How Long Till Villi Heal

[holdthegluten]

I was told by my gi doctor that i was in the early stage of celiac disease, because i didn't have any malabsorption. I am getting mixed info on how long it takes for your villi to heal. Can having issues with dairy and soy prolong the villi healing if not removed from my diet. I have been gluten free for 7 months and thought that was enough time to heal. Any info would be great.

[CMCM]

My mom was so sick she nearly died....her biopsy revealed her villi were entirely gone, and some of her stomach lining was gone too. So this is your most extreme situation....her intestines were smooth as a billiard ball, so the doctor said! They did a follow up biopsy 6 or 7 months later after she'd been gluten free for all that time, and found that her villi were back and looked just fine. So in your situation, I'd say it's likely your intestines have repaired themselves!

[hez]

I have had 2 endoscopies about 2 years apart. The first one showed complete villi atrophy. The second one showed villi but they are fragile and delicate. Looks like I still have some healing to do!

Hez

[CuriousOne]

wow thats amazing. 2 years and still not better? i wonder if there is a way to hasten the healing of villi...

[spunky]

I think it can vary, but seems I remember reading somewhere that 2 years is a general ballpark figure to shoot for.

I was never tested, etc., just figured out my problems on my own and went gluten free (got 100% of my info and HELP in doing all of that by lots of lurking here)... and have been gluten free for 2 years and 2 months.

I felt somewhat better at 7 months into gluten free, but the road was rocky getting there. Then, after the 7 months, I began battling lots of what seemed to be new food intolerances popping up here and there... very difficult to figure out and deal with. I was already dairy free before, but ended up giving up soy, eggs (but I do eat some eggs here and there, but can't tolerate them much), and some other foods along the way.

By 2 years, it seems my health got some big boost, and I've felt much better just in the past couple of months, even though I THOUGHT I was much better before... so... it's conceivable to me that a person might get lucky and be all well in 7 months or so, but giving it 2 full years might be a good idea.

Dogtor J says that some celiacs tested after 2 years still show damage, and from his experience treating dogs and cats, he believes the damage would heal more rapidly if they avoided other foods, namely dairy products, soy and corn. Just his opinion, but he makes a lot of sense.

For me, the thought of giving up corn isn't too pleasant...LOL! But if I wan't getting better, I would do whatever I had to do to be well.

[CuriousOne]

interesting stuff...

maybe dairy is a bad one because cows are fed gluten and/or soy...

corn is bad because it can be cross-contaminated...

and soy is bad because...well its similar to gluten in structure.

[Moongirl]

interesting stuff...

maybe dairy is a bad one because cows are fed gluten and/or soy...

corn is bad because it can be cross-contaminated...

and soy is bad because...well its similar to gluten in structure.

just to comment ....If cows are fed gluten it is not transfered into their meat, its perfectly safe to eat. Im not really sure about the corn being CC, thats more an issue with Oats. People are usually sentivtive to soy not because its similar to gluten but because its more likely people are intolerant to them, especially if your body is in the process of healing.

[CuriousOne]

But how do you know for sure? How do we know that gluten metabolites are not transferred into the fat and/or meat somehow? Just like the antibiotics are??

Especially with diary and eggs I would imagine. Even if its not the full intact gluten protein maybe some metabolites of it get in there...which would explain how people don't necessarily get "glutening" symptoms to things like dairy and eggs...but they still feel they are intolerant and get other types of symptoms.

Maybe gluten intact has different symptoms...and as its broken down then each metabolite has its own set of symptoms...

Kinda like how caffeine breaks down into different bi-products which each have their own reactions in the body.

[spunky]

Dogtor J is a vet, has experience treating animals, and also has celiac disease himself, and so he's very aware of how animals are fed and the consequences.

His belief is that most meat and eggs should not have gluten effects on people or animals who are sensitive and eat them, but he did say that some chickens are now fed with a special high-sodium type of wheat, inedible to people, but fed to those chickens to make them retain water and be extra plump and juicy, and he has seen some dog patients that react to gluten seem to also react to some chicken...he thinks it's possible this is the reason for that. He thinks it might be a wise idea to know how chickens were fed... the usual chicken feeds are corn-based and supposedly those proteins shouldn't come out through the meat at all.

