Timeline and Severity Relationship of Successive Gluten Attacks

[Brogrammer]

So, at this point it's decided that I have Celiac, not even just intolerance. However, that doesn't change the fact that I keep screwing up, so I'm going to post here with the rookies. My streaks of successful gluten free diet were at first 3-4 days at a time, then I went a solid 11 days without screwing up. It has been 6 days since that last gluten attack.

Anyway, in all past cases of getting glutened after I started attempting to go gluten free... I'd be back on track after 3 days reliably... like that was my body's perfect internal clock. This time though... I'm on day 6 right now and I'm still experiencing the symptoms. Of course it's a bit hard for me at this point to distinguish the reaction from the subsequent withdrawal that is to be expected... but I just know that after 3 days there tends to be a bit of a reprieve before I go into withdrawal, and there hasn't been yet.

Is this normal or should I be worried I've done something worse than usual, or rather... something worse than usual has happened to me? In terms of the number of relapses, this is relapse #4. It has been about a month since I declared to myself my intention to ditch gluten, and I saw the doctor and confirmed my situation last week since my mistake provided that opportunity (I cannot imagine agreeing to gluten myself for the sake of science, it's too much suffering). Anyway, I got used to the 3 day rhythm, so I'm very concerned that this time I don't seem to be bouncing back.

Thanks as usual, helpful people.

[Scott Adams]

Normally it takes weeks or even months on a gluten-free diet for celiac disease symptoms to go away, so hopefully you can have more success going forward. It can take years to fully recover if you do have celiac disease and there is considerable intestinal damage.

[Brogrammer]

  On 7/20/2018 at 11:20 PM, Scott Adams said:

Normally it takes weeks or even months on a gluten-free diet for celiac disease symptoms to go away, so hopefully you can have more success going forward. It can take years to fully recover if you do have celiac disease and there is considerable intestinal damage.

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Thanks for the info. After first realizing I was sensitive to gluten, celiac or not, I of course screwed up a few times, and some are detailed already on this site. But like I said, I felt back to what I knew as normal (which is me having eaten gluten products unwittingly until I ended up in the hospital and knew it was time to quit, and then lasting a few days to a week at a time successfully avoiding gluten).

Now it's just scary because I am not back to normal and it has been 8 days since that sinister handful of the wrong granola sprinkled on my parfait. To think I almost spooned it off and threw it away, I feel so dumb for consciously not being as cautious as I sort of suspected I needed to be. The thing is, I had actually eaten that same parfait a few times since realizing gluten was a problem and being a bit ignorant of what all it's in... I would eat them because yogurt settles my stomach and fruit has good vitamins... they had not been a problem previously.

So in other words, it seems that my sensitivity has sharply increased since my first realization that I should go gluten free. Based on my first round of tests and the symptoms I described to her, my doctor said that I in fact am not just gluten intolerant, but have Celiac disease. She also mentioned Crohn's (her research specialization) when she was being thorough and all that... but I looked at the FODMAPs and I still have been eating plenty of those with no trouble at all.

So yeah sure, another round of tests after this recent glutening... but her expert suspicions confirm my non-expert ones... so I'm still going to be doing the gluten free thing, and also avoiding soy because I've observed that to also be something I've started reacting to. Other food allergens do not seem to be a problem... tree nuts and dairy are still part of my diet without issue. Haven't had shellfish in ages, don't particularly care to I guess but maybe one day I'll find out if that's okay or not.

Anyway as I say in pretty much all my posts... I don't mind a few days, even weeks of sickness... my main concern is longer term troubles of a debilitating nature, or permanent consequences.