosed with fructose malabsorption. Pineapple is on my list of foods I can eat. However apples, pears peas onion and more are on my do not eat list. Do you react to onion?

[domesticactivist]

It could be the sugars that are the problem, due to the damage your gut has taken from the gluten. The diet our family has done is aimed at restoring gut health and really takes its time introducing fruit. Monosaccharide sugars don't require the processing that disaccharide sugars (like fructose) do in order to be digested. I've posted a lot about our experience with the GAPS diet so hopefully a search here will turn up the info.