He says the reason for the problems with milk proteins is that the protein is very sticky and tenacious, like gluten protein is, and he calls any of these proteins "glue foods," as they are also used as a base for glue manufacturing. His thought is that in animals sensitive to gluten, a lot of them also react in a similar way to soy-based feeds, dairy proteins, and corn-based feeds, although he says the corn is a lot more iffy... that many of the animals will be healthy fed on corn. He also notes that corn-based glues are very weak glues, break down easily, and not used much in industry for anything more than cardboard. He says that dogs and cats were in fact much healthier back before the 80s and 90s, when pet-foods were normally heavily corn-based... now they almost always have wheat flour, barley, gluten, etc., and dogs and cats have tons of health issues that were formerly very rare.

I interviewed him for an hour-long radio show one time... he's very interesting to talk to, the way he compares human celiac disease / gluten sensitivity and various health/ diet-related issues in his animal patients over the past few decades...

www.dogtorj.net

Actually, you can listen to the interview we had with him here:

Open Original Shared Link

if you right click and download (save target as...) first. It won't work if you just left-click on it. I think that link should still work for now, but we have since stopped doing those radio shows and the site will go down before too long... it's a long story why we stopped: we used to be vegan, and it's a vegan-oriented radio show, but I had to stop eating gluten and then found myself having too much trouble with veganism, etc. So I stopped doing the show, since the vegan diet turned out to be just a disaster for me; I believe it triggered celiac disease for me. Anyway... the link should still work for a little while longer in case anybody wants to hear what Dogtor J has to say in a nutshell.

[Moongirl]

There are other discussions on the board about this, and here is part of it...Look it up through the search.

Also all the "evidence" we have at this point is overhelming -- grain-fed animals are gluten-free. Some people may have other issues with it, such antibodies and so on, but gluten simply does not appear to be an issue.

When an animal consumes gluten, its digestive enzymes break it down into short sequences of amino acids before it can be absorbed into the animal's bloodstream. (Which is also what happens in humans that are not intolerant to gluten or who do not have Celiac disease.) From there, the animal uses those amino acid to build the proteins specified by their genetic code. Many of these proteins are similar to those of humans, such as muscle proteins, ect. Beef may have a more dense protein concentration or have a higher fat content, or some other factor that makes it more difficult to digest.

[CuriousOne]

You know, that may "make sense" on a logical viewpoint...but thats assuming everything you said is true. I just don't think we fully know what is true...

For instance they say eating meat with antibiotics is bad because it can get in you and kill off bad bacteria etc..

Either way I'm going without anything that eats soy or wheat for now on!

[CuriousOne]

I personally wonder what the life-cycle of -a- villi is...like how long is it alive before it dies and a new one is regenerated. This would be something interesting to find out.

Another interesting idea is this...

in relation to dogtorJ's ideas...

Lets say celiac/gluten people have hardly any villi...because the immune response has killed off/destroyed lots of the villi...

Meanwhile... lets say we decide we are going to stop eating gluten so the villi regrow. But, we are still eating all this other stuff...corn/soy/diary!...

So as the new villi pop up, they are getting smothered in this glue stuff. so we don't feel good still because we are blanketing the few healthy villi as they pop up...so still not absorbing...

So then it could take years until enough villi grow to offset the blanketing of them...

So instead, we should cut out as much as possible foods that glue the villi...at least until we start feeling better. I don't know, just a thought...

Or just drink more wine to dissolve the sticky substances off the villi... at the same time cutting down on these sticky substances.

[gfp]

There are other discussions on the board about this, and here is part of it...Look it up through the search.

Also all the "evidence" we have at this point is overhelming -- grain-fed animals are gluten-free. Some people may have other issues with it, such antibodies and so on, but gluten simply does not appear to be an issue.

When an animal consumes gluten, its digestive enzymes break it down into short sequences of amino acids before it can be absorbed into the animal's bloodstream. (Which is also what happens in humans that are not intolerant to gluten or who do not have Celiac disease.) From there, the animal uses those amino acid to build the proteins specified by their genetic code. Many of these proteins are similar to those of humans, such as muscle proteins, ect. Beef may have a more dense protein concentration or have a higher fat content, or some other factor that makes it more difficult to digest.

This is how muscle is built, but it doesn't mean its the whole story. Our bodies often lock away toxins (in fat cells for instance) ... or expel them via other means such as through the skin. We know gliadin is passed in human breast milk...

How do cows digest wheat? They are pretty much specialised in digesting grass, not high protein sources like seeds. What happens to unused protein sequences?