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Does Dairy Do Damage?

luvs2eat

By luvs2eat
in Coping with Celiac Disease

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luvs2eat Collaborator
luvs2eat
Posted

Gluten damages. But does dairy? It doesn't like me but there are some times when I'm willing to put up w/ the gas, belly noises, and bathroom issues for a good piece of cheese. Am I damaging anything other than my toilet/septic system?

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bigbird16 Apprentice
bigbird16
Posted

I've heard that there can be. Pubmed may be a good place to look for more info. Here's one article: Open Original Shared Link

Yep, being dairy-free totally sucks worse than being gluten-free, but it hits me harder and faster than gluten. Sometimes I miss cheese so bad. Though it smells gross to me now.

psawyer Proficient
psawyer
Posted

I do not believe that dairy in and of itself causes autoimmune damage. But if you are healing from damage caused by gluten, I can't imagine that it would help the process.

sandsurfgirl Collaborator
sandsurfgirl
Posted

I wouldn't think it would do damage, but you never know about inflammation. The villi are damaged so they aren't able to produce lactase enzyme to digest dairy. When the villi heal many can eat dairy again, but not all. It's complicated unfortunately.

If you are newly gluten free, I would say going off dairy would help you heal and hopefully you can eat it again in the future.

saintmaybe Collaborator
saintmaybe
Posted

The papers that are cited seem to indicate villous flattening in the presence of a lactose intolerance alone, but failed to separate the intestinal damage from the context of celiac disease. Does anyone know if milk intolerance BY ITSELF can cause intestinal damage via an immuno-response? The papers were also 20-30 years old. Any more recent info?

luvs2eat Collaborator
luvs2eat
Posted
  • Author

I wouldn't think it would do damage, but you never know about inflammation. The villi are damaged so they aren't able to produce lactase enzyme to digest dairy. When the villi heal many can eat dairy again, but not all. It's complicated unfortunately.

If you are newly gluten free, I would say going off dairy would help you heal and hopefully you can eat it again in the future.

I am SO not newly gluten-free. I've been gluten-free for TEN years. It's only in the last year that dairy doesn't seem to like me anymore. And I completely agree. Going gluten-free was way easier than going DF.

Strawberry-Jam Enthusiast
Strawberry-Jam
Posted

I tho't that lactose intolerance does not cause permanent damage, whereas a casein intolerance can act just like coeliac. If it is your autoimmune system that is producing antibodies and attacking casein in the same way it does for gluten, then I can totally see how that would be the case.

I don't have anything to back this up, only that I've heard this a couple times.

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kwylee Apprentice
kwylee
Posted

This is a great question and I've wondered about this myself. In addition to being gluten intolerant, I am intolerant to milk protein (casein) but not lactose, and I have ALWAYS reacted to dairy with intestinal trouble - even though my gluten reactions were strictly neuro only. With the stomach aches I've had all my life due to dairy, I can't believe it would not be doing me harm in some way to ingest it, although my intestinal villi have always tested as healthy. But if you do a dairy challenge in time and your body tells you something, probably best to listen. In my case, after over a year being gluten-free/DF I challenged a couple months ago with a handful of mozz cheese on a gluten-free pizza. I could usually tolerate that much cheese before and I had no tummy trouble, but I did get a slight weird feeling in my brain for a couple hours, so not sure I'll be going there soon.

Leper Messiah Apprentice
Leper Messiah
Posted

I think this depends on how long you went between it starting (for some very difficult to pinpoint) and beginning a strict gluten free diet.

After a long period my theory is that your GI tract tries to work out what's causing the inflammation itself and wrongly identifies a selection or one (if you're lucky) of the common allergens such as dairy, soy etc etc.

What I'm unclear on is if this is permanent or could be retrained over time.

Lisa Mentor
Lisa
Posted

This is an article from 1996, but I believe and intolerance to cows milk protein can also cause villious atrophy, but it's not common.

https://www.celiac.com/articles/50/1/Main-Causes-of-Flattened-Villi/Page1.html

IrishHeart Veteran
IrishHeart
Posted

This is an article from 1996, but I believe and intolerance to cows milk protein can also cause villious atrophy, but it's not common.

https://www.celiac.com/articles/50/1/Main-Causes-of-Flattened-Villi/Page1.html

That was an interesting article, even though the source of the info is from 1984.

I knew there were other reasons for villous damage, but from soy and milk proteins? hmm.... I also noticed it said that these cases were rare and more often in conjunction with celiac and if the villi did not heal after a total gluten-free diet, they should look for another reason why. Man, there's always more to learn with this "thing". :rolleyes:

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